And with learning them, he says, "there's no instant gratification. Sometimes you wonder why you didn't take up the ukulele. But it's a disease for which there is no cure," he says, with a laugh. "You fall in love with the pipes, and you are hooked for life. The good thing is that you get so involved, you don't notice that it's work."

Atwood, who "in real life is a piano player and a conductor," joined the Tinkers in 2000. "They are a great band. I had always loved their sound. They were coming to play in Rhode Island, where I lived at the time, and I had heard they were losing their didgeridoo player, so I asked them if I could just sit in. We found we all have this deep affection for Scottish and Celtic music, and here I am."

Atwood often appears in "tribal makeup" which consists of a blue handprint across his face. The kids especially have fun with that, he says.

He enjoys playing the Bronze-age Irish horn — it's a sound that was lost for thousands of years, he says. But he's also been known to play something as modern as a metal gas cylinder — it makes the perfect clinking sound.

Casey has "always walked to the beat of a different drummer." He was always more interested in world music than the pop music his friends were listening to. At 16, he built his first instrument, a skin-headed bass drum called a tapan. That's what he still plays today, along with several other drums that he builds. He loves the thundering sound of the bass drum but is equally good at finessing the bodhran. Drums, any drums, resonate deeply in the soul, he says.

Jones loves the fact that "everyone gets to wear kilts," but he, too, loves the music the Wicked Tinkers play. "It grabs you. It's not mainstream, but there's a real history to it. There's a passion that a lot of modern music doesn't have. How far does pop go back? How long will it last? We are playing music that goes back thousands of years."

To have lasted that long, he says, it has to have real substance. "It touches you in many ways."

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E-mail: carma@desnews.com