The pair took in the vacant music room with a look of deja vu.

Scotty Huff is a little bit country, growing up in Millinocket. Robert Reynolds is a little bit rock ‘n’ roll, as a native of a Miami suburb.

Like many of its kind, the music room at Piscataquis Community High School in Guilford is isolated, so the sounds emanating from within won’t disturb all the serious academics at the school. To get to it, you have to walk through the gym to a back corner.

“There’s a blink of an eye between high school and where I am now,” said Reynolds, the bassist for the country band the Mavericks. “It’s been 20 years, and it feels like yesterday, and it’s really startling.”

Huff and Reynolds are in Day 4 of a five-day barnstorming tour of Maine high schools, trying to open students’ eyes to the possibility of careers in the music industry. So far, they’ve talked to students from Houlton, Ashland, Mars Hill, Stearns, Bangor, Old Town, Hampden, Dover-Foxcroft and Dexter high schools, with three stops planned for the Portland area the next day.

Their tour is being sponsored by Northern Kingdom Music, for whom Huff’s father, Dale, a longtime music educator, works as a representative.

The younger Huff, a trumpet player in the Mavericks’ horn section, the Havana Horns, remembers what it’s like to live in Maine and dream about a career in music.

“These kids do feel removed from the world,” said Huff, 32. “We want to impress upon them that there are jobs out there in the world of music for them to pursue, if they choose to.”

“There’s great opportunity if they go looking for it and put themselves in the right place,” added Reynolds.

Huff and Reynolds, who also write and arrange music together, came to the Mavericks through different paths.

Huff started playing trumpet in the fourth grade and guitar in the sixth grade. After graduating from Stearns High School in 1986, he earned a bachelor’s degree in music education from the University of Southern Maine in 1991.

He taught music for a time, but that didn’t feel right for him. He went back to school for an associate’s degree in computer technology, but decided that computers weren’t the answer, either. All this while he was performing on the side as a free-lance musician.

Huff opted to try music full time, but not in Portland, where he was living. Los Angeles and New York City seemed too big and impersonal, so he headed to Nashville instead in the fall of 1997.

He started playing trumpet at society gigs – weddings, parties, corporate functions – which were most common and paid a little more than bar jobs. He also began meeting other horn players.

One of those horn players was Jeff Coffin, a Dexter native who is a member of Bela Fleck’s Flecktones and who played on the Mavericks’ 1997 album “Trampoline.” The Mavericks were looking for a horn section in late 1997, and Coffin recommended Huff to them. Huff put together a section and approached the group. After they all jammed together, all involved discovered they were simpatico, “and the rest was history,” Huff said.

Huff and the Havana Horns toured around the world with the Mavericks in 1998 and 1999. The section also recorded four new songs with the band for the recently released “Super Colossal Smash Hits of the 90s: The Best of the Mavericks.”

Reynolds faced a different type of isolation as a student in a large Miami-area high school: “There were so many children, and so little resources to go around, that they would get lost through the sheer volume of things. I didn’t get all the music offerings I’d like to have had. There was a lot of misinformation or a lack of information about the music business.”

Reynolds, singer-songwriter Raul Malo and drummer Paul Deakin formed the Mavericks in 1989. They sunk all their early wages back into the band, so that they could produce their first CD, which they sent out to all the labels. Five or six labels offered record deals based on that demo.

“It was lucky, but there was a lot of hard work, too,” Reynolds said.

Since then, the group has gone on to produce six albums, which have sold 4 million copies worldwide. They have earned Grammy and Country Music Association awards along the way.

So, although Huff and Reynolds grew up in totally different environments, they faced a similar lack of information about the music industry. That’s why they made this tour through Maine.

“We’re focusing on trying to make a little bit of a difference in young people’s lives,” Reynolds said. “Scotty’s taught before, but this is as close as I’ve come to stepping into a classroom and teaching. It’s a form of mentoring, definitely a giving-back thing.”

Back in Guilford, the talk, set to begin at 1 p.m., is off to a late start. Huff chats with an old classmate, Lonnie Wescott, the director of music for SAD 4 and the session’s host. Reynolds finds a 12-string guitar in Wescott’s office and picks out “Norwegian Wood” and “Tambourine Man.” Later, he autographs a photo of himself for the father of an Australian who doing his student teaching at PCHS. It’s finally 1:30 before all 90 students have noisily ambled in and found seats.

Both Huff and Reynolds briefly introduce themselves, then play a video presentation about the Mavericks. Watching the band playing for David Letterman and Jay Leno, and at the prestigious Royal Albert Hall in London, quickly gets the students’ attention.

The duo’s goal today is quite simple: to show students other music jobs besides performer. As Huff explained, “If I had known then what I know now about the recording and publishing industry, I may or may not have made different choices.”

They point out that for every performer on stage, there’s dozens of support people making the show possible.

“Acts come and go, but technicians behind the scenes will always have a job,” Huff said.

The music industry needs people in many different fields, they said. Those interested in medicine could become ear-nose-and-throat specialists, helping singers to protect their most precious commodity – their voices. Those considering becoming lawyers could be music attorneys, helping to draft the tons of contracts on which the industry runs.

Since very few artists write all their own songs, there’s a constant need for songwriters and arrangers. As an esoteric example of what can be done, they play the short film “Miss Nelson Has a Field Day,” part of a youth-video series that they’re scoring for Scholastic.

To show one route that worked, Reynolds traces the history of country superstar Trisha Yearwood, who also happens to be his ex-wife. She grew up in a small Georgia town, wanting to be a singer. She attended Belmont College in Nashville, majoring in music business. She interned at record companies, and sang on demo recordings of new songs. Before long, music executives were trying to find that female demo singer with the big voice.

Their strongest words of advice: diversify your talents, by picking up another instrument or singing.

“The more you can do, the more marketable you are,” Huff said.

It takes the students most of the hour to open up, but when question time came, a few were ready. Most questions are practical, like how to protect a copyright or what type of equipment is needed to make a demo. Another asked Reynolds about his favorite person that he had met, and he went on to rave about his recent encounter with his idol, Paul McCartney.

After the final bell rang, small clusters of students remain around Huff and especially Reynolds, showing the visitors have accomplished their goal: “We just want to give them a little perspective on things, to motivate them a little bit,” Huff said modestly.