ABOUT US

In 2004, singer/songwriter Ira Marlowe was singing in a small San Francisco café when a stranger approached him. This stranger turned out to be the creative director of The Learning Company, the leading producer of educational software for kids, who hired him on the spot to write a series of songs for their upcoming Reader Rabbit release, including the Reader Rabbit Theme, which now appears with every new Reader Rabbit product.

After 20 years in the music business, Ira found writing for kids to be absolutely liberating. No longer wondering what record company execs might think, he started having fun again, knowing that the more creative and colorful he made his songs, the more kids would like them. This is what inspired him to start his own kids’ music company, Brainy Tunes.

KIDS' ENTERTAINMENT THAT CHALLENGES, DELIGHTS,

TEACHES and UNITES

With Brainy Tunes, Ira's goal is to create entertainment that challenges kids ages 3-8 while respecting the tastes of their parents. He assumes kids to be creative, intelligent, and hilarious and he refuses to talk (or sing) down to them. The textured, dynamic musical arrangements stimulate kids and get them moving and participating creatively. The narrative, visual imagery in the songs engages their imaginations. And, by including just enough information over their heads, the lyrics trigger kids' questions and curiosity.

Brainy Tunes' first independent CD for kids, The Teasing Bird and Other Stories, was released in December of 2005. Its first printing sold out in two months, based entirely on word-of-mouth. Fans have described The Teasing Bird and Other Stories as "Baby Einstein meets Schoolhouse Rock", and "the Sgt. Pepper of kids records".

Containing 13 songs, and including a 28-page illustrated lyric booklet, The Teasing Bird boasts top-notch production values and an over-all sound that is sophisticated, contemporary and pleasing. The disc covers (and sometimes spoofs) a variety of styles--rock, reggae, jazz, folk, delta blues, techno---and is laced with musical jokes aimed at grown-ups, with asides to the Beach Boys, Bob Marley, Harry Belafonte, Muddy Waters, even the Ramones.

Brainy Tunes' second CD is All The Colors, released in December, 2006. It contains 14 songs and includes a 20-page illustrated lyric booklet. The musical range and rich imagery in All The Colors expands on Ira's talent for creating music-videos-without-the-video and igniting kids' sense of wonder and possibility . All The Colors also playfully revisits Molly the Moose, a character introduced on The Teasing Bird CD, creating a fun sense of continuity.

MAKING THE MUSIC

Ira Marlowe records his CDs in his home studio, using his computer. He plays almost all the instruments you hear on the CD -- one at a time!

First he records the acoustic guitar.

Then he does the singing.

Then he adds the bass guitar...

...the electric guitar...

and keyboards.

After that he brings in the other people who also sing, like

MEGAN

SMITH

...and a bunch of really great kids from the San Francisco Girls’ Chorus.

There’s also a really nice man named who plays the trumpet.

RALPH

LU

Then, Ira goes into a recording studio--a big room with lots of expensive equipment--and records the drums, which are played amazingly well by

PAUL

REVELLI

Finally, he mixes it all together and sends it to a factory in Canada that turns his recordings into CDs!!!!

MORE ABOUT IRA

When Ira's not writing and singing songs for kids, he works as a professional dogwalker. That means he drives around in his pickup truck, picking up dogs from all over the neighborhood and taking them to the park where they can run and play.

Hope looks almost exactly like Toto from The Wizard of Oz, and almost every day people stop and tell her this. Frankly, she's getting a little tired of it. Hope dreams of having her own career in the movies and she doesn't want to walk in any dog's shadow, even a dog as great at Toto. So the back of her nametag says:

Hope has a boyfriend, another Cairn Terrier who works at the corner store up the street. His name is Romeo.

Don't they make a cute couple?

When Ira was a kid, (Yep, that was him...)

he loved to play baseball, basketball, dodgeball, kickball and a game called "Spud" which was sort of a combination of dodgeball and hide-and-go seek. Some of his favorite toys included a

Motorific Torture Track,

a tabletop hockey game

and above all his record player,

a gift for his fourth birthday.

(Before CDs, we used to have to play records,

big discs made of vinyl that got scratched really easily.)

Ira also loved to paint and draw. He especially loved to draw big castles, with towers and drawbridges and dragons and crocodiles in the moats. He also loved to sing, but he didn't start learning to play the guitar until he was almost thirteen.

He had lots of different heroes as he grew up, some imaginary--like Zorro and Batman--and some real--like Ernie Banks,

(a baseball player for the Chicago Cubs,)

and Don McLean

(a singer who wrote the song "American Pie").

Ira loves to eat. He could eat pizza every day but realizes this is probably not a great idea. He loves salad, too, especially when there's lots of different stuff in it. He's still not sure about Brussels Sprouts.

(Brussels Sprouts are those things that look like tiny little cabbages. Ira thinks that instead of eating them, people should use them as cabbages for Barbie Dolls.)

Ira and his wife Beth live in Oakland, California and just bought their first house. They recently adopted a new puppy to keep Hope company. His name is Potus.*

ABOUT BRAINY TUNES

click to enlarge

They love to chase balls, and chase squirrels, and chase each other, and once they get good and tired (usually after about 45 minutes) Ira rounds them all back into the truck and takes them home. It's a fun job with lots of sunshine and exercise, plus quality time with his happy, drooling, four-legged friends.

Of all the dogs Ira walks, his very favorite dog is... well... his own dog, a little Cairn Terrier named Hope.

*”POTUS” is an acronym for

President of the United States.

(We’re hoping he’ll run, but he’s still too young. The U.S Constitution says he has to be 35 years old, which is about 5 in dog years. Nowhere in the U. S. Constitution does it say the president cannot be a dog.)