The Handsome Mix:

It’s no small irony that Handsome Brothers Music operates out of the cell block of the former Somerville police station in Union Square.

As law-abiding commercial music producers (ahem), the studio comes up with a lot of the music you’ve probably heard on TV and radio for clients that include major local and national corporations.

The “lawful” side of Handsome, run by Doug Stevens and his business partners Ed Grenga and Charles “Kook” Lawry, also scores multimedia trade shows and product introductions for companies like EMC and Gillette, writes music for PBS and Discovery Channel documentaries and brings in almost a million a year in revenue.

But in between client jobs, Stevens, composer and keyboardist Grenga and guitarist and instrumentation guru Lawry write and produce the irreverent and law-provoking “Red Peters,” Steven’s persona as a singer of a raunchy comic songs

Peters was regularly featured on the Howard Stern Show—although his song “I Can’t Say These Things” was banned from the show by the station manager after several weeks of play.

But Stern stands behind him and is helping Peters angle for his own radio show on the Sirius Network.

Peters’ two albums “I Laughed…I Cried…I (bleeped) my Undies” and “Ol’ Blue (bleep) is Back” have sold over 100,000 copies. Peters possesses an original comic style influenced by Frank Zappa, Firesign Theater and Weird Al Yankovic.

The clever novelty albums trace Red’s rocky career, narrated by pompous PBS-like narrator Alan Pinchloaf, who guides us through comic songs in styles including from Big Band, Folk, Country, Polka, R&B, Disco, Rap and Rock.

Songs like “Ballad of a Dog Named Stains”, “The Two Gay Irishmen” “How’s Your Whole…Family,” “I Don’t Just Love You Down There” and the infamous “(Bleep) Me (You Hardly Even Know Me)” are clever and funny parodies with lyrics that would make your mother blush.

Possibly your father too.

“Some of our clients know and appreciate that we do Red Peters here,” says Stevens, a 55-year old Somerville native who went to Mass. College of Art and fronted a band that toured with Zappa and Sha Na Na before starting Handsome in 1976. “That’s because we can do all the serious business stuff like understanding marketing and selling and the psychology of music. They trust us. And Red Peters has even gotten us some jobs.”

But not always.

Stevens recalls giving a copy of his CD to a prospective client who turned out to be a deacon of a fundamentalist church. “Needless to say we didn’t get that job,” he says.

How do the two side of Stevens/Peters square? The same comic living out an admittedly juvenile fantasy of recording dirty ditties is also considered one of the country’s major corporate music producers who has done trade shows, product introductions and sales meetings for locals like Fidelity Investments, Bain Capital, EMC, John Hancock Financial Services, Dunkin’ Donuts, Avid Technology, Reebok Raytheon and even Harvard University.

Global players such as Microsoft, SAP, Kraft Foods, GTE Sylvania, CNN, AT&T, Hewlett Packard and ITT also used them.

“These guys are not only incredibly talented musicians, but they understand the needs of the corporate world,” says 20-year Handsome client George Scontsas, producer/director of Chelmsford’s Jupiter Productions which produces multimedia events for many of the world’s major high-tech companies.

Scontsas says that not all of his clients know about the Peters persona. “We have to be careful with that, because in the corporate world it could be taken as off-color. But Handsome does first-rate, original work with outstanding production values. They have an incredible reputation and we’d be lost without them.”

Jack Malnati, media services manager for RMC, who has done business with Handome since the early 1980s, says that when the company is working on a project for him “Red Peters is kept in the closet- he only comes out at lunchtime.”

“It’s never been an issue with us because when it comes to tailoring music to a message, these guys really get it – and usually on the first pass,” says Malnati.

It’s why they’re in demand for high-end corporate work. Handsome was responsible for the recent “superhero” musical introduction of Gillette’sfive-bladed “Fusion” razor. Local TV viewers will recognize theme songs like “Get Your Kick. It’s the New England Revolution,” Polar Beverage’s “What Your Favorite Beverage?,” WB 56’s “It’s Great to Be Here”and the catchy Wachusett Mountain ads.

And the same company that writes music for Reader’s Digest also does musical parodies and national radio spots for E-Z Wider/Joker rolling papers with “Roll Your Own” music sung by everyone from a geriatric rock group, an angry alternative singer and a potty mouth rapper.

Every musical style is in play at Handsome – from classical composer Aaron Copland (for American Life TV) to Fellini composer Nino Rota ( for PBS’ new series American Plumber), from Brazilian bossa nova to New Age (for a promotional album or original music for Rockport Shoes).

“All of our work, including Red Peters, has strengthened our chops at how to solve any musical problem our clients bring us,” Stevens says.

As corporate spending, which once accounted for 90 percent of Handsome’s business, has declined, Handsome has moved more into music for TV shows ( now 40 percent of its revenue). A quarter of its business is from scoring films, including two locally made moves “Johnny Slade’s Greatest Hits” starring “Law and Order” and “Sopranos” star John Fiore and Waltham’s Moody Street Pictures’ production “The Legend of Lucy Keyes.”

Stevens, who lives in Milton, counts his 15-year-old daughter Aurora as a creative consultant, keeping Handsome abreast of the latest alternative bands for clients who want “the sound of today.”

“My daughter is a little embarrassed about the Red Peters thing,” says Steven, who is readyings his third CD. “When one of her teachers heard that I was a musical performer and asked her to bring in some of my work, she quickly talked her teacher out of it.”