For the past 15 years, the Portland-based band Dominic and The Lucid has drawn crowds of fans with its special brand of rock. The band started out as a trio of Dominic Lavoie (guitar and lead vocals), Nathan Cyr (bass) and Charles Gagne (drums), releasing two albums — “Waging the Wage” in 2006 and “Season of the Sun” in 2008. In 2011, they released their third album, “The Lucid,” with their newest member, Scott Mohler (guitarist and multi-instrumentalist). I learned recently that they were coming to the Unity College Center for the Performing Arts on May 20, and considering I hadn’t spoken with Lavoie in quite some time, I decided to do a phone interview and find out what’s been happening with him lately. He called me from his home in Portland on April 26.

Q: I understand you’re coming into the UCCPA for a show mid-May.

Lavoie: Yes.

Q: Have you done that venue before?

Lavoie: No, never. I’ve been there for a show, about 11 years ago, but I’ve never played there. It should be pretty great.

Q: Do you have anything in the works recordingwise?

Lavoie: We have a new album coming out in June. In fact, I think by the time this runs, presale will be going. We just got the artwork today and are in the process of setting up the website right now, which will be cool. But yeah, we’re going to do vinyl, and presale of the vinyl and CDs will happen this week at some point — probably Saturday.

Q: Now, your last one came out in 2011, correct?

Lavoie: Yeah, that was a while back, which is pretty crazy. We’ve been working on this one since last February, so it’s been a year and three months — it’s finally coming out. It’ll be great.

Q: How far afield do you guys tour?

Lavoie: Usually like Boston, and we go to northern Maine quite a bit, so it’s Boston to Madawaska.

Q: Do you still have your gig at WBLM?

Lavoie: I do, yeah. I’m still there, and I’m on WCYY now, too, which is an alternative station in town. They’re sister stations. Yeah, I’m still doing that and recording people. I’m basically self-employed at this point doing the music thing, playing in a couple of different bands and running sound. Yeah, I’m keeping busy, and I just had a baby.

Q: Oh, wow.

Lavoie: Yeah, I’m slammed. It’s a little girl. We had her last June. I’m extremely tired all the time, but it’s great. I’m more focused now ever since I had the baby, which feels weird, but it’s true. I’m more on point with getting things done. There’s a pressure to focus and make sure I’m not wasting time now. Before, I was pretty much go-with-the-flow. I’m still kind of that way, but I’m way more organized. You almost have to be, I think, if you have a kid.

Q: Tell me about this forthcoming new album. Are there any new directions on it?

Lavoie: Yeah, there’s a bunch of new directions. The last two albums we put out were not concept albums but more thematic from song to song lyrically, but this one doesn’t have any rhyme or reason. It’s more of a collection of songs, which reminds me of the first album we put out, 10 years ago. And we have the same artist do the art work. There are a lot of similarities, actually, to the first one. I think it shows a cool growth path, but also there’s still some little throwbacks to the original sound, which I think is neat. The last one was kind of a concept (album) and kind of a dark record, where this one’s got a little more light in it.

Q: Do you think that’s because you now have a child? Did she “lighten” the music up a bit?

Lavoie: I think so. She was around for some of the writing. Yeah, there’s a song about her on there, but I also think that she helped me not drag my feet and overthink it. We recorded what we needed and moved on, which is kind of nice. We’ve had the tendency in the past to maybe work on our records longer than we needed to sometimes, which is pretty classic with some bands; but the flow of the songs on this one is really nice, actually.

Q: Is there anything you’d like to pass on to the folks reading this article?

Lavoie: Yeah, we’ll be playing out this summer, so try to catch us. Come see us at Unity, and also I’d love it if people checked out the new record. Oh, and also for the first time ever, we’re doing a vinyl release, which is amazing. I finally got the test pressings and heard our music on a record, and it’s wild. It’s like a dream come true. So if people want to scope that out, it sounds great, the artwork is amazing and we’ve got the presale going now — so they can snag it. (www.dominicandthelucid.com)

Lucky Clark has spent more than 45 years writing about good music and the people who make it. He can be reached at luckyc@myfairpoint.net if you have any questions, comments or suggestions.

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