Evidently, the acclaimed Irish-music group Solas had Richard Thompson on the brain when they were planning their upcoming disc, “The Turning Tide.”

For starters, one of the album’s tracks is “The Ditching Boy” — their cover of a song that was written and recorded by Thompson — the heralded songwriter and British folk-rock guitar hero — way back in the early 1970s. (Although, Solas has changed the title somewhat; Thompson’s original was titled “The Poor Ditching Boy.”) And another track is “A Sailor’s Life” — a traditional tune most notably recorded by Fairport Convention in its early glory years, when Thompson was still in the band.

(And, not to make too fine a point of it, but Thompson also recorded a song in the late ‘80s titled “Turning of the Tide.”)

“Yeah, I had been listening to Richard’s music a lot during the period when we were preparing to make the album,” says group leader Seamus Egan. “We’ve all liked ‘Ditching Boy’ for a long time. It really does sound like a traditional tune, which is what Richard is great at — writing songs that sound like they’ve been around for a couple hundred years.

“So, those songs just seemed to fit in with what we do,” says Egan during a phone interview from a tour stop in England.

Which raises the question that is sometimes asked by Celtic music fans: that is, whether or not Solas — who come to The Ark for a concert on Thursday, January 14 — are in fact a “traditional” Celt-music band. And the answer, to borrow from Bob Dylan, is: Some of the time, but not all the time.

The group’s instrumentation is certainly that of a trad-Celt outfit — flute, fiddle, banjo, Irish whistle, accordion, concertina, bodhran. (Egan alone is scarily proficient on more than a half-dozen instruments.) And on every album, Solas delivers a handful of lively traditional or trad-inspired jigs and reels, usually fueled by Winifred Horan’s flying, fiery fiddle.

But Solas often likes to push the boundaries of what most Celt-music fans would consider to be “traditional.” The band incorporates modern folk-pop, the American singer-songwriter tradition, and, on occasion, New Age ambience or bluegrass-style solos.

Solas performing with The Duhks in October:

And Solas has a real affinity for interpreting the work of modern-day songwriters. Over the years, they’re recorded songs written by the likes of Dylan, Rickie Lee Jones, Richard Shindell, Tom Waits and Peggy Seeger, among others.

“Yeah, we’ve never really felt bound by whatever the definition of ‘traditional’ Celtic music is, although we certainly love that music,” says Egan, who was born in Pennsylvania, but raised in Ireland — before returning to the U.S. as a teenager to tour with acts like Ralph Stanley and Peter, Paul & Mary — which partly accounts for his fondness of American roots music.

“For us, it’s always been about musicality,” Egan continues. “The only criteria has always been whether we could get our heads around a song, and make it work — not whether it was ‘traditional’ enough.

“The Turning Tide” does have its share of the aforementioned revved-up jigs and reels, in addition to a couple of Egan originals, plus a song written by the group’s accordion player, Mick McAuley, and a high-stepping medley penned by the group’s guitarist/keyboardist, Eamon McElholm.

But, as usual, they also tackle the tunes of several contemporary songwriters. In addition to the Thompson song, they deliver Celtic-music takes on Bruce Springsteen’s harrowing, socially-conscious “Ghost of Tom Joad,” Josh Ritter’s “A Girl in the War,” and a few others.

“Tom Joad” is Springsteen’s unflinching mid-‘90s song about poverty and economic inequality in America that invokes the name of the central character from John Steinbeck’s Depression-era literary classic, “The Grapes of Wrath.” That makes Solas’s new, wistful version especially compelling, given the current state of the U.S. economy and the hardships suffered by millions of Americans since the meltdown of the financial markets in the autumn of 2008.

“We’ve always liked Springsteen’s work,” says Egan. “And we were touring the U.S. at that time, in the latter part of ’08 and in early ’09, and we could see the effects right in front of our eyes, which made the experience a different one for us. It had a much greater impact on us than if we’d been back in Ireland, hearing about it.”

And though Springsteen’s original is rugged and monochromatic, Solas singer Mairead Phelan’ sometimes-breathy vocal delivery conveys a frailty or fragility that makes the song even more emotionally stirring.

“The Turning Tide” is only Phelan’s second album with the group. She joined in time to record the group’s last CD, “For Love & Laughter,” released in the fall of ’08. She replaced Deidre Scanlon, who in turn had replaced the group’s original, big-voiced singer, Karan Casey, back in ‘99.

So, back to Solas’s lovely new interpretation of “A Sailor’s Life”: Fairport’s haunting early-‘70s version is more or less considered to be the “definitive” one by the British folk-rock cognoscenti, and that version was exquisitely sung by the long-deceased but still-beloved Sandy Denny, who is also still regarded as one of the greatest, more expressive singers of her era. So, did Phelan feel intimidated at all about tackling such an iconic folk-rock song — one that was delivered so emotively, and so definitively, by such a legendary singer?

“Nah,” says Egan, before adding, with a laugh: “She’s young, so she’s pretty fearless.”

PREVIEW Solas Who: Popular, critically-hailed Irish-music group. Bearfoot opens. What: Lively, eclectic mix of traditional Irish music, modern folk-pop and Celt-i-fied covers of songs written by big-time and / or acclaimed contemporary songwriters. Where: The Ark, 316 South Main Street. When: Thursday, 8:00 p.m. How much: $17.50. Details: 734-761-1451; The Ark web site.

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