Emmy-winning producer Genevieve LeDoux’s children inspire her latest career move.
They say necessity is the mother of invention, which certainly holds true for Genevieve LeDoux. The chief imagination officer, as she jokingly refers to herself, of Silver Comet Productions, LeDoux is an award-winning producer whose current pet project centers around an animated rock band called Star Forest.
The aha moment for her newest venture took place during the pandemic, when, to get out of the house, she and her two sons would get in the car and drive around with the windows rolled down and the music cranked up. Her oldest son, Hudson, who was 5 at the time, wasn’t a fan of his 3-year-old brother Dempsey’s music because it was too babyish. So LeDoux went looking for music for kids Hudson’s age and found it didn’t exist.
“Everything that was made for the 5 to 9 age group was still very immature and not well produced, so they weren’t into it,” LeDoux says. “I joke it goes from CoComelon to Cardi B, because there’s nothing in the middle.”
It was then she saw a niche that needed to be filled. For inspiration, LeDoux drew upon her years in Los Angeles working on children’s TV shows like “Yo Gabba Gabba!,” “My Little Pony” and a stop-motion series called “Tumble Leaf” that won her an Emmy for Outstanding Preschool Children’s Animated Program. She and her husband, Chris LeDoux, who founded the visual effects company Crafty Apes, had since relocated to Atlanta when he decided to open an office here in 2014. “He was working a lot for Tyler Perry and was going back and forth to Atlanta, and he came home one day and said, ‘You know what, there’s something really happening there,’” she explains.
LeDoux had just gotten nominated for her Emmy and was about to have a baby, so moving was a tough decision for the pair, but they headed to Atlanta when her son was 4 months old and settled in Buckhead for 5 years. “I didn’t know a soul,” she says, “but I fell in love with the people, the trees and the culture.”
The LeDoux family now resides in Smyrna in a whimsical, all-rock house built in 1890. Part of the Silver Comet Trail runs through their property, which is where the name for her production company came from. Their home also inspired the name of the fictional cartoon band she created, Star Forest. “We have a lot of trees in our backyard, and for some reason this one night, just after dusk, there were thousands of fireflies,” LeDoux says. “We’d had fireflies lots of times, but this was a show. And that’s when I said it’s like a starry forest.”
LeDoux came up with the band’s creaturesque animated characters: lead singer/keytarist Fawn Velvette, guitarist/singer Twig Leifort, bass guitarist/rapper Sluuth Marbles and drummer Rocktapus “Rocky” Blueblood VII. She also cowrites the songs in a genre she describes as synth wave nature pop. The band has put out two albums so far: Star Forest and the newly released Let Me Be Real. The latter includes a song called “Fancy Little Creek” that was written about the creek that ran through LeDoux’s backyard in Buckhead. The albums can be found on the Apple, YouTube and Amazon streaming music platforms. The band also has its own YouTube channel, @starforestrocks, with music videos, bandmate interviews and more. And a new mobile iOS game called Beam On: A Star Forest Quest is about to debut.
However you encounter Star Forest, you’d be wise to heed the following notice posted on one of the band’s recent YouTube videos: “Warning: Side effects may include uncontrollable toe-tapping, spontaneous daydreaming and a sudden urge to befriend talking animals.”
SILVER COMET PRODUCTIONS
silvercometstudios.com
STAR FOREST
starforest.rocks
@starforestrocks
