John Batdorf can thank The Rolling Stones, internet radio and a comic-book movie for his career renaissance.

The singer-songwriter, known for his work in the ’70s with folk-rock duo Batdorf & Rodney and Silver, which scored a hit with 1975’s “Wham Bam Shang-a-Lang,” had long since given up touring. After Silver’s split in the late ’70s, Batdorf got into session work, recording with artists such as Mötley Crüe and Donna Summer, and became a staff songwriter for the Entertainment Company, where he wrote songs for America and England Dan Seals, among others.

In 2004, the year Batdorf teamed with fellow singer James Lee Stanley for an album of acoustic Rolling Stones cuts, “All Wood and Stones,” he composed music for television, including a long stint with the show “Touched By an Angel.” The album was meant to be a one-off, until it got picked up by SiriusXM Radio. Batdorf agreed to a request from a fan to play a house concert in Los Angeles in 2005.

“And so here I am; I’m in this living room with 85 people, no PA,” Batdorf said recently while sitting in a coffee shop in downtown Bend. He will perform his first show at the Tower Theatre on Saturday.

“I started playing the first song, and all of a sudden, the whole room started singing because they knew the songs. It was like, either I’m dead, or this is your life, John Batdorf. I thought, this seems so surreal. I remember leaving that day going, man, I have to do more of this stuff.”

Batdorf kept touring and releasing solo albums (his seventh, “Me & My Guitar,” a collection of old Batdorf & Rodney and Silver songs done acoustically, came out last year). He also released another “All Wood and Stones” collection and “Soundtrax 2 Recovery,” a collection of songs to help people recovering from addiction that was written and recorded with songwriter Michael McLean and inspired, in part, by Batdorf’s son’s struggle with drugs.

Along the way, he moved to Eagle Crest in 2015 and immersed himself in Central Oregon’s house concert scene, building relationships with local artists such as Pete Kartsounes and Scott Fox, who will play with Batdorf at the Tower show.

“It’s kind of the new listening room,” Batdorf said of house concerts, which make up the bulk of his touring. “It’s very much like it was in the ’70s where people are there just to hear music. They’re not here to drink, although they do drink wine at the shows. But it’s not like you’re playing in a bar; you’re not playing in a coffee place where the grinder’s going off all the time.”

Batdorf was living in Eagle Crest when the movie “Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2” was released in 2017. Silver’s “Wham Bam” makes a prominent appearance in the film’s climax, something Batdorf did not realize until his son told him about it.

“My son’s sitting in the movies, and he’s falling asleep towards the end, and ‘Wham Bam’ comes on,” Batdorf said. “He goes, ‘Hey, man, that’s my dad!’ And those guys, his buddies, they go, ‘Yeah, sure, man, that’s your dad.’ He goes, ‘No, no.’ Then (the song) went away, but then, it came back. He goes, ‘No, my dad was in a band, Silver, and that’s him!’ And they’re going, ‘Yeah, sure.’ So they stayed around at the end and saw the credits; (they) go, ‘Man, that is your dad!’”

That soundtrack appearance led to even more opportunities for Batdorf and inspired him to record “Me & My Guitar,” which features a stripped-down version of “Wham Bam.”

But originally, Batdorf never wanted to record the song. Silver formed in 1975 after Batdorf split with his Batdorf & Rodney partner, Mark Rodney (the two have since reunited for shows and an album in 2008, “Still Burnin’”). Clive Davis of Arista Records signed the five-piece on one condition: It would record “Wham Bam,” written by country songwriter Rick Giles, and release it as a single.

“(With) ‘Wham Bam,’ we thought, well, if it flops, we won’t even put it on the record,” Batdorf said. “But it got to No. 16 in the nation so it ended up on the album and later in the movie.”

Before Silver, Batdorf released three albums with Rodney. The two musicians met in Las Vegas in 1970.

“We used to sit at this place called Paradise Park out by the airport and watch the big 747s come in, and we’d get high and just learn all my songs,” Batdorf said. “And finally, we got to the point where we were so popular there. I told Mark, I said, ‘Hey, man, we should go back to L.A. and maybe try to hook up with Ahmet Ertegun,’ because that’s who I met when I first came to L.A., the president of Atlantic.”

Today, Batdorf records in his home studio and releases his music independently. His most recent songs, “I Know What Girls Like” and “Broken,” which feature contributions from Kartsounes, are the first in a planned series of singles that will release digitally over the next few years. Eventually, he hopes to compile these into an album titled “Singles Anyone?”

“It’s cool to do it like this where you’re not so rushed to — I gotta get the album out by April; I gotta write five more songs,” he said. “It’s like, hey, when they come, record them.”