Matt and Jason Tardy build musical instruments (among other things).

They have to, you see, because it’s almost impossible to walk into a music store and buy a 17-foot-long drum kit with 20 drum heads right off the floor.

Why do the brothers need a 17-foot-long drum kit? Well, because they’re jugglers (among other things), and need to be able to juggle and throw drum sticks to each other from a good distance away.

And they needed a keyboard with really good key action, because they play it by bouncing juggling balls off each key.

“Nothing in our show is used the way it’s supposed to be,” said Jason Tardy, 32, of Turner. “We’ve basically had to build or modify all our own instruments.”

That’s because the Tardy brothers use their instruments for their act, AudioBody, which combines music, physical comedy, juggling and contortion (among other things). It’s not a genre of performance you see very often, which is probably why the instruments needed are hard to come by.

But you can see it on Saturday, when AudioBody is slated to do a show at Fryeburg Academy.

So what can you expect to see at an AudioBody show?

Well, Jason Tardy says, there will be lots of lights and light play. At one point, they do a bit where they swing sticks that glow in the dark. Matt — who is 30 and also lives in Turner — is a contortionist. So he’ll squeeze his body through the widest part of a tennis racket at some point. And the brothers will play tunes on their massive drum kit, throwing and juggling sticks as they play.

The drum kit is electronic, so each drum head is a “trigger” for another sound. It might be a drum sound, it might be a rhythm track. When the brothers play a tune on the keyboard, the balls hit simple notes or keys that trigger tracks. So they start by juggling a tune that’s simple, like “Chopsticks,” and end up doing something far more complex and dramatic.

The Tardys didn’t start out as musicians, but in their business, you’ve got to be prepared to improvise. As teenagers, they apprenticed with Mike Miclon, founder of the Oddfellow Theater in Buckfield, a haven for vaudeville-style physical comedy performers. There, they learned to juggle and do a unique brand of physical comedy.

As adults, they became performers, and have made a living at it ever since, performing around Maine and around the country.

As the act grew, Matt wrote interesting electronic music for the act. Then a couple of other Maine physical comedy performers, Fritz Grobe and Stephen Voltz, used some of Matt’s music for a video they were making, in which they created bubbling geysers of Diet Coke by dropping Mentos candies into the liquid.

As odd as that sounds, the video became a huge Internet hit, and soon people from all over the world were asking the Tardy brothers about their music and when and where they could see their band.

“But there was no band,” said Jason. “So we started thinking that maybe there could be a band.”

A band that juggled and did funny things while playing very funny instruments.

“We wanted to put on a music show, but we have this skill (juggling) that we really wanted to find a way to put in,” Jason said.

The Tardy brothers also perform shows outside of AudioBody — physical comedy without the instruments. In both acts, their relationship as brothers is part of the story. In fact, some newspaper critics have described their show as “Blue Man Group meets the Smothers Brothers.”

“In the shows, Matt and I are always fighting over something, fighting over the instruments,” said Jason. “He tries to keep everything on track, and my character messes everything up.”

And there’s a lot to mess up, potentially, if your drum kit is 17 feet long and your keyboard is ball-activated — among other things.

Staff Writer Ray Routhier can be contacted at 791-6454 or at:

rrouthier@pressherald.com