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Handsome Brothers has completed the production of a new radio and television jingle for Woburn based, Newpro Windows. The uptempo, rock song, featuring Brian Maes on lead vocals, spells out the address of Newpro’s website, and highlights the energy savings from installing New England’s #1 rated replacement window. Newpro marketing director, Bob Sheehan, along with songwriter Ed Grenga and lyricists, Doug Stevens and Kook Lawry all put their two cents in, to make it a very memorable tune. Paul Soares played drums and sang background vocals, and Lawry played bass and electric guitars.
A hilarious new docu-comedy series created and produced by Powderhouse Productions and playing on the Discovery Channel, delves deep into the existential angst of a working everyman. Eddie Cirigliano is a hot-blooded Italian-American plumber with a short fuse and a heart of gold. He tries to keep everyone happy, but things don’t always work out.
Handsome Brothers composer Ed Grenga and Exec. Prod. Douglas Stevens decided to key off Cirigliano’s Italian ancestry and base the music score on Italian folk influences. Composer Nino Rota and his music for Fellini’s Amarcord, was a huge inspiration. Grenga used accordian, acoustic guitar and organ throughout the program, but also incorporated more contemporary music for the driving segments and scene transitions.
The Warner Bros./Mr. Magoo styled animated open, close and transitions, to and from commercials, were created by Newton native, Gabriel Polonsky. In turn, Grenga created a rousing Simpsons-esque main music theme with multiple sound effects.
“The Raising Cain Project” is a two, one hour episode television documentary based on the best selling book “Raising Cain”. Michael Thompson Ph.D. is a best-selling author and lecturer whose life’s work is helping parents, teachers and therapists understand and navigate the social and emotional lives of our children and is host and guide for a two-hour special on protecting the emotional life of boys.
When describing his vision for the music, Powderhouse Executive Producer, Tug Yourgrau, did not want the audience to feel sorry for the subjects in the film. Composers Kook Lawry and Mike McMahon’s mission was to create simple, one or two instrument underscores that weren’t happy and weren’t sad. They had to evoke thought, set a serious tone, but be neutral and non-commital to any specific emotion.
It is the first program of a proposed series of PBS specials, “Raising America's Children.” The program is co-produced with Oregon Public Broadcasting.
When Goodlife Television Network, the Washington, DC based network of 80 million subscribers, changed its name and look this Spring to the American Life TV Network, they called on Handsome Brothers to compose and produce their new musical signature logo, and to produce their entire music id package. Senior Composer/Producer, Ed Grenga had the task of composing a different music theme and genre for each night of the week: American Family, Private Eyes, American Soldier, Secret Agents, American West, FBI Fridays and Good Comedies. Plus music for original programming, Daytime and Weekend themes. Nearly one hundred cues in all. The styles ranged from symphonic and orchestral, to Americana, to Western, to detective, to nostalgic.
The producers at “Ask This Old House” asked Handsome Brothers to compose “process” music beds for their program. They defined process music as the music that supports, and is in the background of scenes when the hosts demonstrate how to execute a certain repair or installation. But the music had to match or be in the same style of their main theme, an earthy, traveling blues theme.
Handsome Brothers composers, Kook Lawry and Mike McMahon, who both compose on guitar, were a perfect match for this project. Since the host is narrating off camera, usually describing the process, the music had to support the action, yet not distract from the information in the segments. They created six distinctive themes without any percussion, and using one to three guitar tracks.
The “Great Pink Scare” tells the story of a vital but little known chapter in the history of civil rights, government censorship and cold war politics in America. In 1960, a terrible persecution took place at one of the nation’s most elite colleges, Smith College, in Northampton, Massachusetts. The Great Pink Scare destroyed brilliant careers and young lives in the name of an anti-pornography campaign and a witch-hunt against homosexuals on the faculty.
Powderhouse Executive Producer, Tug Yourgrau wanted dark, sparse and foreboding underbeds for this tragic story. With its moody music, it was intended to have the effect of a modern film noir.
Kook Lawry, Ed Grenga and Mike McMahon all contributed themes for this compelling documentary that is playing on PBS.
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