Canadian duo Zubot and Dawson bring a simple message from their native Canada: Acoustic music needn’t mean improvisation that reels off into infinity.

The pair, who play at 8 p.m. Sunday at the Unity Centre for the Performing Arts, don’t take offense when new fans tell them that their style of music is accessible.

“It’s a conscious thing for us, since we come from backgrounds in rock, blues, country and classical,” said Steve Dawson by phone from Denver, where the duo was starting its first-ever tour of the United States. “It’s exciting and challenging for us to play, but not so out there that people don’t know what it is. It’s familiar and comfortable for people, but we still play something they haven’t heard before.”

Jesse Zubot and Dawson dub their style of music “strang.” Zubot on mandolin and fiddle and Dawson on slide, Hawaiian, acoustic and Weissenborn guitars intertwine over the rhythm section of Elliot Polsky on percussion and Andrew Downing on bass.

“It’s a mixture of all sorts and styles of music,” said Dawson. “It’s not extended solos. It’s carefully constructed and orchestrated, with all improvisation happening within that framework.”

Their music on the albums “Strang” (1998) and “Tractor Parts” (2000) has earned them comparison to such greats in the acoustic music field as David Grisman and Tony Rice. They’ve earned Canadian Independent Music, West Coast Music and Juno award nominations.

The pair knows the value of such critical praise.

“The music we’re playing has such a small target audience that what we need is the most exposure we can possibly get,” Dawson said. “The press has picked up on the fact that we’re doing something pretty different, which has really helped in the furthering of our career. We were able to get signed with True North because of that exposure.”

Dawson started playing blues-rock guitar at age 14, but left his hometown of Vancouver, British Columbia, to study jazz at Berklee College of Music in Boston. He soon found himself straying into blues and bluegrass.

Zubot began studying classical violin, but moved to electric guitar in high school. He rediscovered violin and mandolin while at Capilano College in Vancouver.

The two met as members of the rock band Spirit Merchants. They found themselves dissatisfied with the conditions in which they were performing.

“We were touring in rock clubs, and found that we were hitting walls as far as people’s attention levels were concerned,” Dawson said. “We’d get good crowds, but people were coming to party and drink. We started playing acoustic at folk and jazz festivals and found attentive audiences who wanted to be there to listen to music. That’s what this is really all about for us. Getting people to come and listen to us makes us feel like we’re doing something that’s really worthwhile.”

Next up for Zubot and Dawson is their third album, “Chicken Scratch,” available this month in Canada and over the Internet and in the States shortly afterward.

Producing the album was Lee Townsend (Bill Frisell, John Scofield, Elvis Costello).

“Lee had worked with Bill Frisell, and we felt a real bond with what [Bill has] done,” Dawson said. “Lee was excited about working with us. He’s more about improvisation, and we’re more into structure, so we wanted to bring our two worlds together. Lee was really able to draw the improv out in us, and it was a really great experience to work with someone like that. He dug what we did, and he was able to coax the best out of us musically.”

During their spare time, both work on side projects, appearing on other musicians’ albums and producing. Dawson even released a recent solo album, “Bug Parade.”

Such outside ventures are important to the core group of Zubot and Dawson.

“We’ve got a lot of other musical ideas to get out,” Dawson said. “It’s essential to keep the musical brain ticking, and doing so positively contributes to what this group does as well.”

After their swing across the United States, the duo heads back home to finish up an album with bass player Downing’s Great Uncles of the Revolution and to tour across the country, from Victoria, British Columbia, to St. John’s, Newfoundland.

But Dawson places extra importance of the U.S. tour.

“We’ve got a great fan base across Canada,” he explained. “You can play [the large cities] in Canada once or twice a year, but then you run out of places to play. That’s why we started going to Europe. There are small cities and college towns in the U.S. with populations comparable to the large cities in Canada. There’s a helluva lot more people to play for, which is what we want.”

For tickets to the Zubot and Dawson show, call 948-SHOW.