For more than 35 years, “Mighty Max” Weinberg has been pounding out the big, fat backbeat that anchors the rhythm section for Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band.

And for 17 years, he played a mix of rock, jump-blues, jazz-rock fusion, etc. as the leader of the house band for Conan O’Brien’s late-night TV shows — mostly on “Late Night,” but also during O’Brien’s short-lived 2009 stint as the host of “The Tonight Show.”

But there’s another side to Weinberg’s musical personality — he’s also a serious big-band aficionado, and he's currently out on the road as the leader of the 15-piece Max Weinberg Big Band — a tour that comes to The Ark on Saturday.

Weinberg has always been a fan of big-band music, but he never got serious about playing it until the early 1990s, when he was given a tape of a 1960s-era Count Basie recording by Scott Healy, the accomplished jazz pianist in Weinberg’s late-night band.

Then, in the mid-'90s, Weinberg began lecturing at colleges, where he would conduct jazz-master classes in drumming, and sit in with the school's jazz ensemble.

“It was about ’95 or ’96 that I began to have the ability to play the kind of jazz music I had always heard in my head,” says Weinberg by phone from his historic cottage in the Tuscany region of Italy, where he spends part of the year with his family.

After O’Brien left “The Tonight Show” last year, Weinberg returned from Los Angeles to New Jersey, and decided, “I’m going to put a big band together, with Jersey and New York guys, and go in this direction, and just see what happens.”

The Max Weinberg Big Band made its debut during Christmas week of 2009 at the Fountainbleu Hotel in Miami Beach, and the crowd response was so enthusiastic — and Weinberg had so much fun — that he knew he had to take the act on the road and share it with audiences.

“I’ve always had an interest in this kind of music, dating back to when I was a kid, in the late ‘50s and ‘60s, when you could turn on the TV and see variety shows that always had a big band,” recalls Weinberg. “It wasn’t unusual to see Duke Ellington, Count Basie or Buddy Rich and their big bands. And of course I’ve always been a big fan of Buddy, who was the world’s greatest drummer, and Gene Krupa, and Kenny Clarke…..But I just didn’t play it for a long time. I became a rock drummer.”

Weinberg describes his Big Band’s music as being “hard-driving, muscular” versions of jazz instrumentals. “There’s a certain attitude to the Jersey style of playing, and, by the way, there is a certain linkage between Jersey drumming and Detroit drumming,” adds Weinberg, giving a tip of the hat to Johnny “Bee” Badanjek, the drummer for the legendary Mitch Ryder and the Detroit Wheels.

“I’m a rock drummer, but I understand the concept of swinging, and I believe there is an element of swing to my rock drumming,” says Weinberg. “You know, in the early days of rock ‘n’ roll, when they cut the first rock records, the drummers they hired were usually jazz drummers, who applied their talents to this ‘new’ music, and they could do it, because they were versatile and really schooled.”

Since jazz is more complex than most rock ‘n’ roll, it’s safe to say that playing jazz is a greater challenge, on a technical level. “That’s true, but the job of the drummer is still the same,” says Weinberg. “You add your voice to the musical conversation of the band, and can divide the beat into any number of different placements.

“When you play big-band music, you have to stay on the front, leading edge of the beat — if you don’t do that, it can start sounding a little lazy,” he shares. “It is a greater technical challenge than playing straight-ahead rock ‘n’ roll, but during all of those years of playing with those great musicians in my TV band, a lot of whom are schooled jazz guys, we sort of used rehearsal time as a workshop, and I got to develop new techniques.”

The Big Band’s repertoire consists of classic works by Weinberg’s heroes, like Basie and Rich, plus some selected TV-show themes, some original compositions, and, surprisingly, some big-band arrangements of a few of Springsteen’s songs.

“I don’t want to say which ones, though, because I want it to be a surprise,” says Weinberg with a devilish laugh. “But it’s not just going to sound like it's The E Street Band playing the songs without vocals. These are whole new arrangements, done up in swinging, big-band style. Just imagine the sound of 12 horns interpreting Clarence’s sax parts,” says Weinberg, referring to Clarence Clemons, the larger-than-life saxman wh's been Springsteen's onstage foil since the early '70s. “It’s a real homage to the Big Man.”

Max Weinberg Big Band performing live this summer:

For months now, there’s been a huge buzz among Springsteen acolytes about the upcoming “Darkness on the Edge of Town” box set,encompassing three CDs — including two CDs of tracks from the 1976-'78 recording sessions for that historic album that have never been released — plus three DVDs with live shows and a documentary on the making of the album.

“I remember that being a very fertile time, not just for Bruce, and his writing, and the E Street Band, but for rock ‘n’ roll in general, so there was a lot of electricity in the air as we were cutting these songs,” recalls Weinberg. “To tell you the truth, I don’t really remember much about the film crew that was shooting us, because we were all so intently focused on the songs.

“We recorded so many songs during those sessions, but most of ‘em just stayed in the can, because they didn’t fit with the theme that Bruce wanted to create for that album. So, we just forgot about most of them.

“And then, several months ago, we were all sitting around at Bruce’s house, listening to these songs, and we couldn’t remember them. It was like hearing a whole new band! But I’ll tell you, there were enough of those ‘lost tracks’ for another four great albums.”

Kevin Ransom is a free-lance writer who covers music for AnnArbor.com. He can be reached at KevinRansom10@aol.com.