In almost every interview with Stephen Lynch that I’ve ever read he gets asked, “Are you a musician 1st, or a comedian 1st?”

So, let’s be clear right off the bat: For Lynch, it’s the music that comes first.

“Yeah, I write funny songs — or, at least, songs that are meant to be funny — but it’s the musical aspect, and the craft of songwriting, that is more interesting to me than the comedy,” says Lynch, who brings his musical-comedy act to the Michigan Theater on Friday. “I listen to music for hours a day, but I don’t go out of my way to watch stand-up comedy, unless it’s someone I really, really like.

“Right now, I’m not as interested in the comedy side of things,” says Lynch, a Saginaw native who’s lived in the Ann Arbor area for the last few years, even though he and his wife also have a place in New York City. “I used to tailor a song to how I could make it as funny as possible, but now I’m at a point where I’m more interested in tailoring it in a way that keeps it interesting musically.”

Lynch’s latest album, “3 Balloons,” also reflects his current interest in focusing more on the music. All but 1 of his previous albums were live recordings, in front of an audience, so you could hear the laughter of the live crowd. But he recorded “3 Balloons” in a studio.

“Most comedy albums, they’re recorded live, in front of an audience, because when you’re a comic, you want to hear that laughter, that feedback,” says Lynch during a recent interview. “But as musicians, you just want to make good songs.”

Another departure on “3 Balloons” is that he recorded it with a full band, whereas his previous albums (except for his low-budget debut disc), just featured him on acoustic guitar.

“I always wanted to do that — to indulge myself a little, and spend some money to make music I like, instead of just hearing the same old me in front of an audience with just the acoustic,” says Lynch. “So I just figured, ‘Screw it, I’m doing it.’ This album was closer to what I eventually want to do — which is write some songs, rehearse them with a band, and then take the band out on stage with me and record that live performance — and then release that as the album.”

Lately, the kind of music that has been catching Lynch’s is the singer-songwriter style of artists like Brandi Carlile and Ray LaMontagne, he says. “I like them because they’re artists who keep things simple but still write great songs.”

Coming up, says Lynch, his biggest influences were similar, in that they were folk or folk-rock artists who wrote great lyrics but mostly stuck to basic song structures and chord patterns, “like Bob Dylan, Paul Simon and Joni Mitchell.”

But Lynch knows that his audience comes to him for laughs, which he has been only too happy to deliver over the years with songs like “Little Tiny Moustache” (a song about a guy who suspects his girlfriend might be a Nazi), and “Hallelujah,” in which he gives comic thanks for womens’ breasts, or the edgy “Waiting for my AIDS Test To Come Back.”

Listen to Stephen Lynch “Little Tiny Moustache”:

“3 Balloons,” released in spring of ’09, was Lynch’s 1st album after doing a ’06 stint on Broadway, where he played the title role in the stage production of “The Wedding Singer.” That performance earned him a Tony nomination and won him a Drama League Award for Distinguished Performance.

Lynch says that gig wasn’t a big leap for him, “because I did a lot of theater growing up, and after college as well (he graduated from Western Michigan University in ’93). “It was fun, but I wasn’t prepared for how grueling it was, doing so many performances a week for so many months. By month 7, I was longing to get back on the road. And when it was done, I discovered that that schedule, and doing the same show night after night, had sort of screwed me up when it came to touring or writing. I didn’t write a song for 5 months after that.”

Stephen Lynch performing “Lullabye“ last fall:

Lynch comes from a family with a unique background: His mother and father had been a nun and priest, respectively, before leaving the church, getting married and starting a family. But despite that religious background, the household Lynch grew up in was not a strict 1 — and certainly was not 1 that prompted Lynch to “rebel” by writing songs that are sometimes scatological, profane, or might offend those with delicate sensibilities.

“Nah, my parents left the church a long time before I was born,” says Lynch, now 38. “They were actually rebellious themselves — they were 1960s, rabble-rousing, peace-marching people. We didn’t go to church much. It was actually a very liberal, progressive home to grow up in, and both of my parents had a great sense of humor.”

Lynch’s father, Leo, who passed away last October, also had a musical side. “He had this folk-music trio that was very much in demand in the Saginaw area, and even after the group ‘retired,’ he still supplemented his income by singing at weddings and retirement homes, that sort of thing. He was very much sought-after on the Saginaw ‘oldies’ circuit.”

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