It occurred to me, after living on this planet for 18 years, and after loving music for the majority of that time, that I had no earthly clue of how to actually play an instrument. So, being the lazy under-achiever that I am, I picked up a ukelele, figuring that the quickest route to indie-rock stardom would be to start at the very bottom. After spending an inordinate amount of time tuning the damn thing, I was left with the shaky prospect of actually playing it. This I tried for a short time before effectively giving up.

"My fingers are just too long to navigate these dumb strings," I told myself about an instrument that 4-year-olds learn.

So, it seemed, performing music was just not for me. Hosting karaoke? That's a thing I can do (and I do do, every Wednesday and Thursday at Puget Sound Pizza, he shamelessly plugged). Still, as much as child musical prodigies should make me jealous and go all Salieri on them, it will never not be charming and amazing to see children pick up an instrument and startle an audience - especially when it's divorced from the queasiness of young violinists, or other instruments that imply rigid practice and placed in the context of a band that actually plays rock music.

Pig Snout is such a band. Formed by longtime Tacoma music fixture Justin Tamminga and his two children, Dahlia and Lucien, Pig Snout is a testament to the joy and universality of rock 'n' roll. If it can be believed, Dahlia and Lucien are 6 and 9, respectively, and they just started learning their instruments in earnest earlier this year.

"I teach guitar, bass and drums," says Tamminga. "My kids had been around it, but never learned it. But, I did what most people that have kids and play music, and I put them on my lap and showed them beats and whatnot. I didn't push them, because I didn't want them to not like music because dad's trying to make them do it. In February, my daughter was interested, and started wanting to play. So, I started giving her and my son lessons. I would post their progress online and people started really liking it. Brian Redman and I used to be in a band together, and when he died I would play the Brian Redman Memorial Music Scholarship events every year. His brother was putting a show together, this year, but I didn't have any projects going. He said, ‘What about the kids?' And that's how it became a thing."

Tamminga lets his kids have almost all of the creative control of the band, including the name, which is ingenious in how super metal it sounds, while also sounding like exactly the sort of thing a kid might come up with.

"They came up with ten names, and the first one was the Ostrich Conspiracy," laughs Tamminga. "Then my daughter suggested Spytar, and she said, ‘You know, like a spider and that black sticky stuff,' and I was like, ‘damn!' Adults think of the most contrived crap ever, and then you get little kids that come up with the perfect stuff."

Dahlia and Lucien trade off on drums and keyboards, with dad playing guitar and singing lead. It's amazing to see them play and know that they only really started learning their instruments in February. Dahlia, in particular, is a beast behind the kit. She's the most adorable, real-life version of Animal this side of Keith Moon. All of this would be a cute sideshow, though, if the songs didn't stand up, which they do. Their first single, "The Tar Trap," could stand up against any indie-pop song out there.

As I write about Pig Snout, my ukelele looks at me disapprovingly. Damn kids.

PIG SNOUT, w/ Hell's Belles, the Clear Chaos, 5 p.m., Saturday, Nov. 1, all ages, Jazzbones, 2803 Sixth Ave., Tacoma, $10, 253.396.9169