There are the opening acts at the Johnny Reid concert extravaganza - J.J. Shiplett and Aaron Goodvin - but there are also some extra special guests built into the show. One of those is well known to Canadians and fans of modern Celtic music the world over. She is fiddling royalty, Natalie MacMaster.
With her New Scotland birthplace and her Celtic ancestral roots, she was a natural collaborator for Scotch immigrant Johnny Reid.
"I'm fifth generation Canadian, but I'm still attached to my roots and my geneology and I'm proud of that ancestry," she said.
The two worked together on Reid's recent Christmas album but struck up such an easygoing friendship that he extended a full invitation to travel on his 46-show cross-Canada tour. He wanted her fiddle, her step-dancing prowess and her veteran stage presence. It wasn't easy to say yes, but it was impossible to say no.
"(The Johnny Reid concert production is) incredibly exciting and musically diverse and as a musician, I want to be part of that. It's a hard call to make when you have a husband and six children and a home-life, that's its own little world," she said.
However, no husband better understands his wife's need to travel in a musical roadshow more than MacMaster's. She is one half of the fiddling dynasty within their home walls, the other being Donnell Leahy. Yes, from that family - the superstar Leahy clan out of Ontario that are so renowned for their presentation style that a whole fiddling genre is named for them.
The music world gasped at the possibilities when Leahy and MacMaster married. After six children, and a busy family act that has grown up with the kids, it is only now that the two individual stars have released an album as a duo, rekindling that old excitement of possibility.
"This album marks the official merge," she said. "It wasn't necessarily a plan, it was a natural evolution. It makes so much sense. I mean, when we first got married 13 years ago we were all giddy with excitement thinking 'oh, two fiddlers, and we have such unique styles, we'll just play together and write together and record together and compose together' and all this. Over time, it is inevitable."
Gordie Howe didn't force his kids into hockey, but a couple of them went on to big careers in the NHL anyway. Leahy and MacMaster didn't force their kids into music, but likewise they are showing signs of growing up steeped in reels and jigs.
"They are coming on," MacMaster said. "They are so musical. Forget the playing an instrument part, they just love music and they want to be a part of it."
So do she and Leahy ever get a chance to look at each other and say 'wow, honey, so this is what it's like to be one of Canada's music industry power couples, what a treat, please pass the diapers and wipe that spit-up off your collar' when they're reposing around the house?
"No, we don't get to do that," she laughed. "You never get a moment to take it all in, you're so busy with everything, and it's true we should sit a bit and be grateful a little more often."
The answer going forward, more and more, will be to bring the kids along. It's already a reality on a lot of their extensive touring missions and it is bound to increase as the new album gathers traction. It is already up for three East Coast Music Awards.
The deeply buried ulterior motive for MacMaster's inclusion on the Johnny Reid tour is reconnaissance. She and Leahy have done more touring in the States and Europe than their own country, these past dozen years, although both have been from Canadian coast to coast many times. She is doing some preliminary groundwork now for a cross-Canada Christmas tour they'll do next winter.
To get a taste of that, join MacMaster, Reid and a merry band of other troubadours as they bring their musical circus to town on Friday night.
MacMaster hinted that the best part of the night isn't even her contributions to the festivities. She singled out another VIP on the stage, the Senegalese-Canadian performer lage Diouf.
"Yes, yes, yes. My favourite part of the show. He is fantastic, and it's sweet and beautiful and it's my highlight of the night," she said. "The thing with true blue musicians is they hear it, they feel it honestly, they respond to it. It doesn't matter where in the world you're from, if you're what my father-in-law (the late Frank Leahy) used to call a 'true blue' there's just a flow there that bridges all gaps."
