Strumming their wooden guitars while wearing matching royal blue-and-white striped bib overalls, Bear and Tiger Bachmeier looked like stars in the making — just not the kind you see under the bright lights at LaVell Edwards Stadium on Saturdays.

Their day job, at least right now, is playing for the Cougars. Bear is BYU’s star quarterback, looking to lead the program to its first Big 12 championship. Tiger is a wide receiver fighting for a spot in the rotation.

The brothers, though, are also musicians.

“It just became natural that we would be playing music in the house or coming home from stuff and just pick up guitar and play,” Tiger said.

They looked like naturals taking the American Fork Amphitheater stage for a concert last month.

While hundreds of fans looked on, Tiger and Bear played a set list of around 30 tracks with their great-uncle, Don Bachmeier. Bear led some parts, his raspy, vibrato-filled voice giving life to songs ranging from country to folk. Tiger and Don joined to form an ensemble, harmonizing and strumming along the way.

Planning the concert took about three months, Tiger said — a much larger challenge than the brothers’ viral performance at a Provo retirement home last year.

“It was a lot of arguing,” Tiger said with a laugh. “We were yelling at each other for three months straight. But the Harrington Center approached us, told us they had seen the [retirement-home] recording and wondered if we wanted to play for their nonprofit on Mondays.”

Soon, the “Music Bachs” was born.

Well … it actually goes back much further than that.

Days at the lake house

For the last 10 years, the Bachmeiers have met up at Donald’s lake house in Minnesota for the Fourth of July.

And before there was music, there was food.

Don would make Tiger, Bear, Ella Bachmeier, their sister, and the rest of the family buttermilk pancakes for breakfast and massive pots of spaghetti for dinner.

While mixing the batter or tomato sauce, Don would sprinkle in a few well-placed fibs.

“I told them I was a world champion pancake and spaghetti maker for about five or six years in a row,” Don said. “Then they found my Ragu bottles one day that I usually hid before they got there, and found out I made it all up.”

While they didn’t believe in his cooking skills for long, they did pick up on his musical talents.

Every morning, Donald would wake the family up with a loud — sometimes off-key — guitar. In the evenings, he’d sing them his favorite songs on the balcony or in the living room. If they were on the boat, there was a guitar — and the same went, somehow, for a Jet Ski.

“It felt like something in the movie where you just gather around the couch, and everybody starts playing and singing along,” Ella Bachmeier said.

Maybe it’s because of those moments that Donald continues buying kids their first guitars — including Tiger and Bear.

“I’ve probably bought 10 guitars over the years, maybe a dozen for kids,” he said. “Some of them pick them up and run with it, and some of them don’t. And you know, if one does, it’s very rewarding.”

Tiger was one of those who ran with it. He was already musically gifted — performing in talent shows in grade school and in choir during middle school — so adding the guitar to his repertoire wasn’t anything new.

He took a few classical guitar lessons here and there. Soon enough, Tiger was performing at retirement homes around his hometown, a tradition he’d later continue in Provo.

But he may have had another motivation for picking up the instrument.

“For the girls,” Tiger joked. “That’s the reason. My uncle Donald also kept harping on us to play, and he said, ‘You don’t realize how much fun you’re gonna have when you actually pick it up.’”

Especially once both brothers picked it up. A couple of years after Tiger started playing, Bear joined him. Tiger taught him a few chords, and then Bear figured out the rest.

“I picked it up, probably, four years ago,” Bear said. “Then I’ve been on and off, but I’ve been playing for a while now.”

Since then, Bear, Tiger and Don have all played together at the lake house, performing songs like “Brown Eyed Girl,” “Take Me Home, Country Roads” and “Wagon Wheel.”

Bear and Tiger also traveled to Temecula, California, to perform at an open-mic country spot, donning the required cowboy hats and boots.

It’s all helped them discover just how powerful a song — or a performance — can be.

Ella’s middle name is Rose, so “Every Rose Has Its Thorn” by Poison became one of the songs Donald would regularly sing at the lake house. He sang that same song to her at Rady Children’s Hospital in San Diego, where she lay catatonic and unresponsive after being diagnosed with anti-NMDA receptor encephalitis.

“She’d bolt up in the bed upright and hold her arm straight out,” Donald recounted. “She goes, ‘Minnesota, Minnesota, water ski, water ski,’ to the song, because that song took her back to Minnesota.

“It was a rather moving moment, and now that I think of it, they really kind of took off at that point.”

Ella says her brothers’ performances are more than just a hobby. She said they are about family, joy and keeping goodness in the world when so much of it seems like it’s “fading away.”

“It’s about seeing the little things that make people happy,” Ella said. “It’s like opening the door for somebody — for them, playing music is keeping that kindness around.”

That’s what they wanted to share that July night.

‘A lot of refinement’

After the brothers were offered the chance to be the main act, Donald sent Bear and Tiger a book of around 300 to 500 songs to learn.

“We looked through those, picked out the ones we liked and wanted to play,” Tiger said. “We kept shortening that list, refining it, and then adding songs. We ended up adding one song, like the day before the concert. So it was a lot of refinement.”

The annual Fourth of July trip to Don’s lake house, a couple of weeks before the show, turned into an extended sound check — and drew multiple complaints from the neighbors as the trio practiced the same songs over … and over … and over again.

Tiger and Bear’s baby nephew, Bronco, even got into the action, singing (OK, screaming — or maybe even wailing) a few baby notes into the microphone.

“He was holding [the microphone] — it’s way bigger than his hands, but he’s yelling into the mic,” Tiger said. “So they were hearing baby jargon, and we made sure the windows were open.”

Call it a makeshift — and unwanted — concert for the lakeside community. Hey, the Music Bachs needed the reps.

“You have to achieve being a dope,” Donald said of his advice to his nephews. “You don’t care what anybody thinks, and you sing your heart out, and you’re loud, and you’re boisterous. And if you’re off key, we’ll go back and do it again.”

Swap the music terms for football ones and the pep talk wouldn’t feel out of place in the BYU locker room. And Donald got a taste of what Bear is like on the field during the prep for the concert.

“He’s such a dynamic leader, and he’s so mentally strong,” Donald said, laughing. “He ended up beating the s--- out of old Uncle Donald.”

Though Donald’s competitive streak kicked in, too.

“I’m bullheaded, and I was going against Bear and Tiger,” Donald said. “It was these three type-A guys just going at it all the time, arguing and laughing and crying. It was just a ball.”

In the lead-up to their show, the trio ran sets in Walmart parking lots, Chubby’s Cafe and even a local Five Guys to get their feet wet for the big show.

It all led to July 13, when they took the stage in American Fork.

“Tiger’s more serious; it’s harder to get him to bust loose,” Donald said. “We busted him loose at this concert. It was a big breakthrough for Tiger.”

As for Bear? “Bear is pretty good at sitting there and looking pretty,” Tiger said.

He is a quarterback, after all.

The concert may just be the start for Bear and Tiger’s music careers.

“We do have an album coming,” Tiger said. “I don’t actually know how much I can say, but we do have an album coming out, and it’s gonna be fun.”

That’s all Tiger said about that, not even letting slip the genre. But it seems like an encore is on its way — it just might have to wait for the football season to finish.

“It sounds like everyone’s expecting it,” Tiger said. “So there’s a little bit of buzz going around. Keep your ears open.”