Our first album Two-Sided Fortune was a bit of a lark. We’d started writing songs together for the sheer joy of it. The next thing we knew, we had 10 we wanted to share, so we used one of Tamsin’s paintings as the basis for a digital cover and published the release on the streaming services. No expectations. No fuss. Just get the music out there.

We started playing live shows, which is when an artist really gets a sense of how songs are hitting. Without an audience, everything still feels theoretical. To the maker, a digital song isn’t really a song until he/she/they sees someone swaying/smiling/bouncing to the sound.

But we both remember the intimacy of holding a physical album in our hands, pouring over liner notes and lyrics, and becoming directly immersed in the stories beyond sound. So when we realized we had much more to say – a double-album’s worth, in fact – we wanted to give the lark proper wings.

Pressing vinyl opens up new dimensions of space for creative expression. With two LPs to present, we chose a gatefold design for album number two and brought a massively talented collaborator into the process. Charlotte Audrey is a UK-based artist, director, and writer. She works across motion and stills primarily for the entertainment industries. Top notes include creating the visuals for Ed Sheeran’s lyric videos, directing projects for Walt Disney Studios, Pixar, and DreamWorks, and art-directing One Direction’s album campaigns. Regardless of the project, her bold and captivating sense of whimsy stands out.

Working with Charlotte has been a dream. She takes the spark of an idea and builds a rich visual world. For the album that became Digging, the spark was a stunner of a painting that our friend Emilio Villalba made for us. The painting is full of everyday images from our lives. Check out where Charlotte took it.

In addition to creating the band’s new logo, Charlotte’s been hand-illustrating a tour de force animated video for “Poet’s Song” (one of the tracks from Digging), which envisions the lyric’s references to a chain of creativity stretching from Homer and Sappho to Keats and Dickinson to Stevens and Ginsberg. It’s getting close to done, and we can’t wait to show you. For now, how about a listen…

We’ve waylaid Charlotte a bit on this video because she’s designing our third album, which we’ve just finished mixing, Gawd Save The Strays. This album feels transformative for lots of reasons. It was the title’s multi-level resonance that prompted us to change our name from Wundercat to The Strays. It’s also a more eclectic mix of songs, so much so that two tracks will be captured on a standout and standalone 7” bonus disc to accompany the 12” LP. We’ll keep the design of the 7” a surprise, but here’s a sneak peek of the LP cover.

Indie stray rocks regal crown bonnet. Ace, right? Gawd bless Charlotte.

Hey, before we sign off, have you seen Christopher Nolan’s Odyssey yet? Go.

Here’s our more playful take on the hero’s journey. Penelope’s version?

Our songwriting process doesn’t walk a straight line. Lyrics emerge from a slurry of memory, experiences, sensation, imagination, exploration, and random catches of conversation. Shards of lived encounters and personal philosophy rub up against phrases that emerge purely based on what the underlying notes suggest.

Sometimes we start with a goal. “Dirt” was written for Zack’s son Cole (frontman and songwriter for the band DIIV), and we wrote “Run Run” as an ecological call to action. More often than not, though, the notes come before the words. Zack will pick up whatever guitar he’s into in the moment and just start to play.

Currently, it’s a Bass VI from Nelson Guitarworks, a custom instrument shop run by luthier Bruce Nelson, long-time tech and guitar and bass builder for Stone Temple Pilots. The spark for many of the songs on our first album Two-Sided Fortune was something altogether different: a 1955 aqua-blue Harmony Caribbean, Nashville-tuned. A reference to that instrument even made it into the song “Cherryvine” along with nods to Joni Mitchell and W.B. Yeats.

As a given song’s structure evolves, melody emerges via Zack scatting nonsense lyrics and placeholder syllables. Tamsin takes this fluid mass and begins weaving a story based on the vibe she gets from the tune and whatever else floats to the surface. Snapshots from the day’s often wrenching news, a recent dream, or her daughter Tabitha sitting by the pool, soaking up the sun, playing pop, and contemplating life post-college graduation, all have kicked off various songs on the upcoming album.

More often than not, the songs tell us what they want to say. The trick is to listen and be willing to take all the tracks back down to zero and build things up again. There’s a lot of trying this and trying that, so it’s key not to get attached to legacy layers. What we throw out ends up being as important as what we keep in the final mix.

We have a recording studio at our place in Sebastopol, which gives us the gift of time to both experiment and let a song settle into itself. We also have the luxury of amazing friends who act as a sort of style council, providing feedback on what’s working and what isn’t. Shout-outs to Cole Smith, James Terris, Jason Falkner, Alvin Risk, Jed Leiber, Michael Lockwood, and Francesco Echo for their clever ears and insights.

Then there are collaborators (all of whom also belong in the group above!), who sometimes play on tracks. Songs on the upcoming album include performances by Justin Meldal-Johnsen (bass), Blair Sinta (drums), Libby Lavella (background vocals), and Jason Falkner (guitars).

The upcoming album Gawd Save The Strays includes an Alvin Risk remix of “Dreams”, a song off our first LP. Alvin recently spent a few days at our Sebastopol studio, working, among other things, on a new song we’re calling “Twenty-Two”. Can’t wait to share it. Alvin is a brilliant songwriter and musician in his own right. We think of him as a young Stevie Wonder. Gawd, we’re lucky.

Harmony is a beautiful thing, Zack & Tamsin

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Beginnings

The Substack prompt that guides writers into their first post flashes the headline “Beginnings are Hard,” but ours wasn’t.

I met Zack Smith in October 2021. A friend introduced us. I learned that he was a creative director at Apple Inc. and was the founder of the iconic 80s pop band Scandal. He learned that I, Tamsin Smith, was a poet, painter, and social impact innovator who helped Bono and Bobby Shriver build (RED), which has raised over $800 million for life-saving programs primarily in sub-Saharan Africa. Resumes out of the way, he asked me about my perfect day. My answer: a day where there’s nothing that I have to do, and I can spend every minute just making things.

Yet fun as woodworking, sewing, gardening, sketching, and playing with words could be, I’d always dreamed of writing a song. You wouldn’t think that would be challenging for a poet, but it was for this one. My verse has its own internal rhythm, but it’s irregular, and I tend to avoid all but the most subtle rhyme and repetition. Songwriting is driven by hooks and melodies that I couldn’t hear on my own without dipping into the trove of music already written by other artists.

Convergence

Enter Zack, who began learning guitar around age 8. He grew up in Westport, Connecticut, playing in local bands from the seventh grade on. The music scene there was already exploding after the Beatles appeared on the Ed Sullivan show. Steven Tallarico’s (aka Steven Tyler pre-Aerosmith) band Chain Reaction played Saturday night dance parties at Staples High, which booked A-list music acts including The Doors, Cream, Sly and the Family Stone, Nazz, The Young Rascals, and The Yardbirds to warm up on their way to larger Manhattan shows.

In college, Zack played lead guitar with Zephyr after Tommy Bolin left the band, then moved to NYC, where he formed Scandal in 1981. Hits like “Goodbye to You” and “The Warrior” found heavy rotation on MTV, and the band’s second release hit gold and then platinum. After leaving Scandal, Zack began producing commercial work, winning a Clio for writing the original lyrics and song for Cotton’s long-running “Fabric of our Lives.” At Apple, he developed system sounds, including ringtones, alerts, and alarms, and was the architect of the Memories feature.

Needless to say, music rolls out of him, but in all those years of songwriting, the words had never meant as much to him as the melodies and instrumental elements. Re-enter Tamsin, for whom storytelling is everything.

Collaboration…magic

So it began. As we melded our lives, the songs began to flow.

Our first album, Two Sided Fortune, was an act of love and fun. Our second, Digging — a double album — is when we knew this wasn’t a lark. It was a welling-up of something deep inside us both that being together had released. The feeling was electric, propulsive, and totally thrilling. That’s what we hope these songs generate in the minds and bodies of our listeners.

We believe that music shortens the distance between people. It collapses time, space, and differences in experience and outlook. In a fractured world, that’s not a small thing. It’s a step forward towards one another. Towards self-reflection, forgiveness, and better choices. That’s at the core of every song we write together.

This summer, we’re releasing our third album, Gawd Save the Strays. The melody line: no one and nothing is lost. We’re always in the act of becoming.

Together is more fun than alone, right? We’d love for you to help form the soundtrack of this journey. Let us know what you want to hear more about…stories from the studio, the friends we record with, players in the band, lyrics, and life at Rancho Mogato, where the whole is always greater than the sum of its parts.

The Strays.