Music has been a constant and a really important force, he emphasizes. “I relate just about everything I experience in my life to music in one way or another,” Scaggs explains.

For decades fans have been the beneficiaries of that passion. At 65, he is eager to continue to share it. “I feel like I’m in a pretty good spot. I’m lucky to still be doing very much what I want to do and looking forward to a good stretch of a tour, longer than I have had for a while,” he says.

There seems to be some very interesting activities on the horizon for him, he says. “There’s a new (still to be released) album that I have no idea what’s gonna happen with. I’m very pleased and proud of it, and it might find its way into some hearts and minds,” he says. It is comprised primarily of standards “done in a little progressive Gil Evans mode,” he says.

In a 2001 interview, Scaggs, then 57, said he felt “things count more than they ever have.” “Perhaps it’s a sense of age. Perhaps it is the time of my life. Everything counts with me now,” he explained then. “Turning 50 now is a benchmark. After 50 everything counts.”

Now, at 65, he has not changed his opinion. “That’s very much my feeling,” he says.

As to what extent age is a motivator to get to the projects he may always have promised himself he would one day, he notes, “There is always some unfinished business we carry around, and I’m sure there is some part of that (the ticking chronological clock). On the other hand, we perhaps let ourselves fall into place more.”

He says he does not really have a “To Do” list to check off, though he would like to have some music in a film, and he also has “sort of a rhythm and blues jazzy album” he wants to finish, as well as “kind of an R&B blues rockabilly record in me that has to get out.”

“I find myself engaged in something and let it consume me. Whatever it is is what I’m doing,” he says. “I don’t worry about time passing. I just do what I do in front of me.”

That’s probably different than in other times of his life, he says. He seems uncertain if there is any less pressure now for him, then acknowledges, “There probably is less, but I’m still under the impression that I’ve got to get things done.”

Scaggs sees himself as happier now than he has ever been in his life. “But my knees hurt more,” he adds through laughter.

Fortunately it is his voice, not his knees, that he needs most and it is quite healthy. “My voice is my primary instrument,” he says. “What I am trying to express comes through my voice.”

Each project with those pipes is a learning experience, he adds. “I learn ways of putting chords together and of using my voice in new ways,” he says.

He keeps what he does fresh for himself by tending to follow his instincts and interests. He found the album he just finished, for example, extremely challenging. “Singing in this mode with this jazz quartet really forces me to get into a range of my vocals and harmonic challenges I haven’t had before,” he explains. “It definitely makes me better at what I do as a singer and musician. It’s done purely for the sake of the songs and the music. It makes me feel brand new challenging myself. It makes me remember what it was like when I was starting out as a musician as a kid. It’s a very good feeling.”

He always looks for a song that is a comfortable melodic fit. “And I look for the emotion in the songs and hope that the lyrics match the emotion of the music. If a song keeps me going around and around in my head, I know it’s something I can possess at some time or another,” he explains. “If I can actually make my voice do what I want to do, then I’ve got a home run. That’s the way I measure it. It’s not that often that all the things click.”

He assures it has not been difficult to hold to his philosophy to only explore the music that means something to him. “There are no commercial pressures that would interfere with me just trying to find a song that means something to me,” he says.

Scaggs says he has been touched deeply and emotionally by a lot of vocalists and a lot of instrumentalists. “That’s what means the most of me. I’ve never experienced anything like seeing Ray Charles live when I was 25 years old. That galvanized, rewired me. Something touched me deeply,” he recalls.

If he ever struck a note that touched anyone as deeply as he has been affected by Charles, he says that would be his crowning achievement. “That means everything. I’m serving music, this thing that I love. I want to give the joy and pleasure that has been given to me to someone else.”

His body of work is proof that he has.

The Texas native was raised on rhythm and blues, soul music, early rock’n’roll and raw Delta and Chicago blues. In high school he played in a band with classmate Steve Miller, then went to London in 1965 and performed across Europe. In 1967, he returned to America, joining the Steve Miller Blues Band as the Bay Area music scene was making its artistic mark on the world. After two albums with Miller, he made his U.S. solo debut for Atlantic Records with “Boz Scaggs,” an album cut with the famed Mussel Shoals rhythm section and featuring young guitarist Duane Allman on a blazing 13-minute blues workout in “Loan Me A Dime.”

He moved to Columbia Records in 1971, where, over several albums, he explored his love for rhythm and blues. Scaggs says it is difficult to describe the powerful draw that R&B has been for him, other than “it’s the rhythms and resonances that come out of the black American experience we got to hear.”

It’s universal, it’s very deep and it’s music that touches us all emotionally in a way, he adds. “And it’s what I got to grow up hearing in Texas and radio around me,” he says.

His 1974 CD, “Slow Dancer,” is described as his most explicit bow to soul music. It was followed two years later by his commercial and artistic breakthrough, “Silk Degrees,” which produced the hit singles “Lowdown” and “Lido Shuffle.”

“There is an album I did in 2000 called ‘Dig’ that has some of the most satisfying moments of music I’ve ever recorded,” he adds.

When he looks back on his career so far, Scaggs says he thinks of some of the ensembles he has put together through the years, and the musicians with whom he has recorded and toured, such as those on “Silk Degrees.” “They were an inspiration to me,” he recalls.

The artist always has prided himself in working with the best players available. “That’s a really key component,” he adds.

Scaggs recognizes that some people might be surprised to find him on an occasional jazz festival bill. “They could very well be. I’m better known in other areas. I don’t pretend to be a jazz musician. That’s very sacred musical ground to me,” he says. “That said, I think the wonderful thing about the age we live in, in terms of music that is around, is that we musicians have found commonality with our musical brothers and sisters in all walks of music, what we call world music.”

One genre of commonality is American blues and rhythm and blues, he says. “The progressive form of that is jazz. And jazz is finding commonality with hip-hop. We are all part of a bigger musical universe. That is just a fantastic time now,” he says. “I remember what a sort of precious thing it was when I first heard James Brown. I guess I was 17. There weren’t a lot o kids getting to that.”

That’s all changed, he says. “Now these complex rhythms and harmonics, kids are getting to this stuff at an early age, all sorts of music. Our whole lives are just infused with so much music. It’s great.”