All the world’s a stage for Michael Franti. Or at least, all of Les Schwab Amphitheater was Thursday night.

The San Francisco “Soulrocker” (as his latest and ninth studio album is titled) spent most of the two-plus hour set running around on the lawn, dancing with audience members and passing the mic off to people to sing. Granted, Franti’s voice and acoustic guitar continued to emanate from the stage where his band Spearhead continued to play, causing some disorientation if your eyes weren’t fast enough to follow him — and he was moving pretty fast.

Onstage (and off stage) antics aside, Franti and company delivered another strong show for his legions of Bend fans, who don’t seem to be sick of him even after five years running. Chalk a lot of that up to the nonstop positive vibes he threw out, from dictating a circle-dance routine from the stage to bringing a passel of kids out to help him in his closing numbers. (Though the final salvo, a bow taken as the original studio recording of John Lennon’s “Imagine” blasted through the speakers, was a bit much.)

That brings us to another reason for Franti’s fan loyalty — Spearhead can play. It certainly could have tackled “Imagine,” the same way it blasted through a short snippet of Prince’s “Purple Rain” late in the set.

But the band preferred to rip though Franti’s originals, and wasted no time setting the joyous mood with the pogo-worthy “Hey Hey Hey” into “The Sound of Sunshine.” By the time Franti was throwing rapid-fire rhymes on “Stay Human (All the Freaky People),” Spearhead’s expansive bag of tricks was well established — meaty grooves, staccato guitar upstrokes and synth lines straight out of the dance club.

Aside from Franti, whose welcoming presence clearly dominated proceedings, VIP mention goes to bassist Carl Young. He got two solos — one on the ’80s vibing “Crazy For You,” another on the extended jam that closed out “Once A Day,” one of the strongest tracks from “Soulrocker” — and both impressed in a way a bass solo has no right to impress. But he mainly impressed with his anchoring grooves, which held together the tender love ballads (“Life is Better With You,” dedicated to Franti’s wife) and pseudo-reggae freakouts (the self-explanatory “My Favorite Wine is Tequila”) with equal aplomb.

Make no mistake, Franti was here to party — mid-set scorcher “Summertime is in Our Hands” was a defining moment for the entire evening — but his star truly shone when he opened up in some of the quieter moments, such as the aforementioned “Life is Better With You” or “11:59.” “Good to Be Alive Today” was perhaps the most affecting song he performed, a spirited and spiritual anthem to the downtrodden that he prefaced with a call for peace and understanding: “Not all cops are bad people, not all black people are criminals, not all white people are racist and not every gay man dresses better than I do. That last one’s not totally true; most of them do.”

Probably more than anything else, that ability to lace humor and joy into serious discussion keeps Franti’s audience — Bendites specifically — coming back for more.

— Reporter: 541-617-7814, bmcelhiney@bendbulletin.com