Lyle Lovett first broke though to the pop audience in the late 1980s by fronting a “large band,” but on his current tour, it’s just two guys with acoustic guitars. The other guy in this case is John Hiatt, and on this tour, the two of them are onstage together, taking turns singing songs, asking each other questions, shooting the breeze and basically acting like they’re just sitting around the front porch on a Saturday night.

That underscores what has always been one of Lovett’s greatest talents: the ease with which he segues in and out of big band jazz-rock, acoustic country-folk, Western swing, gospel and blues. Or, the way he often incorporates a few of those elements into a single song.

The tour comes to the Michigan Theater on Monday.

Hiatt is a frequent touring partner for Lovett — they played the Michigan together in February 2009 — and the two definitely share a kinship. Hiatt also draws deeply on most of those same roots-music styles, and both have long displayed an ability to shift gears from an emotionally penetrating song to one that is brimming with sharp wit and clever wordplay.

Lovett has been busy lately. In December, he did a 13-performance run in the Shakespeare Center of Los Angeles’ stage production of “Much Ado About Nothing,” with Helen Hunt and Sara and Sean Watkins (of Nickel Creek). He also recently appeared in the ABC crime drama “Castle” and was featured in the documentary “For the Sake of the Song: The Story of Anderson Fair,” a film about an iconic Houston music venue and the role it’s played in helping to preserve various American musical traditions.

Lovett’s most recent album is “Natural Forces,” which he released in October 2009. He continues to draw on songs from that album in his current live show, even as he also reaches back and retrieves old ones from his deep catalog, which goes back to the mid-‘80s.

Hiatt’s latest album, ‘The Open Road,” was released last spring. (See our July 2010 story on Hiatt here.)

Lovett recorded “Natural Forces” with his Large Band, and the songs on the disc range from pensive and poignant to jazzy, rollicking or bluegrassy. And Lovett’s deadpan drollery is also on display, as usual.

Lovett, a native Texan who has lived in his grandfather’s old farmhouse in Klein, Texas since 1987, is also a big booster of his fellow Texas singer-songwriters. And he continues to give a tip o’ the hat to Lone Star writers on “Natural Forces,” by lending his distinctive voice and musical sensibility to covers of Townes Van Zandt’s “Loretta,” Robert Earl Keen’s “It’s Rock and Roll,” Eric Taylor’s “Whooping Crane” and Vince Bell’s “Sun and Moon and Stars.”

Alongside those and other covers are a few of his own compositions, like “Pantry,” which showcases another of his talents/ affinities — the one for double entendres. In the song, which he co-wrote with his long-time girlfriend April Kimble, he sings about having an appetite in a way that can be interpreted on two levels, like when he delivers lines about “what’s cookin’ right at home.”

“The song came out of April coming home with some groceries and my helping get them in from the car to the house,” Lovett recently told the Times-Picayune in New Orleans. “That particular day I was rifling through the grocery sack before it got to the house. I guess I was a little too enthusiastic. She’s an amazing cook, so I get excited about what’s going to happen.”

Another standout on the album is the title track, which ruminates about how we as a culture have become desensitized to historic tragedies. But Lovett follows that up with a giddy dancehall reel, “Farmer Brown / Chicken Reel,” which employs another double entendre. Lovett says that he intentionally followed a somber song with such a romping, bawdy one.

“I like the contrast,” he added. “It’s important to show you can be silly and still have a serious thought, and vice versa.”

Of course, Lovett has become almost as well known over the years for his acting as for his music. The recent Shakespeare production was Lovett’s first play, but he’s appeared in more than a dozen films, including “The Player,” “Short Cuts,” “Cookie’s Fortune” and “Ready to Wear” (all Robert Altman films), plus “The Opposite of Sex” and “Bastard Out of Carolina,” and he wrote the score for “Dr. T and the Women.”

One would think that making records, touring and acting would be enough to occupy his time, but Lovett has another passion he devotes time to — his prized quarter horses. He has said he owns “more horses than I could ride in a month,” and one of his stallions, Smart and Shiney, was on the team that won the bronze medal in the recent World Equestrian Games (which is essentially the Olympics for equines). Lovett also competes himself, albeit on a non-professional basis, in reining events.

Regarding the Hiatt tour, Lovett told National Public Radio that he likes the stripped- down, casual, spontaneous presentation — “the two of us sit on stage together by ourselves, no band, no accompaniment, and we take turns playing songs….(Hiatt) plays a song, and then I play a song, and we talk, and visit about it, and we talk to the audience a little bit, and really just have a great time.

“The show is different from night to night,” he continued. “It’s something that I’ve gotten to do over the years with John many times….I am very excited to see him, and spend time with him, and do these shows with him. Collaboration is a thrill, and the thing I like the most about being a performer and writer — it’s really all of the talented people that you meet and get to work with.”

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