Well, if it’s late November, that means it’s time for Matt Watroba’s annual day-after-Thanksgiving show at The Ark.

The event has become such a tradition that even Watroba isn’t sure how many years he’s been doing the show now. “I do know it’s been more than 20 years,” says Watroba, the local folk singer and longtime radio host who, in recent years, has also been honing his songwriting chops.

In fact, he wrote nine of the 11 songs on his stellar new album, “Shine Right Through the Dark,” which was released in September — and co-wrote the other two with nationally known singer-songwriter Anne Hills. By comparison, he wrote four songs on his previous release, “Jukebox Folk,” in 2004. Prior to that, his recordings and performances had consisted of him doing his own interpretations of trad tunes and songs penned by other writers.

“The floodgates have definitely opened for me as a writer the last few years, which has really been exciting” says Watroba. “I didn’t really start getting serious about writing until the ‘Jukebox’ album, and hooking up with the Yellow Room Gang a few years ago has really helped me develop that side of what I do.”

The Yellow Room Gang is a group of local songwriters who conduct workshops and critique each other’s new songs. It includes local roots-music talents like David Tamulevich, Kitty Donohoe, Annie Capps and four others. The Gang has also released a couple of albums and performed live shows as a group

“That has really helped a lot, to have a support group of friends and fellow writers. I’ve really come to love exploring the whole writing process now.”

So, was this a matter of discovering an existing talent he never knew he had, or more a matter of now having the time to devote to writing? (Watroba was a public-school teacher for many years before leaving that field several years ago to devote himself to making music.)

“I think, in a way, I’ve been writing, in my head, for as long as I’ve been singing and playing and doing radio,” says Watroba, who is also well-known in these environs for his 20-plus years as the host of the “Folks Like Us” radio show on WDET, Detroit’s public radio station — until the show was dropped last December, along with several others, during yet another one of the station’s format changes.

“On the radio show, I’ve interviewed many of the greatest songwriters who ever lived, so I’ve really been thinking about writing for just about my entire adult life,” ponders Watroba. “And as a radio host and folk singer, I’ve probably listened to a thousand more songs than the average person - so, that whole time, I’d been gathering information on how to write songs.”

Watroba presently hosts the Sing Out Radio Magazine show, which can be heard via SingOut.org and via XM radio on “The Village” channel.

By the time he'd written the songs that comprise the new album, Watroba realized that a theme of sorts had emerged. “I ended up writing a several songs about heroes,” explains Watroba. “Wild Morning Glory" is about Townes Van Zandt, "The Saint of Warren Avenue" is about his Aunt Sue, and "Shine Right Through the Dark" is about Martin Luther King and the civil rights movement.

And the song that is probably the biggest fan favorite of the bunch — one that Watroba wrote a few years ago and has been playing it in his live shows ever since — is a song about a place where "heroes" of a different sort once roamed, and about the heroism of the people struggling to keep a neighborhood alive after that place went away.

That “place” is Tiger Stadium, and the song is the wistful and elegiac “They Used to Play Baseball Here.” When Watroba began writing it, it was meant to be a song about the stadium itself, but it evolved into something more universal.

“It started out being a lament for a place I loved, but ended up being a song about what happens to a neighborhood when you take something out of it - about how we traded a neighborhood for a corporate box suite, and about how there is a loss, and a cost to be paid, when you make that trade — although I tried not to be preachy about it.”

And in the song, Tiger Stadium — although it is not referred to by name — can also be heard as a metaphor for the current economic plight of Metro Detroit in general, and the city of Detroit in particular.

The stirring title song occurred to Watroba about three years ago, soon after playing several Martin Luther King Day events. “I woke up one morning after that, with the chorus in my head, and wrote it down, and I decided I needed to create a civil rights time line, so I took real stories and wrote about one in each verse, and talked about how the reason we celebrate these things today is because we couldn’t be there when they were happening.”

The album was produced by the talented multi-instrumentalist David Mosher, who also plays in the Raisin Pickers. Local singers Katie Geddes and Theresa Smith lend their vocal talents to a few tracks. And Robert Jones, the Detroit gospel-blues singer and minister, added his vocals to the title song.

Given Watroba’s longtime love of folk music, it’s no surprise that the disc is an organic, acoustic affair, with Watroba on acoustic guitar and Mosher adding to the emotions conveyed in the songs with his sympathetic backing on mandolin, fiddle, accordion and even cello. (He also played bass and guitar on the disc.)

Mosher, Geddes and Smith will perform with Watroba on Friday. And, some special guests will likely be on hand, as is usually the case for this show, he says.

“Last year, Jeff Daniels came out and joined us, and one year it was the whole YMCA choir. So we’ll just have to see who turns up this year…..”

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