with jukebox: Rock great Ray Davies playing the Michigan Theater

And now, he’s finishing up another stage project, “Kinks Musical,” as well as planning a Kinks reunion and writing songs for what he hopes will be a new Kinks album.

Davies is taking time out from those latter endeavors for a U.S. tour that comes to the Michigan Theater on Thursday, March 11. The show will open with a set by The 88, after which Davies will do an acoustic set with guitarist Bill Shanley, consisting of songs from his solo albums. Then, The 88 will join him as his backing band for a plugged-in set of Kinks classics.

If some his recent and current projects seem elegiac — looking back, as they do, at the venerated Kinks songbook as their source material — well, that’s a natural tendency for rock artists in their 60s. Paul McCartney, Pete Townshend, Eric Clapton, Bob Dylan and others of that generation have been in similarly retrospective mindsets in the last decade or so, as they’ve eased into their autumn years.

“The Kinks Choral Collection” probably struck some as a curious project — creating choral arrangements of rock songs, and then having the choir back Davies and a small rock ensemble.

Listen to the Ray Davies album “The Kinks Choral Collection”:

But Davies has long shown a flair for “conceptual” projects, dating back to the late ’60s. “The Kinks Are the Village Green Preservation Society” — which they released in ’68, when the psychedelic era was in full flower — was a pastoral, patina-tinged lament for the passing of the old ways, set in a fictional, bucolic English village.

Then, in ’69, came “Arthur (or the Decline and Fall of the British Empire),” a concept album brimming with social commentary, about a London dweller who moves to Australia in the wake of WWII. And their ‘70s-era stage shows were often elaborate, theatrical productions.

And the choral album is appealing, in a slightly skewed way. As Davies has pointed out, these are reinterpretations, not re-recordings. “Obviously, (the album) is not meant to replace the original Kinks recordings,” Davies told the Boston Herald.

And it’s intriguing to hear the more pensive, poetic tunes receive the “church-music” treatments. And some arrangements sparkle with Davies’ wry wit.

The classic “All Day and All of the Night,” for example, is done “basically as the Kinks did it,” Davies told the Arizona Republic, but “with the choir singing like Gilbert and Sullivan in the choruses, sort of tongue in cheek.” And the plaintive “Waterloo Sunset” shimmers with relaxed, sun-dappled harmonies that suit the song’s ruminative tone.

That tone is fitting for songs that stir up recollections of another musical era. The Kinks were indeed one of the most influential groups of that time, when they were in the front tier of the British Invasion bands, along with the Beatles, the Who and the Rolling Stones. Davies’ songcraft and melodic gifts — along with the ragged, fuzzed-out guitar tone that became the signature of the band’s lead guitarist Dave Davies, Ray’s brother — have inspired 3 generations of rockers.

One dedicated Davies and Kinks follower, Brad Wernle of Ann Arbor, well remembers the impact of those records in the ‘60s. “The 2nd album I ever bought was the Kinks’ ‘You Really Got Me,’ recalls Wernle. (The first was “The Kingsmen sing ‘Louie Louie,’” he says.) “I loved their early stuff — that mix of Dave's primal riffs and Ray's memorable songs.

“The hard-rocking stuff like ‘You Really Got Me’ grabbed all the early attention, but the Davies well has always been pretty deep. ‘Tired of Waiting for You,’ their 3rd single, showed the Kinks were no 1-trick pony, and lesser-known songs like ‘See My Friends’ are miniature pop symphonies,” remarks Wernle, who spent 6 years in the late ‘90s - mid-‘00s living in Muswell Hill, the North London area where the Davies brothers were born and raised.

“Davies has always been an entertaining live performer, weaving biographical vignettes about his life and long musical career into his between-songs patter. And as he’s aged, Ray has somehow managed to maintain his dignity. That's more than you can say for some of his peers, such as Rod Stewart, another former Muswell Hill denizen.”

Which brings us back to Davies’ plans for a Kinks reunion: Whether and when that happens depends on the health and inclinations of Dave Davies, who engaged in some famous brotherly battles with Ray over the years, and who suffered a stroke in 2004.

Dave has been doing some “low-key dates” first — “which I think is a wise decision,” Davies told the Herald. “You can’t rush Dave. If he wants to do this slowly, in stages, that’s fine with me.”

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

Ray Davies performing live in October: