There’s going to be a series of concerts coming up, starting on Sunday, Oct. 16, that will bring two incredible guitarists to the area that is sure to thrill all those of you who appreciate the intricacies that can be generated by this instrument. The duo is made up of Brian Doyle and Scott Macmillan, two masters from the Nova Scotia region of Atlantic Canada, who got together in 1995 at Macmillan’s house warming party in Brook Village, where they discovered their ability to play together effortlessly while pushing the edges of their personal envelopes to new directions and heights. One of the shows will take place Thursday, Oct. 20, at the Unity College Centre for the Performing Arts, so in a recent telephone interview from Nova Scotia, Macmillan was asked the opening question.

Q: Have you ever performed at the Unity College Center for the Performing Arts before?

MACMILLAN: No, I have no. All of these gigs are in places where I have not played.

Q: Have you ever played in Maine before?

MACMILLAN: Not at all … this is my first time down there which is odd, you know, because I’ve made my career here right in Nova Scotia.

Q: Do you get the other places in the United States?

MACMILLAN: No, no … actually I haven’t played in the U.S. at all. There used to be a ship that would go down the Eastern Seaboard called The Scotia Prince and it was kind of in the U.S. — we’d pull into ports and play but we were still, I guess, on Canadian soil.

Q: Do you have any trepidation about breaking into a new market down here?

MACMILLAN: No, not at all … this is going to be fun.

Q: How many shows have you planned for your first foray into the states?

MACMILLAN: We’re starting on Oct.16, and so there’s 16, 17, 18, 19, 20 and then the 21st we come back over the border into Canada — we have a gig in St. Andrews.

Q: You have quite a mini-tour going there.

MACMILLAN: Yeah, it’s going to be a lot of fun. We start in Calais and then go to Bayside and then we’re in Colebrook, N.H. Then we’re back to Carthage and then to Unity … and then St. Andrews, New Brunswick, on the way back.

Q: You are a guitarist?

MACMILLAN: I am indeed.

Q: As opposed to a singer/songwriter/ guitarist, correct?

MACMILLAN: That’s right, it is a guitar duet.

Q: With Brian Doyle?

MACMILLAN: Brian Doyle, that’s right.

Q: Do you perform with him a lot?

MACMILLAN: I’ve worked with Brian a lot, yeah. The last 10 to 12 years we’ve been doing a lot of work together.

Q: Is he based in Nova Scotia as well?

MACMILLAN: Yes, he lives on Cape Breton. He’s lived his life here.

Q: Now when the caller ID came up it read: M-A-B-O-U?

MACMILLAN: Yeah, Mabou — that’s in Cape Breton.

Q: It seems that there are more musicians up in your area then there is anywhere else in the Canadian Maritimes. Did you grow up in a musical household?

MACMILLAN: Yes, I did actually. My mother and father weren’t musicians, but both my other brothers are. We started up in music as youngsters, really, learning blues and rock ‘n’ roll — stuff like that — at an early age.

Q: The program you and Brian will present, is it original compositions or traditional tunes or possibly both?

MACMILLAN: It’s sort of original, but we also do some Cape Breton Celtic music and then we do some blues and a little bit of jazz … and we’re on two acoustic guitars and two electric guitars, too.

Q: Is there a preference of one format over the other: acoustic or electric?

MACMILLAN: Not really, no. We’re both really comfortable either way.

Q: I imagine that with the two styles — as well as sonic differences — it makes for a varied palette of sounds to choose from.

MACMILLAN: Oh, sure — there are different flavors all together.

Q: Seeing this will be a three-pronged debut for you — venue, state and country, even — what can folks expect from your shows?

MACMILLAN: They can expect it to be very approachable. We’re not formal at all on stage, we’re really relaxed. There’s a lot of flashy guitar playing. You can expect some improvising — some jazz — you can expect some celtic music from Cape Breton in the Cape Breton style on the two acoustic and the electrics. We can adjust our program depending on the hall: with the two electrics we can get pretty aggressive and rock-y in our approach, or with the two acoustics we can kind of mellow it out a little bit more. So we kind of read the audience and figure out the most appropriate thing to do.

Q: Is there anything you’d like me to pass on to the readers of this “What’s Happening” story?

MACMILLAN: Well, they are guaranteed to be entertained — and what I find with Brian, the two of us are real musician backup accompanists and lead players, so with him I do a lot of improvising. I can throw music at him and he picks it up right away — and he throws it at me — so there’s a lot of spontaneity and fast-moving stuff between the two of us. In that sense, there’s a lot to listen to, so the audience is for a nice listening time. And we’re kind of jolly fellows, you know, we just kind of loosen up onstage and have fun with each other, so it’s a lot of fun and it’s musically interesting.

Lucky Clark has spent over four decades writing about good music and the people who make it. He can be reached at [email protected] if you have any questions, comments or suggestions.