You Wanted Country?, Vol. 1

When citing Fiver’s 2017 Audible Songs From Rockwood LP as one of the city’s best albums of the 2010s, NOW Toronto observed that songwriter Simone Schmidt “has a knack for infusing old music styles with new life”. With “You Wanted Country? Vol 1” Schmidt celebrates and critiques country music as a living form, from a position of deep love, passionate study, and radical understanding, pairing a stunning original song “It Is What It Is” with covers of iconic works by Willie Nelson, Gene Clark, and Johnny Paycheck. Performing with some of the finest young improvisers working in North America, here credited as The Atlantic School Of Spontaneous Composition, Fiver is reinvigorating and reinventing a beloved musical tradition. Country Music: "it is what it is, and it’s not”.

You wanted country? Well, you're gonna get it. Simone Schmidt's latest incarnation as Fiver is that of dust-blown country crooner, a distill...