Los Lobos brings its roots-rock and traditional Latino music to the Nantucket Nectars Sunset Music Series at the Newport Yachting Center Friday night.

Summertime is touring time for Los Lobos, and from his home in Oregon, saxophonist Steve Berlin says that the Los Angeles band, which has been combining roots rock, studio experimentalism and Latino traditional music for more than 30 years, is gearing up for “sojourning about the world,” an annual ritual that lasts from May through October.

That’s good news for Lobos fans, would-be fans and should-be fans; their shows are typically long on energy and improvisation without edging into excess, and songs can be pulled from any part of their long discography.

There haven’t been any new additions to that discography for a while, but Berlin explains that’s going to change soon.

The last Los Lobos disc was 2006’s excellent The Town and the City, which was an ambitious, multi-genre disc which evoked the striving, change and costs of the immigrant experience. It did well, but not Hollywood Records well, and the band and the label parted ways in 2007.

Berlin explains that there were no hard feelings and that the band expected that their contract wouldn’t be renewed. “This deal was signed in 1997, and the industry had changed so much in those 11 years. [Renewing the contract] certainly made no sense for them, and it made [only] a little sense for us.”

They spent two years playing live and looking for a new deal — “We just had to figure out what we’re about and what we want to do” — and they considered going it alone and releasing their music themselves, but then recently signed with Shout! Factory Records. Berlin says that the songwriting process will begin during the summer, and that he hopes a new disc will be out in early 2010.

Los Lobos’ long history and devoted fan base would seem to indicate that they could do well by doing it themselves, but Berlin says the marketing and promotional costs were always the sticking point. “If we could find a deal out there that was equitable, with a good sharing point, it didn’t make much sense to take on all those costs.”

What sold them on Shout! Factory was the prospect of taking back ownership of their recordings a few years after they are made. “We’ve been recording for 30 years and we still own very little of what we’ve actually done.” With this deal, “we share the risk and share the reward, which is not always the case. Many of our record deals in the past, we’d get a little bit of money and never see anything else, no matter how many records we sold.”

So, has the band got an itch to record again? “I think so. I hope so. … It’s not something that we talk about a lot, but I’m sure that we will be.”

The next step is to set aside some time for songwriting. “We always need to cut time out of our schedule to make records and write ’em. So that’s the challenging part. … As far as I know, no one [in the band] has ever written a thing on the road.”

David Hidalgo, one of the chief songwriters, has been working with Bob Dylan, playing accordion on his latest Together Through Life album, and Berlin says that that’s an ongoing collaboration, so that’s another demand on the band’s time.

Meanwhile, Berlin stays busy in his studio, playing with and producing artists including Buckwheat Zydeco, Raul Malo and Clap Your Hands Say Yeah!’s Alec Ounsworth. It’s a great, flexible way to spend the months that Los Lobos isn’t on the road, and producing demands a different kind of effort from touring.

“When you play in a band, you show up and blow your solos. When you’re producing, the intensity level’s a little higher and the responsibility level’s a lot higher. So I just try to be present and let the records tell me what they want to be like.”

As for following up The Town and the City, Berlin says, “I don’t know if it would necessarily be a sequel, but I think the kind of record that we made, and the way it was made, I could see us doing something similar to that again. We’re three years older and wiser, and hopefully the music will be three years older and wiser as well.”

Los Lobos play Friday at 7 at the Nantucket Nectars Sunset Music Series, at the Newport Yachting Center, off America’s Cup Avenue in Newport. Santa Mamba opens; Jackie O’Brien plays at the second stage at 5:45. Tickets are $20 and $30; go to www.newportwaterfront

events.com or call (401) 846-1600, ext. 2.

rmassimo@projo.com