A relationship gone bad can drive some people under the covers, unable to stand up and put one foot in front of the other.
Singer-songwriter Mindy Smith, who plays the Southgate House Thursday night, took a different tack. She wrote an album of upbeat pop songs whose words belie the toe-tapping music that accompanies them.
The title of "Stupid Love" gives the listener a hint of what's to come, but the sunny strumming that starts the opening cut, " What Went Wrong," hints there won't be much self-pity along the way.
"Lyrics don't discriminate with the melody," Smith says somewhat cryptically. "I have no intention (what a song will sound like) when I sit down to write (lyrics). The only intention is that I want to do whatever I want."
Although the theme here is love interrupted, she isn't ready to give up.
"I went through a really rough time," Smith confesses. "But I found something to be happy about."
Much of that happiness relates to music. "Stupid Love" is Smith's fourth album and could be the one that pushes the former Cincinnati Bible College student from the "that's interesting" to the "when is the next album coming out?" category.
Her record was WNKU-FM's album of the month in August. She was recently featured in a revealing interview on NPR's "World Café" ("I was pretty much an open book," she says). On this tour, she is traveling with a band, thanks to some financial support from her label, Vanguard Records.
"The feedback we've gotten so far has been great," Smith says. "I've been playing (solo) acoustically for most of my career, but this group of musicians is just wonderful."
The "Stupid Love" songs lend themselves to the fuller sound that a band offers on stage. And it gives Smith the chance to get out of her own head and interact with others. Although she might not be a social butterfly, she enjoys social networking.
"I'm involved with corresponding with fans," Smith says. "It's such an interesting dynamic in what happens.
"And I've been reconnecting with people. That's what the Internet has done. Friends who didn't know what I was doing contacted me on Facebook. When I was in New York (she grew up on Long Island), I got together with people who haven't seen each other in 20 years, since church camp or something."
If it helps with healing, God bless Facebook.
"I'm happy about making music again," Smith says. "It's great to be out there doing what I love to do."
It's great for her fans to see something so smart come out of something "Stupid."
