Do you live in Maine? Do you care about music? Then you have probably been guilty of complaining about how few world-class performers brave the back roads north of Boston to bring their magic our way. I know I have.

And yet, when a band that once stood atop the world with its distinctive sound, loads its frayed gear into the back of a truck and heads this way – to the Unity Center for the Performing Arts – reaction seems muted.

Such is the case as Lindisfarne prepares to storm rural Maine tonight.

Lindis-Who? Lindisfarne. One of the great lost hopes of music, the British sensation lit up the ’70s with its pioneering folk-rock albums. Tearing up the singles charts with such fondly remembered classics as “Meet Me On The Corner” and “Lady Eleanor.” Sort of like Jethro Tull but, momentarily, more lauded by the press, more pinned with hopes.

Lindisfarne began on Tyneside, on the cusp of the ’70s, when the group Brethren – a package of mandolins, fiddles and Woody Guthrie references – played at a club partially run by Alan Hull. Hull, singer-songwriter, psychiatric nurse and a veteran of the folk circuit, was blown away by the band and soon teamed up with Rod Clements, Ray Laidlaw, Si Cowe and Ray “Jacka” Jackson, to record some demos.

The nascent band was quickly picked up by Charisma Records in 1970, and the group retitled itself Lindisfarne after learning that an American band already was touring under the name Brethren. Charisma released Lindisfarne’s debut “Nicely Out of Tune” in 1970 to immediate success. Driven by songs like “Road to Kingdom Come,” and “Winter Song,” it remains for many critics one of the band’s greatest efforts. Yet better was to come for the band by 1971 with the release their second album, the Bob Johnson-produced “Fog on the Tyne.”

“Fog on the Tyne” became Lindisfarne’s best-known album, its title track the band’s best known anthem. As legend has it, Hull scribbled the irreverent yet thoughtful lyrics to the song on the back of a cigarette packet while sitting on a bus watching fog roll along the river. The album went to No. 1 in the British charts and sent a single “Meet Me On The Corner” into the Top Ten.

“Fog on the Tyne” was followed in 1972 by “Dingly Dell.” The band members became stalwarts of magazine covers and toured the world and beyond, often supported by label-mates Van Der Graaf Generator and Genesis (yes, THAT Genesis).

And that’s where things went wrong, in true rock ‘n’ roll cliche fashion. While “musical differences” were never cited as the reason for the band’s disintegration, that other favorite excuse, “pressures of touring,” was. Hull, away from his beloved Newcastle and living out of suitcases, was missing his muse.

After some initial attempts to replace Hull in the live Lindisfarne set-up, allowing him more space for songwriting, the band split in 1973. Which would usually be the end of the story, except for the band reuniting for a Christmas show in Newcastle in 1976 – a brave act indeed considering bands such as Lindisfarne were supposed to be on their way to extinction.

Yet the show was a huge success, as Tynesiders rushed to greet their heroes of old. The Christmas show became a regular for a couple of years until the band decided in 1978 to get back together permanently. And while the music press now turned against them, the fans were more forgiving. “Back and Fourth” was released by Atco in 1978 and sold respectably, even giving the band a minor comeback single in the shape of “Run for Home.”

Since then Lindisfarne has never really stopped. The band has released seemingly dozens of retrospectives and live albums. They even backed English soccer Teletubby Paul Gascoigne on an ill-advised remake of “Fog on the Tyne” in 1990. And while you won’t see splashes on them in Rolling Stone, the faithful have been turning out to watch them wherever they bring their harmonies.

It’s a different Lindisfarne you’ll see in Unity tonight. Alan Hull died in 1995. He apparently, as a joke, once requested that fog from the Tyne attend his funeral. I heard that as his bandmates scattered his ashes on the river, a bank of fog coalesced and drifted across the water. I hope that’s true.

Whatever, Lindisfarne in Unity offers a chance to see a band that, given a couple of breaks, may have never dreamed of heading this far north. Both the Unity Center for the Performing Arts, and Lindisfarne themselves, deserve applause for giving us that opportunity.