Marcia Ball brings her mix of Louisiana styles to the Rhythm & Roots Festival for two shows Saturday.

Marcia Ball’s set at the Rhythm & Roots Festival will consist of her current songs with her regular band as well as what she calls “a little bit of lagniappe, a little extra thrown in” — a mini-set at the end with guests Johnny Nicholas, Joel Guzman, Steve Riley and more, under the name The Louisiana-Texas Revue.

The special-guests frame recalls the framework of her latest record, Peace, Love and BBQ, which came out this year with a cast of guest performers that includes Dr. John, Wayne Toups, Terrance Simien, Ian McLagan and more.

“I didn’t really want it to be one of those ‘… and Friends’ sort of records,” Ball says, “although when I have a chance to work with some of my friends and heroes, I’m not gonna turn that down. … It just kind of came together.”

It’s a mix of styles that goes beyond what Ball has put on record before. While there’s plenty of rollicking piano blues such as the Ball originals “My Heart and Soul” and “Right Back In It,” there’s also the accordion-fueled “Party Town” (a tribute to the resiliency of New Orleans) and “Married Life” (a full-tilt zydeco stomp that, title notwithstanding, is anything but sedate).

It wouldn’t be a Ball album without a touching ballad or two, and the new disc delivers with “Falling Back in Love With You” and Bill Withers’ “I Wish You Well,” but a couple of songs have an extra purpose. There’s also a bit of what Ball calls “a Southern Gothic thing” in the song “Miracle in Knoxville,” about a preacher who meets a supernatural end.

Ball credits the newfound diversity to her continuing work with producer Stephen Bruton, who also helmed 2003’s So Many Rivers album, making him the first producer Ball’s worked with twice in a row. Recalling the process on So Many Rivers, Ball says, “I was going in and crying because I was recording piano that I couldn’t play — ‘I can’t do it!’ ‘Just keep trying!’ I would do it, and I’d come out laughing.”

Ball and Bruton have worked together in various ways going back to 1989’s Gatorhythms album, and his songwriting assistance has been invaluable, Ball says, citing the bridge to her evergreen “Mama’s Cookin’” from that record.

“If I get bogged down, and I need to take a song out of my comfort zone, I’ll call Stephen, and he’ll just throw a chord in,” Ball says. “I talked to a lot of people before making this record, and it came down to Stephen. … It’s been special.”

Ball will be coming to Rhode Island fresh from performing at the Democratic National Convention on Monday, playing with an ad hoc supergroup called The New Orleans Traveling Road Show that included Tab Benoit, George Porter Jr., three of The Meters, Allen Toussaint, The Soul Rebels Brass Band with Randy Newman, Marva Wright, Irma Thomas and more at two convention-related receptions.

The point of the shows was to keep the Gulf Coast in delegates’ minds, particularly Benoit and Cyril Neville’s Voice of the Wetlands project. “We are losing a football field a day, more than that,” Ball says of the wetlands around the Mississippi River Delta that provide shelter to the coastline from tropical storms.

“I’ve always been radical,” says Ball. “I’ve always been a liberal and a squishy and an environmentalist,” but she adds that nowadays the vulnerability of the Gulf Coast is “really a national problem; it’s a crisis that isn’t being addressed. This is enormously threatening to our whole way of life. … It’s a complex environmental problem that needs to be addressed, and it’s a larger problem than where our shrimp are breeding or protecting New Orleans. It’s like the movement that ultimately saved the Everglades. Because it’s important to the entire country that we do so.”

Music has always been a way to get a message out, Ball points out, and her ballads “Where Do You Go?” and “Ride It Out” from the new record relate directly to the human aftermath of Hurricane Katrina in particular and the fragile ecology of the Gulf Coast in general.

“I think it has always fallen to musicians to put these situations in front of people, from Woody Guthrie in the Depression on. People will take a message, perhaps, when it’s in the form of music more readily than if it’s just being preached at them by a speaker. But it’s always fallen to us to open people’s eyes to situations. … We can couch it in a way that people will listen.”

At the same time, in politically charged times, even songs that don’t expressly relate to contemporary issues, such as “Party Town” and Ball’s setlist staple “That’s Enough of That Stuff,” can take on new meaning.

“When we played in New Orleans soon after Katrina, I had a hard time figuring out what our purpose was there. Here are these people who have struggled through this terrible time, and what are we expected to do — party? Well, as a matter of fact, that’s exactly what they needed — a dance-away-your-troubles night.

“I know that in large part, that’s what I’m there to do. But I also know that you can make a song like ‘A Change Is Gonna Come’ — that’s what Marva Wright sang the other night in Denver — that’s so apropos.”

Ball makes it home to Austin, Texas, to recharge her batteries occasionally, but describes herself as “somewhat permanently on tour. … That’s what I’ve been doing for the past 30 years.”

The kind of burnout that put David Bromberg on the sidelines for 17 years hasn’t affected her, she says. “I stay home for a while, and sometimes it’s strenuous, and there’s a cost there. But there’s also a cost in staying home too much!

“I’m ready to go, and fortunately I have some guys who are ready to go. I love traveling, and I love going to see my friends. People pay to go do what I do.”

rmassimo@projo.com