This story is about John Batdorf’s last several years in the music industry, but his first few years are so remarkable, we have to start there before we get where we’re going.

Batdorf — now a 71-year-old resident of Eagle Crest Resort outside Redmond — is originally from Ohio, but at 15 years old, he traveled to Los Angeles with a band in hopes of getting a record deal. That band broke up shortly thereafter, but Batdorf decided he wasn’t going home for his sophomore year of high school as planned.

“I told my mom, ‘Listen, this is where I need to be,’” he said. “She was not happy about that.”

Record deal

Understandably! But Batdorf’s decision turned out just fine. He went to Las Vegas and soon met a musician named Mark Rodney, son of famed jazz trumpeter Red Rodney.

The two of them sounded so good together, they decided to start a folk-rock project and try to score a record deal.

So they did what any teenager might’ve done back in 1970: They went to L.A. and called legendary music industry executive Ahmet Ertegun, who invited the guys to his hotel room to play for him. They did exactly that, and the next day, Ertegun signed them to Atlantic Records, which he co-founded.

The next spring, Atlantic sent them to Muscle Shoals, Alabama, to record an album under the name Batdorf & Rodney. Together, they scored a couple of chart hits before breaking up in 1975.

“It was a different time back then,” Batdorf said.

Here’s where we’ll fast-forward a bit.

Over the next few decades, Batdorf formed another band (Silver) that scored another hit (“Wham Bam Shang-A-Lang”), got into composing music for commercials, events and TV shows such as “Touched by an Angel,” and recorded acoustic versions of Rolling Stones songs with his friend James Stanley.

Late-career creative surge

But for the past couple of decades, Batdorf has shifted back to writing his own folk-pop-rock songs, and now he can’t seem to stop.

Since 2004, he has released 17 albums and EPs of original material.

“The songs keep coming and I just keep writing them,” he said. “It is my true joy in life.”

The five songs on Batdorf’s latest EP, “I’ll Let Roy’s Song Carry Me Home,” showcase his strong-as-ever singing voice, his gift for memorable melodies and his impressive song arrangements, crafted and captured in his home studio at Eagle Crest.

Lyrically, he writes like a man with the perspective provided by a life well-lived; “Famous Enough” cleverly summarizes his career and expresses gratitude for the current state of his artistry, while “Don’t Waste the Waiting” is a song about seizing the day while we still can.

The songs on “Roy’s Song” were

written in the wake of an injury Batdof suffered last year and the resulting health scare.

“It was really intense,” he said. “I thought, ‘If I have any more songs, I want to get them written before it’s my time to go.’ I got better, obviously, but sometimes the songs just come in waves like that. Something releases them and they just start flowing.”

Indeed, after staying away from the stage for a couple of years due to the pandemic, Batdorf is back to performing live, and he’ll join folk-rock giant Jim Messina on the bill Monday night at the Tower Theatre.

He’s excited to play his songs for a hometown crowd, and he certainly has plenty of them to choose from thanks to a late-career surge of creativity that doesn’t seem to want to stop.

“When I started doing TV work, I thought, ‘Well, this is what I do at this point in my life,’” Batdorf said. “But then I started writing more and more and it just feels like such a part of my life that I don’t think I can ever quit.”

What: Jim Messina and John Batdorf

When: 7:30 p.m. Monday, doors open 6:30 p.m.

Cost: $37-$62

Where: Tower Theatre, 835 NW Wall Street, Bend

Contact: towertheatre.org