Social Distortion turns 40 this year, but don’t expect frontman Mike Ness to slow down.

Since the band’s 1978 formation, Ness has survived a well-publicized heroin addiction in the early ’80s; numerous band lineup changes, including the death of guitarist Dennis Danell in 2000; and an ever-changing music industry.

Along the way, he ushered in a new sub-genre of punk, melding hardcore’s furious attitude with rockabilly, blues and country on classic albums such as 1990’s self-titled effort and 1992’s “Somewhere Between Heaven and Hell.”

Over the last decade, Social Distortion has found stability in its lineup — Ness, guitarist Jonny “2-Bags” Wickersham, bassist Brent Harding and drummer David Hidalgo Jr. — while continuing to tour constantly.

“Our schedule would be hard for a 25-year-old to do what we do every night,” Ness said when GO! Magazine caught up with him at a stop in Lincoln, Nebraska, about a week before the band’s performance at Midtown Ballroom on Sunday.

Q: What can we expect from the show this time out? I’ve heard rumors you guys are playing new material and working on a new album.

A: Well, I put a couple of new songs in the set just to let people know that we’ve got a record coming. We haven’t just been sitting on our asses for eight years.

Q: Back when “Hard Times and Nursery Rhymes” came out (in 2011), you said you didn’t want there to be another long stretch of time between studio albums. (Seven years separated “Hard Times” and its 2004 predecessor “Sex, Love and Rock ’n’ Roll.”)

A: I know, but the problem is we’re a big touring act. In order to really do a record, you’ve gotta stop touring. You’re gonna do four years on a new record no matter what, then you take a little bit of time off. Then you’ve gotta earn money, so you gotta go back out on the road. It’s not like — it doesn’t take eight years to write a record. But what’s good about that is in eight years you can write a lot of songs, and you’ve got a lot bigger pool to choose from. I’ve got 65, 70 ideas that I’ve gotta go through and consolidate and see which ones fit in the direction of this record, and then I gotta finish them.

Q: You mentioned finding the right ideas or songs to fit the direction of the upcoming record. Do you have a direction in mind?

A: I do, I do. I don’t want to give it away, but it’s probably not the record that people are gonna be expecting. And I could just tell you that I think people might be expecting, “Oh, they’re getting older, it might be a mellow record.” It’s not gonna be a campfire record, I’ll tell you that.

Q: The band toured 1990’s self-titled album in 2015, including a stop in Bend, and performed “White Light, White Heat, White Trash” at Riot Fest in Chicago in 2016. Would you be interested in playing more shows where you perform an album in its entirety?

A: Well, I guess, yeah. I’m sure as the years go by there’ll be more anniversaries of records, and yeah. It was really fun to do the self-titled record for sure, and I hadn’t played some of those songs in 20 years. It was neat. … Because some of them I get over-critical on. I wouldn’t play “Knockout” for a long time because I used to go, “That song’s dumb!” And then when I started playing it, it was like, “Wow, this is really fun to play live.” And it’s in the set right now.

Q: That self-titled album was pivotal to the band’s development. At the time, nothing like that was going on in punk rock.

A: No, as a matter of fact that record was really a testimony to risk-taking. It was all about taking risks, and I had no — I didn’t know if people were gonna like “Story of My Life” or “Sick Boys” or “Ball and Chain,” I really didn’t. But I had to write a record that I liked, so I just had to go for it. … I’ve been talking about it every night when I introduce “Ring of Fire,” because I remember people, some of my peers, just like, “Why are you gonna do that? Why are you gonna put a country song on a (punk album)?” And yeah, the stuff I was writing had a punk feel to it, but it wasn’t your everyday punk rock format. I was incorporating blues and country and rockabilly. But I remember people just giving me — I remember people giving me flak for doing a Johnny Cash song; I remember people saying “Ball and Chain” wasn’t very hardcore. It’s like, it’s not? Well, maybe you should listen to the lyrics. It’s about real life; what’s more real than that?

Q: Dennis Danell was your right-hand man in Social Distortion up until his death in 2000, and Jonny Wickersham has taken on that role since. Can you compare working with them?

A: Well, there couldn’t have been a better replacement for Dennis than Jonny. It just felt so natural. Jonny was a fan. I had known Jonny since he was a kid, so it couldn’t have been more natural. You know, Dennis was the moral support of the band and he was always a great sounding board. Jonny’s the same way — we bounce ideas back off each other. We also have a positive competition, playing lead and trying to — not outdo the other guy, but you know, just to step it up, always be stepping it up, stepping up your game. But the dynamic with Dennis was a little different. Dennis wasn’t in the band because he was a great guitar player — as a matter of fact, I taught him how to play guitar. But he was my best friend, so it was a little bit different dynamic.

— Brian McElhiney, The Bulletin