Geoff Muldaur: Part of the American music continuum.

Geoff Muldaur has one of the most varied and lengthy resumes in American music, rising from the Cambridge folk-blues scene of the early 1960s, making a name with Jim Kweskin’s jug band and going on to work with luminaries ranging from Bob Dylan to Richard Thompson to Benny Carter to Phil Everly and more. “There are only three white blues singers,” Thompson has famously said, “and Geoff Muldaur is at least two of them.”

Muldaur’s never been limited to what he calls “American vernacular music,” though; indeed, he might have gotten his widest exposure for his version of “Brazil” that serves as a backdrop to the 1985 Terry Gilliam film of the same name.

And at age 63, he hasn’t slowed down much. While driving from Toledo to Cleveland on a solo tour, he recounts his most recent projects: He’s written four horn charts for B.B. King’s new album; he’s made an album of string-band music with The Texas Sheiks, some friends of his from Austin; he’s releasing a new album in Japan of “tapes I found in my closet” in preparation for a Japanese tour.

And his current project is an album of chamber orchestra backings of Tennessee Williams poetry. “Sort of freeing myself of the vernacular,” Muldaur says; “it’s quite classical.”

Muldaur says he’s done a few shows with Kweskin lately, which have been enjoyable, but when he tours, he tours alone. “Doing my thing and playing my new Martin guitar. It’s fun.”

“That’s a vacation. I’m one of the few people I know who goes on the road to go on vacation. All I have to do is play my guitar and sing and have fun and meet new people. I love it. The other stuff is grueling. When I’m home, I work very hard. I don’t know why I do this, but I’m drawn to this. I’m a very lucky man.”

He’s spent a lot of time leaning on, and bouncing off of, the American folk and blues traditions, but the Williams project touched a different chord.

“I’ve always been in love with American music, not in its current form but in many forms. And I’ve always been so good at interpreting it in a way that’s different and with my own stamp that it’s become easy for me to do that. So to just throw that all off and say, ‘What’s inside of your heart, man?’ Without thinking about Jelly Roll Morton or Bix Biederbecke (a record of whose music was Muldaur’s most recent solo offering) or Blind Lemon Jefferson right now, what have you got on your mind? … It’s been very exciting for me, because I might be better than I thought I was, if you don’t mind me putting it that way. …

“I’ve been around for a while now, and we’re all mortal. And there’s something very right on schedule for me to want to go right inside now, and throw off the vernacular and create something from my marrow. And I’m much more European than I thought.”

The variety of projects he’s taken on means that there are holes in his discography; he can, and has, gone seven years between solo albums. If that lowers his profile, so be it. “I’m not in business; I’m sort of in love. I don’t create albums with a concept, on purpose. Other people might define that for me; I don’t. I just do what’s in front of me, sort of ‘build it and they will come,’ and I’m getting away with it.”

Asked about the ebbs and flows of the popularity of American music over his decades, he takes the question to a wider plane: He sees himself as part of a continuum that lasted nearly a hundred years.

“I grew up, and even performed for a few years in the ’60s, at the end of the golden era of music, meaning to me sometime in the 1880s into the ’60s maybe. Where all around the world, in every form of music, all the greatest players and singers who ever lived did that.

“These people were part of a zeitgeist — the John Coltranes and the Duke Ellingtons and the Rostropoviches and the Blind Lemon Jeffersons. Something happened on this planet and it isn’t happening now.”

He’s quick to add that he’s not being curmudgeonly in his appreciation of the past.

“I feel lucky — I don’t feel like ‘Oh, it stinks now; it was better yesterday.’ I have no problems with that. …

“It’s no big deal that it isn’t happening now, because that happens in history. There are these waves of consciousness, and that’s how it is. And I just feel lucky that I went and heard Louis Armstrong and sat next to Duke Ellington at the piano and heard The Swan Silvertones. It was an extraordinary time, and we thought it would go on forever, but it didn’t.”

It’s pointed out to him that people who are young now may feel the same way about this era as he feels about his golden age. He chuckles and says, “I wouldn’t know …

“And that’s not to say there might not be pretty pleasant crocuses in the snow — we have some wonderful players and singers and all of that. But it isn’t in the same universe.”

One thing he does complain about: “We have a frighteningly unhip youth. … “I think it’s important for a culture to have a historical sense. But it is what it is.

“If this was 1964, half of my gigs would be at colleges. Now, zero of my gigs are at colleges. That’s the negative part.”

In the next breath, though, he cautions against false nostalgia. “There were 35 hipsters on each campus, smoking a little pot, and they knew the Vietnam War was stupid and illegal. It wasn’t hundreds of thousands of people marching in the streets. It took a few months. Six months from now there could be this giant wave on consciousness that hits college campuses.”

He says he doesn’t know whether that will actually happen, nor does he much care. “All I can do is reach in, try and use my sensibilities to create something that I think is worthwhile.”

“But like I said, I’m traveling the world, listening to Beethoven symphonies in concert halls in Europe, hiking the hills of Ireland and looking at the Japanese crane on Hokkaido, and meeting people and playing for them. How could I possibly complain about the state of things?”

Geoff Muldaur plays Saturday night at the Stone Soup Coffeehouse, in the basement of St. Paul’s Church, 50 Park Place, Pawtucket, at 8 p.m. The Killdevils open. Tickets are $16, $8 for children; call (401) 921-5115 or go to www.stonesoupcoffeehouse .com.

Acoustic performances

It’s a weekend full of acoustic folk and blues music: The Rhode Island Folk Festival gets in gear Saturday at the Peeptoad Coffeehouse (in the North Foster Baptist Church), 81 East Killingly Rd., Foster, with a daytime schedule full of workshops on various forms of American folk dancing, instrumental and singing workshops and old-time jam sessions and a nighttime schedule of concerts by Jerimoth Hill (the gospel group led by Aubrey Atwater and Elwood Donnelly). Tickets are $15 for adults and $10 for children for either session, $25 and $15 for both. Call (401) 392-1322.

And Ken Lyon and Tombstone go acoustic on Saturday at the Blackstone River Theatre, 549 Broad St., Cumberland, at 8 p.m. Tickets are $12 in advance, $15 the day of the show. Call (401) 725-9272.

And for another kind of folk music: KRS-One is one of the elder statesmen and spokesmen of hip-hop, and he deserves his status with every record and every live show. Speaking of which, he’s at Lupo’s Heartbreak Hotel, 79 Washington St., Providence, Sunday night at 9 p.m. A Strange Famous showcase featuring B Dolan, Prolyphic and Sage Francis kicks off the night. Tickets are $20 in advance, $25 the day of the show. Call (401) 331-5876 or go to www.etix.com.

rmassimo@projo.com