I recently spent several hours in a Portland recording studio with a most fascinating individual. Rev. Robert Bryan has worn many different hats in the course of his 80-plus years: legendary storyteller, dedicated pastor on Quebec’s remote North Shore, bush pilot, conservationist, the list goes on.

I first met Rev. Bryan half a lifetime ago at Yale University under far less than ideal circumstances. It was the winter of 1982. Bob and I and 100 or so others were gathered in a small stone chapel on Yale’s campus for an event none of us wanted to attend.

Bob had no choice in the matter. In his capacity as a minister, he was there to conduct a memorial service for his recently departed friend and creative collaborator, humorist Marshall Dodge, who was killed by a drunk driver at the age of 45.

Though I’d never met Bob, I’d certainly heard of him.

In 1958, Bryan and Dodge (largely for their own amusement) created an album entitled “Bert and I and Other Stories from Down East.”

The incredible success of that record (more than 1,000,000 copies sold) sparked a cottage industry of imitators and introduced the nation to the distinctive dialect and quirky, dry, understated style of Maine storytelling. Eventually the signature “Bert and I” punchline, “You can’t get there from here!” became an unofficial Maine state slogan.

Sitting in that austere New Haven Chapel, it was hard to imagine a more ironic and uncomfortable circumstance in which to meet Bob for the first time.

The previous summer Marshall and I, as Sample and Dodge, had been riding a wave of popularity and performing to enthusiastic crowds in venues across Maine. We’d just started work on a planned comedy album when I got word of his sudden, untimely death.

Awkward as the situation was, Bob handled it with a mixture of grace, compassion and magnanimity that I later came to recognize as a hallmark of his personality and the “secret” behind his remarkably long list of professional associations and accomplishments.

Several weeks later Bob invited me to his home (“Bert and I” World Headquarters) on Mill Road in Ipswich, Mass. It was a warm sun-dappled day in early spring. We sat on lawn chairs in the backyard garden, sipping lemonade and swapping stories.

That afternoon I experienced Bob’s natural, disarmingly dry, trademark wit firsthand.

At one point, after I’d let slip the fact that I’d been booted out of not one, but two prestigious New England prep schools, Bob leaned forward and intoned in a conspiratorial stage whisper, “Timmy, if you find me 12 boys who were expelled from the best preparatory schools in New England I could run the world!”

That afternoon Bob offered me a “Bert and I” recording contract. Over the next several months Bob and I wrote and recorded our own album, “How to Talk Yankee.”

One summer evening we met in Freeport to pitch it to Leon Gorman, grandson of company founder L.L.Bean himself, who, like nearly everyone else apparently, was a dear friend of Bob Bryan.

We sat in Leon’s office with a portable phonograph and played him the acetate test pressing of our new record. That year “How to Talk Yankee” was featured prominently in the L.L.Bean Holiday Gift Catalogue and (largely as a result of that marketing coup) sold like the proverbial hotcakes.

I made several more albums released on the “Bert and I” label, and Bobby and I continued to perform together as often as our schedules would allow. The years passed and our friendship deepened. Last summer, 31 years after the release of “How to Talk Yankee,” following a performance at Schoodic Point, Bob and I decided that it might be time to make another record.

So that’s how Bob and I came to be at the recording studio in Portland. After months of writing and rewriting scripts, we finally had a couple dozen stories ready to record. How did it go? You can judge for yourself when “Bert and I Rebooted” arrives in local stores this summer.

What I can tell you is that David Lyman, one of the “Bert and I” producers, emailed me a candid photo he took in the studio during the session. In it, Bob is reading a line and I’m grinning and trying not to laugh out loud while my microphone is live.

I’ve had a lot of promo photos taken over the years, but I can’t recall seeing one in which I look happier.