Singer-songwriter Jeff Black brings wealth of work to Hampton

He may have racked up decades’ worth of accolades for his songwriting and performing prowess, but Jeff Black likes to keep touring simple.

“I just usually throw my guitar and my mandolin in the van, and I take off and I go,” he said. “Sometimes I have a banjo with me, and if there’s a piano at the venue, I’ll play some songs on piano. The best thing to carry the song is always my mantra.”

Black brings a wealth of his highly regarded compositions to Steamworks Creative in Hampton for a June 20 concert. Venue owner John Vento, Nied’s Hotel Band vocalist, and friends provide the opening act.

The musician-focused listening room should serve Black optimally as he delves into a folk-based repertoire stretching from his formative years as a writer to “brand-new things that haven’t been recorded yet.”

“Some of those songs, they just seek me out sometimes,” he said. “They say, man, you haven’t dusted me off in a while. So I’ve been trying to do that.”

One tune he performs consistently, dating back to the dawn of his professional career, is a tribute to a co-worker at a gas station.

“He passed away, and I went home that afternoon and I wrote a song called ‘The Carnival Song,’” Black recalled. “That kind of got me my publishing deal.”

It eventually got his name on a Waylon Jennings album, too, as the late legend recorded the composition for “Right for the Time,” released in 1996.

A few years later, the band BlackHawk — fronted by Henry Paul, of the Outlaws fame — scored top-30 hits on the country charts with Black’s “That’s Just About Right” and “King of the World.”

“It’s pretty wonderful. I’d be lying to you if I said it wasn’t,” Black said about others covering his material. “I love the idea of somebody making a song their own. I used to do it all the time, before I started recording. I always picked obscure covers so I could slip my songs in there and see if anybody noticed.”

Early influences on his writing included Jerry Jeff Walker, Townes Van Zandt and Guy Clark, musicians whose recordings Black’s brother discovered while serving overseas in the military.

“I studied the lyrics and the way they wrote songs,” Black said. “It was like they had taken the shiny stuff off of the commercial music, and it took me to a whole different place.”

In 1989, his musical aspirations took him to the Tennessee city he has called home since.

He and singer Iris DeMent — her song “Our Town” later would grace the closing scene for the final episode of the TV show “Northern Exposure” — were trying to gain traction by performing at open-microphone nights around his native Kansas City.

“She said, ‘I’m going to move to Nashville.’ And I immediately thought, well, I think I’d like to move to Nashville, too,” Black recalled. “I couldn’t get here soon enough.”

He made the acquaintance of producer Dave Pomeroy, who lined up musicians for Black’s demo recording sessions such as Kenny Malone, who played percussion on the 1970s hits “Jolene” by Dolly Parton and “Drift Away” by Dobie Gray, and another drummer, Chad Cromwell, who worked with Rock & Roll Hall of Fame inductees Neil Young, Joe Walsh, and Mark Knopfler.

“I was still relatively young back in the day, so I was pretty blown away when those folks showed up,” Black said. “I’ve been really lucky to play with some luminaries.”

Among them is bluegrass mandolinist Sam Bush, whose collaborations with Black span three decades.

“I’ve got the old two-inch analogue tape on the shelf, and it says September 1991, ‘Same Ol’ River,’” Black said about an early effort. “When we got done with the demo, he says, ‘Man, I’m going to record that one of these days.’”

And so Bush did, on his 1996 album “Glamour & Grits.” Nearly a quarter of a century later, he performed on Black’s 10th and latest release, “A Walk in the Sun.”

With his legacy augmented by the popularity of his “Black Tuesdays” podcasts from 2005-11, Black has made the types of fans whose loyalty keeps him packing up his guitar and mandolin, and hitting the road.

“There are some people following me around,” he said, “so I guess I’m doing something right.”

For more information, visit www.jeffblack.com. Tickets to the June 20 performance are available at steamworkscreative.com/events.