When guitar virtuosos Eric Johnson and Mike Stern titled their 2014 duo album Eclectic, they weren’t kidding. The kickoff track, “Roll With It”, is a disciplined venture into old-school funk, and although the rest of the disc conforms more closely to listener expectations, its guitar-heavy jams cover a lot of stylistic terrain. “Benny Man’s Blues” is a swing-to-bop foray into the world of Charlie Christian, who pioneered the electric guitar in Benny Goodman’s band; “Tidal” is a nod to the equally immortal Wes Montgomery. But the horn-assisted rave-up “Hullabaloo” has so much Sunset Strip flavour that it deserves its own TV show, “Big Foot” is squiggly, twisted fusion, and album closer “Red House” honours another major influence, Jimi Hendrix.

Perhaps Eclectic couldn’t help but be, well, diverse; its makers are not an obvious fit with each other. The Austin, Texas–based Johnson comes across as a soft-spoken southern diplomat, while Stern is an affably gruff New York City jazz cat. And if Johnson is so obsessed with the technology of making music that he has his own line of guitar speakers, Stern is the exact opposite.

“I’m not a tech guy at all,” he claims, on the line from New York. “I don’t even have a computer! I mean, I do, but my wife has to turn the damn thing on, and I never use it.”

When it comes to the guitar, however, the two are on the same page—and that was apparent from the first time they worked together, during the sessions for Stern’s 2009 release Big Neighbourhood. “Eric played his ass off, and then we talked about maybe doing some more,” Stern recalls. That led to an East Coast tour, and then the Eclectic sessions; along the way the two discovered that they had more in common than they’d realized.

It’s easy to pigeonhole Stern as purely a jazz musician—at least in contrast to Johnson, whose wide-ranging approach has been influenced by everything from Japanese koto music to progressive rock to the European classical tradition—but that’s an oversimplification. “I check out [Johann Sebastian] Bach all the time,” Stern reveals. “I’ve been doing that for years, not really for performance, but just to learn all those lines and beautiful melodies. So I understand a lot of what Eric’s doing, although he’s deeper into it because he also plays piano and tries to get that shit happening on the guitar.”

In a separate phone interview from Austin, Johnson confirms that there’s a strong two-way exchange between the playing partners. “There’s plenty I can learn from Mike,” he says. “Anytime you play with a really good player that’s different than yourself, you really have an opportunity to learn and grow.…It can ignite new passions and new approaches to what you do.

“Playing with Mike,” he adds, “is one of the more pleasurable double-guitar things I’ve ever done.”

Does that mean a follow-up to Eclectic is in the cards?

“I hope so,” says Stern, “ ’cause I’m having a ball!”

Eric Johnson and Mike Stern play the Vogue Theatre next Thursday (February 5).