Over a 26-year career as a blues-rock guitarist and vocalist, Connecticut's Jeff Pitchell has met, opened for, or jammed with just about everyone on the circuit - from J. Geils and Buddy Guy to the Allman Brothers Band and B.B. King.

Which is understandable. Pitchell's a blisteringly fine talent, and the road-dog musical fraternity is tight-knit and supportive to the extent that artists frequently run into one another on tour and form enduring bonds of kinship.

"I've been blessed to get to know and play with incredible musicians - heroes of mine and players I really look up to," Pitchell says. "So when I say Charles Neville is the kindest, most decent man I've ever met - and just a remarkable musician - that's saying a lot."

Pitchell is referring, of course, to the Grammy-winning saxophonist and member of New Orleans' royal family of funk. Charles Neville, along with siblings Art, Cyril and Aaron, first came to prominence in the Wild Tchoupitoulas and then exploded globally in the mighty Neville Brothers.

In recent years, with the Nevilles on long-term hiatus, Charles, who settled in New York City after Hurricane Katrina, has been working steadily with his jazz band. After he and Pitchell crossed paths and shared dates a number of times, it occurred to the two of them that they should play together in a more formal and larger conceptual context. With Pitchell's longtime backing group, Texas Flood, as musical support, the two have now done about 15 concerts and will perform Friday in the theater at Olde Mistick Village Art Cinemas. The show will be recorded for an upcoming live CD. There's also talk of releasing the performance on DVD.

"We've had a total blast," Pitchell says. "We both write, of course, and we've been trying a lot of different things at these shows. We do some of his songs and some of mine, and we play with the arrangements and come up with some really amazing stuff."

Indeed, the prospect of Pitchell's gritty roadhouse anthems interacting with Neville's jazz-funk DNA is damned enticing. In fact, there are few guarantees in life, but fans can pretty much count on the fact that the Pitchell/Neville show Friday will be an incendiary experience. But it goes beyond just music. Pitchell promises what he calls "a sort of personal, interactive experience."

"Even longtime fans of Charles' are going to be in for a surprise," Pitchell explains. "In the Neville Brothers, Charles wasn't know as much of a front man, and he didn't talk much between songs. But he's emerged with all of this energy and personality. He's singing, he's telling stories and anecdotes - and when you consider the life he's lived, it's going to make for a pretty amazing evening."

It's not much of a secret that all four Neville Brothers had some fairly wild experiences growing up in New Orleans. Yes, they were all precociously great musicians, and they played for decades inside the city's singular and vibrant music scene that's stuffed with all sorts of bigger-than-life characters - but there were also subsequent problems of drug addiction and prison stints.

Now, long sober, Neville is an incredibly soft-spoken and gentle person whose positive spirit and all-around kindness is well known in his hometown and among friends.

"There are not as many survival stories in the music business as you'd like," Pitchell says. "It's actually at the top of the list of vocations with a short life span. Well, Charles is in his 70s, and he's lived and learned. And I've been blessed to get to know him and learn from him.

"When we first started playing together, Charles was reluctant to share some of this stuff with the audiences," Pitchell says. "But I told him, 'People will really appreciate these stories.' And they do. They're really moved by what he's been through - plus he's just as funny as he is wise. Being around him has really helped me, and it's inspired me. And, after all, music SHOULD inspire you on a lot of levels, right?"

Charles Neville and Jeff Pitchell,

8 p.m. Friday, Olde Mistick Village Art Cinemas, Olde Mistick Village, 27 Coogan Blvd., Mystic; $35; (860) 536-4228.