smudie

See if you can guess just what I mean

2012-03-05T08:07:21Z

I don't think I'm going out on a limb in claiming that Philippe Beer-Gabel, the singer of General Bye Bye, is the only Frenchman to play Finnish national instrument the kantele in a rock band. Indeed, he may well be the only Frenchman to play one at all.

Yesterday I had the pleasure of seeing Philippe's new band Feather Feather perform at the recently-opened Fabrique des Balades Sonores. Alongside Philippe on kantele and vocals, the band also features Laura Jorgensen and Liz Tolan on alternate lead vocals, and Andrea Else on the violin. The combination of three quite different voices and all those strings makes for a truly beautiful sound, an example of which can be heard to great effect on the live recording of Rocketlauncher (which was sung by Laura Jorgensen) from yesterday's show.

It's always a delight hearing new voices breathe life into my lyrics, and Feather Feather performing Rocketlauncher was no exception.

Rocketlauncher

Unfinished business

2012-02-01T08:00:15Z

I wrote the lyrics to Bruises a long time ago, and I wasn't sure that they were finished, but today I feel like sharing them anyway.

Sometimes it's better to half-say something that's on your mind than it is to remain silent.

Bruises

Never stop

2011-12-20T08:16:06Z

It's been a while since I've put any new lyrics up here, but that doesn't mean I've stopped writing. I never stop writing.

Songs like My Tattoo.

My Tattoo

Songs in search of a singer

2011-05-02T12:46:39Z

Sometimes I write lyrics specifically for people who ask. In those cases, the music might already exist, or the singer might have an idea of what he or she wants the song to be about, and at the very least I have a particular style of music in mind. Emmylou is a good example of such a song - General Bye Bye's singer Philippe told me a story and together we turned it into a song.

Sometimes, however, I write simply because the lyrics need to be written. When that happens, it's up to me to find someone afterwards to sing the song. I think of them as songs in search of a singer, and I just put a whole bunch of new ones online, including An Open Relationship and Soles.

Murdering a perfectly decent song

2011-02-01T12:15:22Z

Here's a video, featuring a heart-felt vocal performance by Philippe, of General Bye Bye performing the unreleased song Murder Of Crows during their Oliver Peel Session last weekend.

Murder Of Crows

Writing to order

2010-11-26T11:18:54Z

When General Bye Bye were collecting funds on KissKissBankBank to help finance their recent US tour, one of the prizes they offered to generous contributors was the chance to have the group write a song for you.

Gilles-Marie Zimmerman, a photographer from Paris, took them up on their offer - and yesterday he listened for the first time to the song they came up with based on my lyrics, Flirting With The Camera.

By all accounts, Gilles-Marie was very pleased with the result.

Flirting With The Camera

smudie on Facebook

2010-11-10T15:43:55Z

smudie on Facebook?

You're welcome!

General Bye Bye rock the US

2010-08-12T10:25:43Z

Follow General Bye Bye on their DIY tour of the United States, where they will be introducing unsuspecting American audiences to some of the new songs we've been writing together recently, including Physics and Maths.

Physics and Maths

A guinea pig I met in Texas

2010-05-21T09:22:57Z

Last night I attended the launch party for Girouette, the eagerly-anticipated first album from General Bye Bye that was released this week on Greed Recordings.

The album was recorded before I started working with the band so doesn't feature any of my work. However, at yesterday's gig they did perform two new tracks for which I've written the lyrics, including Emmylou, which lead singer Philippe introduced as being "a story about a guinea pig I met in Texas, that Stuart Mudie turned into a song".

In fact, my lyrics were about a hamster, not a guinea pig, but it's still a great tune.

Emmylou

Honeycomb

2010-03-30T15:05:30Z

Honeycomb

Broadening my horizons

2010-03-25T13:12:31Z

Although songs like Cactus, Ashtray and Crayon are probably most representative of how I write, I do venture outside my rock and folk ghetto from time to time as well.

Lately I've been in the studio with a pair of electro producers from Versailles called Juan Carlos, working on a track that begins "Like a piece of chocolate, I'm slowly melting beneath your touch, babe"; I've launched a collaboration with a very funky young singer called Marlene Rodrigues; and I've written a song called Kiss By Kiss for Ashton Kennedy.

Sometimes it's good to broaden your horizons.

Kiss By Kiss

Business, as usual

2010-03-10T16:06:42Z

I wrote the lyrics for several tracks on the album Candy Pop Folk, including The Whisper Of The Leaves and Rules Are Made To Be Broken.

Candy Pop Folk is the most recent release from Kosinus, a successful French music library that supplies instrumental music and songs for use in advertising, documentaries, films and other media.

They may have been created for expressly commercial purposes, but they're still nice little songs that I'm proud to have written.

Oliver Peel Session #16

2010-02-15T21:55:45Z

Early Saturday evening, my daughter and I were among the forty or fifty lucky people who gathered in an apartment at a secret location somewhere in Paris to watch Rivkah perform at the Oliver Peel Session #16.

She even sang the song we wrote together, Splitting The Atom - and it was the first time I'd ever heard it!

It was quite a moving experience to discover one of my songs in a live setting, as opposed to listening to an mp3, and together with the intimate atmosphere of the "concert en appartement", it all added up to make a beautiful moment for me.

Plus, my daughter told me afterwards she was very proud.

Vielen Dank Oliver, merci Rivkah.

Splitting The Atom

Merry Christmas, and all that

2009-12-18T10:32:44Z

It's snowing in Paris, and I have just learned that the Christmas song I wrote with The Hogmanay Children has been released on the compilation album Chantons Noël avec Olga Records.

Admittedly, Like Every Christmas Eve may not be the happiest Christmas ditty you've ever heard, but with its mix of Japanese karaoke-style vocals in the first verse, a drunken church organ all the way through and some harmonies at the end that the Beach Boys would have died for, it still manages to be uplifting despite the somewhat morose subject matter.

Merry Christmas, and all that.

Like Every Christmas Eve

A beast in every song

2009-11-17T10:29:48Z

When Philippe Beer-Gabel of the band General Bye Bye asked me to start working with him a few weeks ago, he was happy to give me carte blanche to write about whatever I liked. However, he did have one specific instruction, which was to try to include a reference to an animal wherever possible. This is sort of the band's signature, it seems - a beast in every song.

Well, we've been working on a few tracks together, and so far I've managed to satisfy Philippe's request in at least one - Give It All Away - by slipping a few geese in there. I'm looking forward to hearing the sound of their beating wings in concert soon.

Give It All Away