The group's first album "Beethoven's Wig: Sing Along Symphonies" was released on Rounder Records in 2002. Prior to that time Perlmutter had released two solo albums, "Tin Pan Alley Songs For Children", and "Hot Diggity", and produced albums for the Grammy Award winning band Nickel Creek and "Saturday Night Live" cast member Victoria Jackson. Perlmutter had studied classical guitar, piano, and music composition, and had wanted to write lyrics to classical music. He described his thoughts when he came up with the words "Beethoven's wig is very big", to the tune of the allegro con brio of Beethoven's Fifth Symphony, "The words fit perfectly with the first eight notes of the symphony. And the wig was a perfect symbol for classical music."