Don White has gone back to his old habits — much to the delight of his longtime fans.

A couple of years ago, White, a folk-pop singer-songwriter whose live shows focus on amusing songs and funny stories, decided that it was time to retire some his best-known comic monologues. “They’d started out as five-minute-long stories but had gotten longer and longer, to the point that some were in the 20-minute range,” White told me at the time. “I felt like they’d started to die of their own weight.”

So, White — who comes to the Green Wood Coffee House Series for 2 shows, on Friday and Saturday — included performances of all of those monologues on his 2008 “Family Man” live DVD, to capture them for posterity. Then he set about the task of creating new stories to tell at his live shows. But since then, the new stories have taken on a life of their own as well — and have now also become more expansive. That’s just his nature.

“Yeah, the newer ones started out at around 7 or 8 minutes, but, just like my old ones, they’re now coming in at 18 or 20 minutes,” says White with a laugh. “I just like stepping into a long story, because it’s a challenge — it’s not easy to do. I like working without a net, and you don’t see many folk singers telling the long stories onstage anymore, except for Arlo Guthrie.”

White has such an affinity for telling funny stories and jokes that, in the early ‘90s, he took 2 years off from his career as a folk singer in to work as a stand-up comic. And, obviously, he still employs those skills in his music-comedy live performances.

On that front, when writing songs or crafting his live shows, White also keeps the audience in mind.

“The truth is, in my heart, I’m probably equally as interested in writing serious songs as I am in writing funny songs,” says White in a recent phone interview from his home in Lynn, Massachusetts. “But I know my audience, and I know what they like, so what I actually write is more like 60/40, or 70/30, in favor of the funnier material.

“With the economy being so bad for the last couple of years, people are so beat up and fatigued that I can see them waiting for the show to start, so they can throw their heads back, and laugh, and forget their troubles.

“And with my albums, I’m reluctant to put out a record that leans too much in a more serious direction. I think people get beat up enough in the world.”

White continues to be more popular in Michigan than anywhere else in the country outside of his New England stomping grounds. “I think I’m doing 5 Michigan shows this year,” he says.

That high Michigan profile began several years ago, when Carey Carlson, then the host of “Over Easy,” the weekend-morning acoustic-music show on WCSX, 94.7-FM in Detroit, discovered 2 of White’s songs — 1st “Rascal,” and then “I Know What Love Is” — and began playing them on her show. Then, after Carlson left, new host Pam Rossi continued carrying the torch, playing White’s tunes on the show.

“I still feel a big debt of gratitude to both Carey and Pam for that,” says White.

White’s latest release, “The Best of Don White, 1992-2009,” includes 2 songs from his ’02 release, “Live in Michigan.”

White is presently at work on a new studio album, a rarity for him. Almost all of his releases have been live albums / videos / DVDs. “I’ve only done 1 album that was 100 percent recorded in the studio, and that was in 1996. I really don’t enjoy working in the studio that much, not compared to doing live shows,” he says. “When you rely on humor as much as I do, it’s sometimes hard to get that same energy when you’re recording in a studio as you get from a live audience.

“But I’m happy with the songs we’ve done so far for this album. Since I don’t do many studio records, I really want to make sure we do justice to these songs — to make sure they sound the same way I hear them in my head.

White says he’s been debating with his producer about how ‘produced’ the album should be. “I thought my ’96 album bore too much of the thumbprint of the producer, with piano and a lot of other instruments, and it didn’t bring new people in, which was the intention — but it sort of spooked my fan base,” White says.

So, for the upcoming album, White says he is favoring the kind of production used on the early John Prine albums, which employed various acoustic instruments, like mandolin and fiddle. “But those records were mixed so that those instruments were more in the background, with the vocals and the song itself more upfront.

“Now, I’m overly-conscious about that — I want to make sure it still sounds like me.”

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

Don White performing “The Lumper Song”: