Avi Kaplan is finally ready to hit the road again more than two years after leaving Pentatonix.

In May 2017, Kaplan announced his departure from the multiple Grammy Award-winning a cappella group — known for its arrangements of Christmas songs and pop hits by Daft Punk, Kanye West, Britney Spears and more — after six years as its founding bass singer.

A month later, he released his first solo EP, the folk-leaning “Sage and Stone,” under the name Avriel & the Sequoias.

But a tour wasn’t forthcoming until last year, when Kaplan finally played some dates in July and August on his Otherside Tour. He kicked off this year with a European tour, and will play Volcanic Theatre Pub on Saturday with a three-piece band featuring guitarist/bassist Kaleb Thomas Jones and drummer/keyboardist Noah Denny in support of “I’ll Get By,” his second EP and first released under his own name.

“I had been in (Pentatonix) for a long time, and I was just running on empty for a long time, so I needed to just come back from that and reconnect with my roots,” Kaplan said from a tour stop in Austin, Texas. “I did a lot of traveling; I did a lot of hiking, camping, backpacking. And I just went full throttle into that: just a lot of healing and reconnecting with myself and with loved ones and all of that. So I spent time doing that, and then after that I spent a lot of time writing because I knew that I still wanted to do music. … One of the reasons I left the group was because I was getting burnt out and I was starting to see music as a job, and I would never, ever want that. It means too much to me.”

Fans are already well aware of Kaplan’s passion for music, as evidenced by his heartfelt performances with Pentatonix and his equally heartfelt video announcing his departure from the band and posted to the group’s Facebook page. “I’ll Get By” addresses the departure and the emotional journey Kaplan has been on since leaving, with songs such as “Change on the Rise,” the title track and the classical-leaning “Chains” delivering Kaplan’s soul-searching via multipart harmonies.

“I definitely use music as therapy for myself; it’s very, very therapeutic,” Kaplan said. “… And some of the songs are a bit of a story, but most of them are definitely — I think the only one that is more of a story is ‘Full Moon’; everything else is very much true to how I was feeling or how I was feeling when I was in the group.”

Sonically, the EP pushes Kaplan further into the modern indie-folk world, stripping away the string arrangements found on “Sage and Stone” in favor of a more vocal-oriented approach.

“I really wanted to use the vocals as that type of production — that type of instrumentation — to serve the same purpose as it,” Kaplan said. “And that’s something that I’ve always wanted to do, and so I was able to really delve into that with Mike (Mogis, producer).”

Mogis (Bright Eyes, Cursive, Rilo Kiley) also helped create the massive, echoing percussion sound found throughout the album. Tenacious D drummer Scott Seiver played drums on the record.

“I imagined it being a little more stripped back in terms of the instrumentation drumwise or percussionwise,” Kaplan said. “But Scott came in and just started laying down all these different layers, and man, it really tied everything together. And that’s something that Mike and I really wanted to do because it’s quite an eclectic EP in terms of vocally and the vibe and all that stuff.”

Despite becoming known for a cappella and choral vocal performances through Pentatonix, Kaplan has always been a folkie at heart. He grew up in California about a 45-minute drive away from the Sequoia National Park (hence his initial solo project name), where he would often spend time listening to folk rock artists such as Simon & Garfunkel and Crosby, Stills & Nash, which also helped instill his deep love of harmony singing.

At the same time he was discovering folk music, he sang in choir growing up. He split his musical talents between the choral and music programs at his high school and solo shows at coffee shops.

“I was a bass vocalist, so it’s the most rare voice that you can find,” Kaplan said. “And so growing up, I was like, ‘OK, I want to make music my career; I want to be able to do this.’ So I definitely leaned into the bass thing and the a cappella thing and the choral thing, and I loved that. I wanted to be a choral director as well as all the other things that I wanted to do musically, so when I was in choral music I was also doing a cappella. And then getting into college I did the same thing and delved into that even deeper. And then from college — I never finished college; I went straight to Pentatonix. I was just following the open doors and yeah, it just took off.”

More Information

What: Avi Kaplan, with Paper Wings

When: 8 p.m. Saturday

Where: Volcanic Theatre Pub, 70 SW Century Drive, Bend

Cost: $15 plus fees in advance, $17 at the door

Contact: volcanictheatre.com or 541-323-1881