LEWISTON — Two weeks before he begins a 21-concert tour with music legend Bob Dylan — including an April 10 show at the Colisee in Lewiston — Dawes’ lead singer and guitarist Taylor Goldsmith still wonders how he and his band got the gig.

He’s not even sure he’ll meet the “Like a Rolling Stone” scribe.

“It’s a bit of a mystery to us,” Goldsmith said Tuesday. “We got a call from our agent and he said, ‘I’ve got some of the best news this band has ever gotten. Bob Dylan wants Dawes to open for his whole spring tour.'”

“We just freaked out,” Goldsmith said. “We didn’t think that would ever be possible. Getting to open some shows for him is a high honor for us.”

They’ll open in Buffalo on April 5 and end the tour one month later in St. Augustine, Fla. Even if they don’t speak, Goldsmith and his band mates hope to watch Dylan up close.

“Just get to experience that, that would be a dream come true to us,” Goldsmith said. “Bob Dylan can tend to be a private person. We’re not even expecting to meet him, necessarily.”

The guys have met and played with their share of rock royalty. They’ve played several times with Jackson Browne, backed Robbie Robertson of The Band and recorded with John Fogerty of Creedence Clearwater Revival. They even shared the stage with Fogerty on Saturday at the South By Southwest Festival in Austin, Texas.

It’s part of the band’s growing reputation as a throwback to the 1970s, favoring guitars, simple-but-exquisite vocals and ambitious lyrics.

Critics from Rolling Stone and American Songwriter heaped praise on their first two albums, “North Hills” and “Nothing is Wrong.” Rolling Stone picked Goldsmith’s “Million Dollar Bill” as one of 2011’s best singles. Their current single, “From a Window Seat,” recalls both Browne and Crosby, Stills and Nash.

Goldsmith said he was flattered, but he insisted that the band is not trying to sound like the graying legends.

“We don’t want our music to conjure up the good-old days to anybody,” he said. “I’m 27 years old. My brother (Griffin) is the drummer and he’s 22. We’re not familiar with what the scene used to be in music. We just know what we love, and we play what we love.”

Their third album, “Stories Don’t End,” is scheduled for release on April 9, one day before their Lewiston performance.

Concert promoter Alex Gray believes Dawes was hired for the Dylan tour because it can appeal to the tour’s intended audience: college students.

Every date on the Dylan tour was scheduled for its proximity to colleges and universities. At each venue, some tickets were set aside and sold at a discount to students, Gray said.

Dawes, who visited Maine last year as the opener for Mumford & Sons, is scheduled to make a quick stop here on March 27. The group will perform several songs at the Bull Moose Music store in Scarborough as part of an effort to drum up publicity and repay their fans, who buy a surprising majority of their songs on CD and vinyl rather than through a digital service.

And that’s only a small piece of a chaotic schedule.

Earlier this month, the band spent three days in Rwanda as part of a charity effort to encourage donations to help fight malaria. Then, while at South by Southwest in Austin, they played 13 shows in one week.

They manage by sleeping as a much as they can and limiting their partying.

“We pace ourselves,” Goldsmith said. “We can’t be going out to bars after every gig and only go on three hours of sleep when we have schedules like this, as much as we’d like to.”

“It’s all right,” Goldsmith said. “We’re having a good time, and we’re all getting along great.”

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