Any time I have the chance to interview Joe Henry is a happy day in my book.

Deeply musical and keenly intelligent, Henry has forged 2 careers in the recording industry: one as a critically acclaimed singer-songwriter and another as a Grammy-winning music producer. His solo career is truly genre-defying and includes elements of jazz, folk, electronica, rock and much more. “Blood From Stars” is Henry’s latest album, a dark but compelling set of songs featuring guitarist Marc Ribot, keyboardist Patrick Warren and Joe’s son Levon Henry on sax and clarinet.

Henry’s equally impressive resume as a producer includes work on a couple of comeback albums from R&B greats Solomon Burke (“Don’t Give Up On Me”) and Michigan native Bettye LaVette (“I’ve Got My Own Hell To Raise”). He’s also brought out the best in songwriters Ani DiFranco (“Knuckle Down”), Rodney Crowell (“Sex and Gasoline”) and Aimee Mann (“The Forgotten Arm”).

Listen to the Joe Henry album “Blood From Stars”:

Moving to the Detroit suburb of Rochester when he was a teenager and then majoring in English at the University of Michigan, Henry’s concert at The Ark this Friday will be a homecoming for one of music’s deepest thinkers. Fresh off collaborations with jazz veteran Mose Allison and Americana newcomers the Carolina Chocolate Drops, Henry took time out of his busy schedule to check in with us by phone before his gig in Ann Arbor.

Q: So how did you come to produce “The Way Of The World,” the first new album in many years by the legendary Mose Allison?

A: It’s been an interesting time working with Mose; I pursued him religiously. I’d been hired as a curator for a festival in Germany, one where they commissioned film, music, theater and dance pieces. I invited him there and wanted to work with him afterward. This was a good excuse to spend some time in his orbit, and I was determined to entice him into my studio. I spent a year on a letter-writing campaign, and his wife would print out my emails and put them on his breakfast table.

Slowly I coerced him to come to my home studio for 4 days. He views studio work as a necessary evil, something which doesn’t compare to live performance. He doesn’t feel the studio is a creative space, but I love being in the studio and the whole record-making process. I’m enthralled by it. So it took a while to convince him there could be something left to discover. He enjoyed the process quite a bit when he showed up. When I work with a legacy artist such as Mose, one who’s already in the museum, the tightrope for me is to be authentic to him as an artist but do something with him you haven’t heard before.

Q: You also recently produced the major-label debut by the young string trio Carolina Chocolate Drops. What was that experience like? That band stole the show at the Ann Arbor Folk Festival last year, by the way.

A: They seem to do that a lot. I caught them at a packed show in L.A. after we recorded the album. The place was in an uproar and it was quite sobering to watch that happen. When they play festivals their merchandise (CDs, T-shirts, etc.) outsells Alison Krauss and Emmylou Harris. The big thing working with the Chocolate Drops is that they have amassed live experience but little studio experience, so it was an issue to get them to think in terms of record-making. Something else is available to you, and you want to think more like a filmmaker, capturing the full arc of a story. I always start with capturing live performances in the studio, but nothing about it is precious. I edit, fly around it and shift it to make it sound like music.

Q: And where are you in terms of writing and recording the follow-up to “Blood From Stars,” your album from last year? A: I write all the time, and when the pile of songs add up to something greater than the sum of the parts, when I notice that the songs speak with a common vocabulary and that there might be a movie within them, I start writing with a different purpose. I look at what needs to be there, which songs do the same job, which ones are chapters that push the narrative, which are abstract, and begin making choices. I sew it together and look for what’s missing. I don’t know what’s next, and I’m not at the point where I need to make the next one. I’ll find the time when it sort of fills the whole windshield.

Q: How emotional an experience is it for you to return to Ann Arbor?

A: My older brother and I moved in together and had an attic apartment in what’s now an office of the law school, at Hill and Oakland streets. That was my first home away from parents, and was like being in the army, tossed out into the world and striving to create your own identity and autonomy in the world. Ann Arbor felt like a big city to me, and record stores like Schoolkids’ were a huge part of my education. I was a bartender at the U-Club and all my tip money I spent on records. I lived there from 1980 to ‘85, and my time in Ann Arbor marked the formation of my own identity separate from my parents’ identity, who gave me loving encouragement. I wrote my first songs there and have a great love for Ann Arbor.

Q: Who’ll be in your band when you play The Ark this Friday?

A: I’ll have David Piltch on bass and Jay Bellerose on drums. Jay does something nobody else does; he’s not just a drummer, he’s a painter. There’s something in the dynamics of the trio setting with David and Jay that I can tap into. And if the scheduling stays together, I hope that my 18-year-old son Levon will also be with us on tenor saxophone.

Q: As a producer, is there any artist you would particularly enjoy collaborating with on a future album?

A: I’ve been working on the soundtrack to the new film starring Mickey Rourke, “Passion Play,” producing music with trumpeter Christian Scott and vocalists Jimmy Scott and Aaron Neville. I’d love to do a full record with Aaron, and would also love to make much more in the way of dedicated jazz records. Pianist Brad Mehldau is one of the most creative musicians alive, and I’d also love to work with (saxophonist) Sonny Rollins, and have written him letters to that effect.

Martin Bandyke is the 6-10 a.m. morning drive host on Ann Arbor’s 107one. Follow him on Twitter @martinbandyke and at his web site.

Joe Henry performing live in Denmark last summer: