At a recent outdoor Celtic festival, some friends stopped for a listen to the band Brother -- Aussie rockers whose press release describes them as "one of the most successful Indie exports Australia has made to the US," complete with bagpipes, didgeridoo, electric guitar, and spiky colored hair. Waiting for the four member band to start, they sat in the grass prepared to be outwardly polite and inwardly cynical, if not outright disdainful.

As Brother revved up and rocked into their first set, my friends sat in the grass in a slightly stunned silence, watching the leather-kilted lads pose like Thor and listening to Brother's primal brand of beat-happy rock. Finally, some way into the first song, one friend turned to another, and said, "Hey. I'm really liking this. Let's go dance!" They proceeded to blissfully dance in the grass for the next three hours.

This is not an abnormal reaction to Brother.

People from six years old to sixty find themselves where they’ve never been before—down in front of the stage, waving their arms in the air as they dance about screaming themselves hoarse. And they’re not even embarrassed.

They don’t have to be—the band considers it their mission in life to connect with their audiences in such a way that listeners feel free to be whatever they feel like at the moment. From the moment the didgeridoo picks up a throbbing bass line and a corduroy-and-zipper-kilted bagpiper stomps his way up to the stage playing a traditional jig to a non-traditional rhythm that you can’t resist dancing to, Brother grabs the audience by its collective shirt collars, hauls them to their feet, and they simply start to move without any conscious thought.

Talking with a waitress at Tulagi in Boulder, Colorado before a Brother show, it turns out that Brother can reach out not only to their audiences, but far past that. "While they were rehearsing yesterday, we had the doors open," she reported, "and cars were literally screeching to a stop out in the street and the drivers were twisting around trying to find out what was going on."

A question about how they take such different kinds of music—traditional, rock, tribal—and put them into such a cohesive whole got a slightly glazed look as the band politely thought about a non-issue that only nominally made sense to them.

"We don’t really see a difference in the music," Angus said, thoughtfully. "We grew up playing and listening to all kinds of things, and we always knew we wanted to use all of it—it’s just the way we communicate to people."

"At the end of the day," adds Hamish, "it’s all about the music. It speaks to people. The didge and the bagpipes—they’re almost elemental. When people come up to us after shows, they always say that they could really feel it" and he gestures at the center of his chest "right here."

Brother had its start when the lads had to find a way to pay the monthly rent. Out they went to the street, in the time-honored tradition of busking, performing for the coins, rolling with the punches of the crowd. Gradually, the music turned them into a band, and they were on to the Sydney pub scene. They added vocal harmonies that irresistibly call to mind Split Enz and The Beatles. They ad-libbed freely from all their influences, including ABBA, Elvis, their classical music studies, and the various folk traditions. (They covered the Eagles’ Seven Bridges Road at Tulagi—and the crowd went wild.)

They’ve always played what felt right, working the music with the different influences until it did what they wanted it to do, said what they wanted it to say, connected with the listener in the way they wanted it to connect.

"Sometimes we’d write a piece for the bagpipes," explained Hamish, "and sometimes one specially for the didge..."

"But sometimes," finishes Angus, "say, the didge, doesn’t work for what we want. We just use whatever works right."

And work right, it does. There’s that edgy grit to their music that speaks of passion, even while careful observation of their stage show reveals that they’re fully in control of every element, from the length of the show to the stare and wink one or the other gives to a fan dancing at their feet. And if there’s any temptation to dismiss them simply as "only a rock band," then there’s the fine musicianship that Brother is known for.

A surprise visit while the traditional Irish music band Dearga was playing at EnVie in Boulder led to an impromptu "unplugged" version of a suddenly more evocative "So Familiar" that left no doubt of the solid musicianship that underpins their usual wild stage show—as Dearga fiddler Jessica Ziegler and flute player Shannon Heaton supported the lads (Kurek on a borrowed acoustic, Kuiper slapping at a set of bongos that someone ran and got out of their car), Brother’s sensitive musicianship kept even the chatty audience at the back of the room hushed and spellbound until the last chord died away.

Their music moves from jigs and reels revved up with a rock sensibility to straight out dance music that had their Tulagi audience jumping. Hamish and Angus might have a guitar or bass hanging from one shoulder while they double on a bagpipe or didgeridoo.

The band works together seemingly effortlessly, although Kurek is new to the lineup since just this year, and that at the beginning of the summer. An early post by Kurek to their website diary reveals this: "Gus or Hash will often turn to me on stage and say, ‘Matie...we're going to play a tune you never heard but it's in the key of D and could you try and make it sound a bit Egyptian....One, Two, Three, Four – go’! I mean sh*t! I had two rehearsals before I jumped on a plane, flew to Lexington for TV and radio stuff and then off to Milwaukee for a sold out show. I just prepare for the unexpected and let my fingers do the talking."

And you thought you had it tough?

A glance at their discography shows some familiar traditional names (Mason’s Apron, The Ten Penny Bit, and, unsurprisingly, Scotland the Brave), many originals, and one or two covers. (The covers, largely, have all gone away in the live show.) The bagpipes are often used as lead solo instruments aside from the traditional tunes (their motto for the bagpipes and didgeridoo is "traditional instruments used un-traditionally.") Their sound is both polished and edgy, a tricky balancing act—by turns Beatlesque in the same way Split Enz was, then a heavier sound more informed by the World music scene, and, especially once the didgeridoo kicks in, a wild primal thing that defies adequate description.

According to Kuiper, "our sound is getting harder all the time."

"I think our music is getting younger," agrees Angus.

All four are articulate, thoughtful, and gracious in an interview. The only time there is any consternation was in reaction to a question about where they see their music and their band being in the next ten years. Angus blinks, Hamish looks first startled then considering, Kurek sits silent, and Kuiper finally answers that in ten years he’d like to have a house and be retired, which gets a laugh and some agreement—a reasonable goal after 8 years of hard touring as a band.

In the meantime, Brother seems to be perched on the edge. There’s a strong sense of building, of having paid dues, of excitement, that a wave is about to crest.

"Yeah, we feel that too, actually," says Hamish laconically.

Determined to do it all their way, the band has formed its own support teams—notably the amazing Brian Anderson, not only their tour manager but an excellent sound technician, photographer, and packer of trucks—and releasing on their own record label, producing and putting out seven CDs on Rhubarb Records. (They’re available at their website.)

While they’d be open to signing with a major label, they say that there’d have to be some major incentives before putting their names on the dotted line.

"The major labels don’t get us," said Hamish. "They don’t know what to do with our music, where to put it, what box to put it in. But we’re always open to talking."

"You have to sign away so much of your life and work," frowned Angus. "Bands lose such a huge percentage when they sign."

"And a lot of control," adds Kuiper. They all shake their heads.

The Tulagi show, booked last minute to last only for an hour, ended twice. The band got started a few minutes late (possibly something to do with Kurek with a flashlight, hunkered over his disassembled guitar with a soldering iron), and had to cut their show off a bit, but they ended on such a high note that the club asked them to do just one more as the crowd shouted and whooped for an encore. The four looked at each other for half a second, and then they pulled out a tune that they said they hadn’t performed in a bit (given Kurek’s diary entry, in his case perhaps not ever) – Amazing Grace.

Amazing Grace is probably the world's best known piping tune, perhaps even over Scotland the Brave. Unbeknownst to many, it’s also just a little tricky to play on the pipes. Brother’s version winds it up, gets it down, and cranks it out louder than any full pipe band could – by the time both Hamish and Angus have gotten going on the pipes with Kurek and Kuiper wailing and whaling away, the crowd was already hoarse and still screaming for more.