Huey Lewis still enjoys what he does and he’ll bring that enthusiasm to the Newport Yachting Center on Thursday night.

AP / PAUL HAWTHORNE

Huey Lewis, the man who sings about the virtues of a “Couple Days Off,” says that it’s important to get just that every once in a while.

While they’re no longer at the 300-shows-a-year pace they were on in the ’80s, and the venues might be smaller than when they were touring behind hits such as “Do You Believe in Love?,” “Heart and Soul,” “I Want a New Drug” and a passel of chart-topping hits, Lewis says that life in the News is sometimes “more fun than it ever has been.” He uses the line from a Toby Keith song about aging to make his point: “We’re not as good as we once were, but we’re as good once as we ever were.”

In some ways, he says, “we’re still improving, believe it or not. We’ve been at this for a while, but I’m smarter about my choices and the notes. It’s like an old baseball pitcher. The show is a two-hour deal … and you have to pace yourself.”

Huey Lewis and the News play about 75 shows a year: “It feels like the right number,” he says. You’ve got to do a certain minimum to keep your chops up, he says, but too much and you lose your edge.

“I used to see my old heroes, the old R&B groups … and they’re all clearly miserable, and I always wondered why that was. And I realized: They work too much! You do 200 shows a year, you’re going to feel like that. You take three weeks off and you’re gonna feel great.”

The News is a nine-piece band now, with original members Lewis, drummer Bill Gibson, saxophonist Johnny Colla and keyboardist Sean Hopper augmented by guitarist Stef Burns, bassist John Pierce and a horn section. (Guitarist Chris Hayes, tired of the road, retired a few years ago, and bassist Mario Cipollina was dismissed in the ’90s due to substance-abuse problems. He recently sat in with the group and Lewis says that Cipollina “looked good”.)

“The guys we’ve added are exceptional musicians,” Lewis says, “and it’s a lot of fun. When we hire somebody … rather than take the kid from down the street, which is how we formed the band, we actually got a pro! And man, does that make it sound good!”

The News’ ’80s hits were a combination of the new and the classic — you could tell from the grooves and the influences that there was an experienced bar band at work, but the songwriting and the smooth-as-silk production were pure ’80s pop. It was a navigation exercise between real rock and commercialism, but Lewis points out that the band produced its own records, and was following its own goals: “We decided that if anyone was going to decide where that line was between commercial and bubblegum, it should be us.”

Lewis uses the hit “Bad is Bad” as an example of what they were trying. He called the song a mix of “Linn drum and doo-wop. It was difficult to put those two things together … but I thought the juxtaposition was charming, when it was properly worked out. And that’s what we did in the ’80s. It was brand-new at the time, and it was responsible for a lot of our success.

Now, however, the band records in a much more down-and-dirty manner, befitting their R&B roots. “A lot of the Sports record (which gave them hits such as “Heart of Rock ’n’ Roll,” “Heart and Soul” and “If This is It” in 1984), which is seen as this pub-rock or bar-rock record, is actually recorded with drum machines and sequenced bass. And we overdubbed the toms and the cymbals so you couldn’t really tell. But it was literally put together piece by piece. And now we’ve sort of retro-ed back to where we capture a performance.”

Lewis says that the recording of the 1994 tribute record Four Chords and Several Years Ago was a turning point. The disc was full of ’50s and ’60s covers of the songs that had inspired the band members in their youth, such as “Some Kind of Wonderful” and “But It’s Alright” (both of which scored on the adult-contemporary charts).

They recorded the songs more in the style of the originals, and Lewis says, “It was a really good lesson in terms of songwriting and arranging. When you have it right, it all just lays out right, and you don’t need as many tracks. So we did that record kind of quickly and live and fast. We vowed that that’s the way we were gonna record from then on.”

Not only were their favorite records done that way, Lewis says, but over the years the band has gotten good enough to record that way. And, he adds, as the commercial expectations change, so does the process.

“If the last record went to number one, you know that stations are going to be listening to this one. So while you’re producing it, if there’s a little bit of a mistake, once it’s charming, but after repeated listenings you say ‘We better fix that if that’s going to be on the radio every hour.’ But we don’t make records for the radio anymore; we make them for ourselves!”

Speaking on the eve of their summer tour, Lewis says that the band will put a few new songs in the set list in order to road-test them for a new album, which he hopes they’ll record in the fall and put out early next year.

He says it’ll be “kind of in line with” the covers concept of the Four Chords record, but “I don’t want to give away the concept.”

In the meantime, Lewis, speaking on the afternoon this summer’s road tour begins, muses on the on-and-off showbiz cycle.

“It’s an odd job; you work too much, and you can’t wait to stop. But you quit for a couple of weeks and you can’t wait to play again!”

Huey Lewis and the News open the Nantucket Nectars Sunset Music Series Thursday night at 7 p.m., at the Newport Yachting Center, off America’s Cup Avenue. Tickets are $70 and $60; call (401) 846-1600, ext. 2, or go to newportwaterfrontevents.com.

rmassimo@projo.com