June 4th, 2021 
Jackson Murphy 
Jonny Jonah and Matty Shapiro make up the popular, dynamic family music duo The BeatBuds. They now have their own animated characters and contribute songs to Nickelodeon’s new short-form series The BeatBuds, Let’s Jam! This week-long event kicks off this Monday June 7th at 9am on Nick, with two episodes each day at that time through Friday June 11th. (Re-airings are every night at 6pm on Nick Jr.) The exuberant Jonah and Shapiro are thrilled that they’ve stepped into the animation world and, thanks to Scooter Braun and Nick, are taking their brand and message to the next level.
Jackson Murphy: What were the animated series you grew up watching that had a lot of music in them?
Jonny Jonah: I loved all the Looney Tunes cartoons. I was a big Looney Tunes guy. The ones that included music were the best. When Bugs Bunny plays the piano and then if he hits that one note that Yosemite Sam set-up the dynamite under, then everything’s gonna explode. But he always misses that note! And Yosemite Sam says, “Nah ya silly varment! It’s like this!” (Jonny makes explosion and music noises.)
Matty Shapiro: Alvin and the Chipmunks! The drummer: Theodore. I was always a big fan of that.
JM: And I grew-up with the new movies that came out from 2007 on for Alvin. When did the idea of a Nickelodeon animated series really come into play for your guys?
MS: There were no set ideas in The BeatBuds. Everything with The BeatBuds came organically and the whole idea of The BeatBuds… we didn’t have a business model for it. One step at a time. I think what really led to the TV show was the fact that this business was starting to roll and all of a sudden we figured, “Oh, we might need a logo.” We made it and looked at it and were like, “Whoa. That’s so cool looking!” And even the kids were pointing at it too when we were performing.” And then we realized, “Maybe we should have some stage names.” Jonny Jingles and Matty Maracas really resonated. And then we made a book!
After all those things, we were like: We’ve been rocking this town for a lot of years already. We’ve been successful, thankfully, to all the supporters. But how can we get this BeatBuds thing… this community we’ve created… this cult following, almost… out to the world? As a gift of music. Logically, Jonny was in my ear, “I think we gotta think about a television show of some kind.” At that point, I really saw the vision. To be honest, we pursued it hard, but it kind of in some way, just like everything else that occurred with The BeatBuds, it kind of happened organically. We weren’t out there banging on people’s doors. This naturally is how we feel it’s supposed to develop.
JJ: We were lucky enough to team-up with Scooter Braun and SB Projects and Scott Manson over there. They then were able to take this dream that we had. Music is our wheelhouse. TV really wasn’t. They kind of said, “Look: we understand what the goal is. We’re with you guys. You guys keep doing what you’re doing. We’re gonna start putting the wheels in motion to see what can happen here on the media side.” Through that partnership, then came this whole thing into Nickelodeon. When they asked us, “Who are your top networks you wanna pitch this to?”, Nickelodeon was No. 1. For us to land the No. 1 network, it’s a dream come true. From what Matt and I conceptualized in terms of what this brand could be, what we’re doing right now with Nickelodeon just far exceeds that and it’s beyond our wildest dreams.
JM: Wow. And you’re right that kids respond so much to just the logos and characters you have on your shirts. I’m not surprised that that’s what started it off. So now that you’ve been in this animation world with Nickelodeon, how do you look at animation as a whole differently?
JJ: No. 1: that it takes… not even a village… it takes a city to get this thing done. The number of people who are involved and their input – not even just on the creative side but every angle. Even just managing all the people. There’s gotta be someone who’s doing that! What it takes to make an animated series… and ours are shorts too. Longer stuff: wow. I can’t even imagine. The amount of respect we have for the process, that’s my biggest takeaway from the animation world.
Matty and Jonny
MS: Many decisions to be made. Every step of the way. A color here, a script change there… there’s not much improvisation going on. It’s all really dialed in. Every little angle of it and every little piece has to be decided upon. It’s so exciting to be able to be a part of it too.
JM: And that includes you writing a song for each of the episodes: 10 songs timed right to a theme of an episode. Was that a challenge for you guys to have to time with [and make them match with] a specific theme of an episode?
JJ: A little bit. And Matty and I had a little bit of experience with this. We co-wrote an intro for the Disney show Gigantosaurus. As musicians, we’re always looking for the next challenge – not just how we play our instruments but from the creative side as well. And that was a lot of fun for us – to take songs that already existed and mold them. We had a great writer, Evan Sinclair, who built worlds out of these songs that we created as well. We had to time them. We had to change lyrics here and there to fit the episode a little bit better. All that stuff we looked at as a challenge that we really accepted and loved and sparked another creative bone in our bodies that we didn’t know we had.
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