Neither Tom Gray nor Mark Johnson could have predicted the result of their first meeting.

It took place in the early ’90s when Gray offered to sell Johnson a guitar out of the trunk of his car. Johnson didn’t buy the guitar, but after realizing they shared an interest in slide guitar, they exchanged numbers and decided to meet and play music.

“We were playing together for several years, just getting together and jamming,” Gray said. But we were thinking two slide guitar players in the same band would probably be a pretty strange thing.”

It was in the late ’90s, when Johnson saw a televised performance featuring two slide guitarists, that the two agreed to perform their songs for an audience. They debuted their blues-infused rock music in coffee shops and restaurants until the release of their first album garnered them wider recognition.

Now internationally renowned and with record deals in Europe and America, Decatur-based blues band Delta Moon has long since established itself as a mainstay in the genre.

Gray said that despite his interest in all genres of music, blues has always been a passion. He said his interest lies in the depth of the genre and its influence on all varieties of modern music.

“All this stuff just goes way back. So we go way back to the roots, the old blues recordings, and that stuff is still a well-spring,” he said. “Some people think of the blues as locked into this Chicago-style thing, but we like to look way back before that for our inspiration.”

The band is now a quartet, which features Gray on lap steel and vocals, Johnson on bottleneck and slide guitar, Frahner Joseph on bass and Darren Stanley on drums, and maintains a largely improvisational live show characteristic of the band’s roots. Because of this, Gray said every song grows each time it is played.

“I think songs do evolve over time,” he said. “It’s still a living thing, that song. Every time you do it, it might be a little bit different. [It] depends on what’s happening that day or what’s happening in that room that minute.”

Delta Moon recently finished recording their newest album, slated for a U.S. release in Jan. 2010.

After tonight’s concert at the Melting Point, the band is heading to Europe for a two-week Scandinavian tour.