Ready to be ‘Thunderstruck’? Red Hot Chilli Pipers bringing ‘bagrock’ to Lexington.

The hall lights dim, the musicians take their place amid rows of amplifiers and the crowd, ripe with a sense of rock ‘n’ roll anticipation, roar to life ahead of the first roaring note.

What comes next as the show starts? A torrent of electric guitar fire? A driving bass groove? A symphonic, synthesized backdrop? Well, yes. All of that is there. But that’s not what is out front. That’s not the sound sending the audience into a frenzy. What is?

Bagpipes. That’s right, bagpipes.

Welcome the world of the Red Hot Chilli Pipers. No, not the famed California rock-funk troupe whose name the band closely approximates. We’re not talking Peppers, but Pipers — a 21-year-old Scottish ensemble fronted by a trio of classically trained Highland bagpipers. The music dispensed is self-described as “bagrock” — a blend of traditional pipe tunes with contemporary pop and rock works.

What is ‘bagrock’?

“When you’re playing your bagpipes, and just bagpipes, at weddings or corporate events, it’s tricky to keep a crowd entertained,” said Willie Armstrong, the Pipers’ leader and sole remaining original member. “So we started playing rock tunes in the middle of traditional tunes. That got the audience, not just the bagpipe aficionados, back on board. We thought, ‘Maybe we have something here.’ Maybe this was our chance to take the bagpipes, which are very niche, even in Scotland, and place them within a really good rock band, the production, all the lighting and maybe some dancers. We thought we could make it an all-encompassing experience for the audience.

“Whether you like the bagpipes or you dislike bagpipes isn’t the point. When you’re with us, you’re hearing a show by the Red Hot Chilli Pipers and not just the Highland bagpipes for an hour-and-a-half, which I can understand some people may not enjoy.”

So what is an example of bagrock? For Armstrong, the blend is born from split musical loyalties between traditional and contemporary camps. That translates into taking the melody of rock and pop classics like AC/DC’s “Thunderstruck,” Journey’s “Don’t Stop Believin’” or Walk the Moon’s “Shut Up and Dance” and weaving them around the melodies of vastly older (sometimes, centuries older) pipe tunes. The band symmetry follows a similar pattern with the traditional charge of the frontline bagpipe trio getting support from a conventionally designed rock band rhythm section.

“The trick here is to avoid karaoke bagpipes,” Armstrong said. “That’s not that clever. Number one, there aren’t that many musicians who will be wanting to join your band if that’s all you do. You would not only be cheating yourself, but you would be cheating your audience. They’re not daft. The audience would definitely be able to see through that.

“People will ask me, ‘Why did you choose that tune to play?’ We have hundreds of tunes on the floor before we get one that really works. But we try not to play that tune all the way through, because then you’re verging on karaoke bagpipes. What you try and do is mix in traditional music to where you’re still keeping most of the content. That keeps the interest level up for all of the audience and not just the bagpipers. That’s the trick. No bagpipe karaoke.”

Graham Norton made them famous

When the Pipers began their bagrock journey in 2002, Armstrong was working as a firefighter in Glasgow. It took a winning performance on the Graham Norton-hosted BBC talent show “When Will I Be Famous?” in 2007 to spread the word on the band outside of Scotland. Since then, it has toured throughout the world, released nine albums and forged a following that includes such high-profile fans as Paul McCartney, Ewan McGregor and Samuel L. Jackson.

“I really was happy at first just playing the pipes, taking on the traditional tunes just for fun, because we enjoy the music. Every now and again, we would get a paid gig. Somebody would want to play a wedding, so we would go and do that. We didn’t have a name. That we became the Red Hot Chilli Pipers was a complete accident. One of my bandmates asked his girlfriend if she would take all of his CDs and put all the trad (traditional) music ones she loved in one pile and all the rock and pop in another pile. When he came in from his work, he picked one off the top of traditional pile, but it was a Red Hot Chili Peppers CD placed there by mistake. She said, ‘Oh, I’m sorry. I thought the record said Red Hot Chilli Pipers.’ That’s how the name came out. There was no other plan, really, involved.

“We thought then we could make this work, but we didn’t really want to force it. It wasn’t until we went on the TV show that the band really took off, turning what we were doing into a full-time career.”

For performances in its homeland, the Pipers become a small army augmented by Highland dancers and a horn section. The band has to leave those extras at home when traveling overseas, but its sense of cross-generational joy, the kind derived from hearing the classic guitar riff from the Deep Purple hit “Smoke on the Water” played on bagpipes, still abounds.

“Even in the smaller version of the band we have three bagpipe players who take on the melodies and the harmonies,” Armstrong said. “We also have a fantastic vocalist, Chris Judge. This guy is incredible. He’s also the voice coach for Susan Boyle, the famous singer. So we’ve got all that plus a bass guitarist, a guitarist, a percussionist, the drum kit player and also a piano player. You have nine people, so it’s already quite a big band. But unfortunately, finances dictate that it becomes almost impossible to do an American tour (with everyone else). Don’t forget, in addition to the main musicians, you’ve got your monitor engineer, your front-of-house engineer, your light engineer, your merchandise seller. So you’re talking 14, 15 people. Once the number goes above 20, it just becomes financially unviable to play America for three weeks. You come back home and you have to sell your car. Don’t want to do that.

“Playing in America is wonderful, though. One of your states is bigger than our whole country. If you play to a lot of people at a festival there, they’ve probably not heard of the Red Hot Chilli Pipers before, whereas in Scotland about 75% of the audience comes back to hear us again and again and again. In America, most of the audience hasn’t heard the bagpipes played in such a manner. It’s doesn’t get old in our own country, but it’s quite refreshing to play in America. It cleanses the palette, you know?”

The Red Hot Chilli Pipers

When: 8 p.m. July 29

Where: Manchester Music Hall, 899 Manchester St.

Tickets: $25-$55 at manchestermusichall.com.