The Naked Brothers Band:
Naked Inspiration
Everybody has been a rock star. We have all jammed in front of the mirror, dazzling a sold-out stadium of make-believe fans. But unless you’re Nat and Alex Wolff, pretending to be a rock star doesn’t get you superstardom. The brothers starred in a mockumentary about a make-believe band and within a year they became a real band with an international fan base, a hit album and a successful TV show on Nickelodeon. They’re called “The Naked Brothers Band,” and they’re the envy of every kid who has ever belted a ballad into a hairbrush.
Nat and Alex may have kicked off their careers by pretending, but they’ve become full-fledged musicians. Nat, 12, mans the keyboard and takes care of lead vocals while Alex, 9, bangs out the beats on drums and sings on a few of his own tracks. Both write their own songs, from melodies to lyrics. In the beginning, they hammered them out one at a time, analog-fashion, with their instruments. Today the team uses GarageBand to pen and record their tunes, and their dad, world-class Jazz musician Michael Wolff, adds finishing touches using Final Cut Pro.
“I just got my black MacBook and I’ve recorded 10 songs with GarageBand already,” says Nat. “It’s so easy to use and I can keep track of my songs better than ever before. The Mac and GarageBand are a really big part of our music. I even recorded the vocals for ‘I’ve Got a Question For You’ using my MacBook’s microphone. It sounds really crunchy and just right for the song.”
And to top it off, the duo is throwing a GarageBand remixing contest to encourage fans to experiment with tunes. They’re offering up their hit “I’m Out” as a downloadable GarageBand track. Then they’ll listen to fan remixes and pick a winner, who’ll get an autographed keyboard and a taste of stardom.
Musical Roots
Nat and Alex soared to stardom after the release of their independent mockumentary, “The Naked Brothers Band.” The film depicted the success and strife of a popular youth rock band. There were hits and there were bombs. There were creative disputes. The band broke up and got back together again. The movie was a hit among kids and parents, and when Nickelodeon picked it up, sales went through the roof. The movie earned the two brothers a regular series on the cable network and a record deal.
It wasn’t a stretch for the brothers. Their dad had infused them with music since birth. “I wrote this lick when I was 3 or 4,” says Nat. “It was just a lick on the piano that I played at my grandparents’ house at Christmas Eve. My dad took it, and he wrote a whole song around it for his album.” It wasn’t long before the brothers started writing their own tracks. Their first song was “Momma Don’t Let Me Cry,” followed closely by “I Wanna Be Like Him.”
It’s tough to grow up in a musical household these days without encountering some kind of music-making software suite. Michael Wolff and his band mates were into Logic Pro, and when the boys started tinkering with the computer they got Macs and GarageBand. “Alex has written more songs than he’s ever written since he’s learned GarageBand,” says Naked Brothers Mom and accomplished actress, writer and director Polly Draper. Says Alex: “I’ll take so many guitar licks and drum licks, then put them together until it sounds like a song that I composed. Sometimes I do every sound that I can think of, with my voice, then layer them on top of each other to make a song.”
Mixing it Up
Sometimes it’s tough to write a song from scratch, even when you can draw on great stuff like puppy love, aliens, sports cars and banana smoothies for inspiration. When creativity gets blocked, The Naked Brothers Band creates remixes in GarageBand to get things flowing again. “I just remixed the Beatles song ‘I am The Walrus,’ for fun,” says Alex. “I used the system effects to make chords sound like voices. I did the whole song like that in about 10 minutes and it helped me think about other songs I want to write.”
What inspires the brothers? “We’ve been listening to the Beatles ‘Magical Mystery Tour’ a lot,” says Nat. “And I’m really into the songs from ‘The Graduate’ by Simon & Garfunkel.” When it comes to bands, the brothers put the Beatles at the top, but they have eclectic music tastes. “I like almost all music,” says Nat. “It inspires me to make my own.”
When it came time to pick a music program that would inspire and enable fans, the choice was clear. GarageBand was the only music making suite the two could endorse for the contest. “We hope that kids will learn how to use GarageBand for this,” says Alex. And learning the program shouldn’t be too difficult. “Even if they’ve never made music before, using GarageBand is so easy,” says Nat. If kids have any trouble mixing their tracks, Apple’s GarageBand experts will be available via iChat for about three hours a day to help out. The contest will last for about a month, then the brothers will start reviewing entries. “I will be really cool to listen to what people come up with,” says Nat. “We should get some really interesting stuff.”
Rising Stars
So what’s next for The Naked Brothers Band? They have an album on the way and they plan to keep plugging away at their Nickelodeon series. Musically, they want to follow their whims and interests and, of course, make good music. “I’ll get an idea in my head about anything and I’ll make it into a song,” says Alex. “Like one day I was thinking about aliens and we wrote ‘Alien Clones’ the next day.”
That’s how most Naked Brothers songs are written. And the brothers write a lot of songs, on top of working on their TV series. For them, entertaining is a full-fledged career, even at their age. Still, it’s a pretty good career, all things considered. “It feels like a career ‘cause we work really hard,” says Nat, “but the song writing and performing never feels like work at all, it just happens spontaneously.”
