Simone Schmidt sat alone as her boyfriend went through a tiring day of chemotherapy. She had to stop being an anti-poverty organizer and shift her focus to take care of him, but never imagined it would be so difficult, or that she would feel so old doing it. On her boyfriend’s rougher days, Schmidt began journaling as characters she created or based on real people, writing out their feelings as sound poetry. On his good days, her boyfriend helped Schmidt create melodies to convert the characters and their stories into songs.
“Through the illness of my boyfriend I came to love to play guitar because it was a way to feel young,” she says.
Schmidt, of One Hundred Dollars and The Highest Order, released her debut solo album, Lost the Plot, this past September under the name FIVER. The songs on the album are about care-giving, sickness and infection.
Schmidt was disappointed with the media’s portrayal of the cancer patient always coming out a stronger person, which she found isn’t usually the case (though her boyfriend is currently in remission). She also noticed that the media barely ever focused on the struggle of the caregiver, particularly young female ones, who often feel guilty when caring for a boyfriend, when the relationship doesn’t survive the chemotherapy.
The songs on Lost the Plot are rooted in the narrative folk tradition, but Schmidt added a layer of psychedelic sound.
The last song on the album, “Undertaker” explores the story of a WWE wrestler. The Undertaker and his brother blame each other for burning down their parents’ house/funeral home (their father was a mortician). The Undertaker’s brother is accused of arson and committed to an asylum, but it hasn’t been resolved as to who committed the crime.
“In song-writing, I’m always trying to build an empathy between the speaker in the song and the listener,” Schmidt says. “Whether or not the speaker is someone I agree with is in the question of whether or not I can feel the challenge in their life.”
Schmidt created another layer of the song by using wordplay to expand on The Undertaker as a man who struggles with love because he takes less than he himself undertakes from others.
With Schmidt having total creative and production control over Lost the Plot, she created the album for vinyl. Her music is quieter than the average mp3 or CD album because she wants the listener to turn up the volume on the record player to hear new things on the album, as necessary for most records.
“I do feel like the point of the record is to have the intention to spend time with it,” she said, “not to just fill your playlist with some cool blip in your time.”
Schmidt, aka FIVER, will be playing at the Bus Stop Theatre on Jan. 24 as part of the In the Dead of Winter festival.
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