Around the same time as he was first becoming a film star, Dennis Quaid was trying to get a music career off the ground. This was in the late ‘80s. He’d gotten a band—consisting of Bay Area music icon Bonnie Raitt’s touring band—and even got a record deal, reportedly one day before the band broke up.

That bump in the road proved to be a significant one. Quaid, 68, has said that he entered rehab back then and didn’t make music again for another decade. Eventually, he dipped back into that pool, and for about two decades, he’s been gigging with his blues rock and soul band The Sharks. The group even released an album, Out of the Box, consisting of originals and some covers, in 2018. That album included original tune “On My Way to Heaven.” A new version of it including country stars Tanya Tucker, Brandi Carlile and Waylon Jennings will appear on Tucker’s forthcoming album

For his latest music project, Quaid is preparing to release a solo gospel album later this year, which he’s prefacing with a West Coast tour—without his band—that makes a pitstop at Yoshi’s in Oakland on May 18.

Dennis Quaid is best known for his sports films like “The Rookie,” “Any Given Sunday” and “American Underdog: The Kurt Warner Story;” action flicks like “The Day After Tomorrow” and “Vantage Point” and the sci-fi drama “Frequency.” He’s also starred in historical dramas like “The Right Stuff,” “The Alamo,” “Midway” and “Wyatt Earp” (he’s set to appear as Ronald Reagan in the biopic “Reagan” later this year). Quaid’s also building an impressive resume in music-related films that include Jerry Lee Lewis biopic “Great Balls of Fire” (for which he learned to play the piano like the rock and roll legend) and now as “Cowboy Jack” Clement in a film he’s also producing about the life of country star Charley Pride, who passed away from COVID-19 in late 2020.

That initial love of music, which preceded acting, began when Quaid was gifted a guitar by his grandfather (who was first cousins with Gene Autry, the Singing Cowboy) when he was 12. Growing up in Texas, he fell in love with the likes of Jennings, Johnny Cash, The Beatles and The Doors.

“The first song I tried to learn was ‘Light My Fire,’ which is very difficult for somebody just learning guitar,” Quaid said in a phone call from his new home in Nashville a few weeks ahead of his Yoshi’s show, on a warm day that he described as like the first day of summer. “I started writing pretty much right away, and Johnny Cash was a big influence on me early. He wrote simple songs, and he wrote story songs. Johnny Cash and the Beatles, and of course the Doors. … My taste in music is rather eclectic. That’s what people can expect when they come to the show. Mostly they can expect to be entertained; what they come for is a good time.”

What do you like to write songs about, and how has that changed over the years? Other actors I’ve spoken to who also write music tend to favor the more personal because they get less of that in acting.

Dennis Quaid: And I’m alone there on stage. It’s just me and a guitar or me and a piano, and with the acoustic set, I can get a little bit more personal and get a connection with the audience. Like I said, I started writing when I was 12, and the first songs were pretty terrible, actually. I think “Eleanor Rigby” was out at that time. I wrote a song about “poor old Mrs. Murphy that she died on Christmas day, and was buried where she lay.” [laughs].

The songs now are just a jumble about life, really, in a way. And I try to make things universal; things that we all go through in life in different stages, and that’s what it is to me. That resonates with people.

What’s the best part of a live music performance for you?

Dennis Quaid: The actual connection with the audience. It’s like a piece of theater, really, doing music on stage, and there’s no fourth wall there. You can look right into people’s faces, and they’re really very vulnerable and wide open. You can look directly at them. There’s not that thing where you catch somebody’s eyes somewhere, and they turn away. It’s a connection with the audience. It’s like a circle; whatever is going on, goes out to them, and then it comes back.

Is there anything that scares you about it?

Dennis Quaid: Right before I go on, I really like having stage fright, or whatever. It is energy turning up inside you. It helps you focus. Fear is a great motivator to get out there.

You still experience stage fright after all these years?

Dennis Quaid: Oh yeah. I think it’s a good thing, actually.

Tell me about the upcoming album. You had a band, The Sharks, all these years, but this is just you, right? Why not include the band?

Dennis Quaid: I’m doing a gospel record, actually, right now here in Nashville, and I moved here about a year ago. The band is in California. It’s music I grew up with in the Baptist church, and I wrote the songs for it as well. It’s not just me. I used a lot of really great musicians here in Nashville. I used a lot of different studio musicians. Three of the four of them were actually in Johnny Cash’s band—his touring band back in the day. Nashville is a great town. It really is Music City. You know that 75 percent of all music, no matter what the genre is, is made in Nashville?

Why a gospel album?

Dennis Quaid: I wanted to do it all my life, actually. The song, “On My Way to Heaven” that I was doing with Tanya Tucker and Kris Kristofferson and Brandi Carlile—we just shot the video for it recently, and I think that’ll be coming out on Tanya’s record this year. Getting that song done was really kind of the catalyst of what started on the gospel record, really.

What’s the story behind the new version of “On My Way to Heaven,” featuring Tanya Tucker, Brandi Carlile and Kris Kristofferson?

Dennis Quaid: It’s going to be on [Tucker’s] record, that particular version of it. Tanya was my first leading lady, actually, back in the late ‘70s. I did this made-for-television movie called “Amateur Night at the Dixie Bar and Grill,” and she was my leading lady. I think she was, like, 20 and I was, like, 24. And then we didn’t see each other for 40 years. I was here in Nashville for a Waylon Jennings [Country Music] Hall of Fame thing, and she was backstage, and we just struck up a relationship again. My record with The Sharks just came out, and a version of “On My Way to Heaven” is on that. And she heard it and called me up and said, “I want to do this; I want to do this song,” and I said, “Wow, that would great.” Then she comes back 15 minutes later and she says, “I just talked to Kris Kristofferson, and he wants to do it, too.” Then they got Brandi Carlile, and it was like a dream.

Kris is one of my original music heroes. Tanya and I had already done our part, and we went to cut him—we did it at Shangri-La [recording studio].” It was a studio that The Band had, and Dylan, back in the day, which is in Malibu. I go to Shangri-La, and there’s only two rooms there. I walked into the wrong room … and Neil Young was up there. … Kris was in the next room.

Walk me through how your shows flow. You tell stories as well as play music?

Dennis Quaid: Yeah, and the stories on the songs. It’s kind of a musical journey through my life, which goes from the ‘50s all the way to the present. Half the songs are songs we all grew up with, and the other half are things that I wrote.

Tell me more about the Charley Pride film you’re making.

Dennis Quaid: For one thing, he’s a great American and a great human being. He grew up in Mississippi. … I wouldn’t say there was any kind of Black music back then on the radio, and it was the Grand Ole Opry, which would come on every week. His whole family would gather around it, just like a television today. That was his music that he grew up with; that was music that he loved. He wanted to be a baseball player, actually, and very much could have been. He was playing baseball in Montana when he got to sing on stage and was invited to come to Nashville. He wound up working with my mentor, who was Jack Clement. Cowboy Jack Clement, who is legendary here. [Pride] was the first Black star of country music, really. … We have the script written, and we’re just putting a couple of finishing touches on it. Then we’re going to take it out, and we’re going to do it.

Any chance that Bonnie Raitt might make an appearance at your two Bay Area shows coming up?

Dennis Quaid: That would be great. I haven’t seen Bonnie or talked to her since right before COVID. It was the anniversary of the video that she had me to do for “Thing Called Love.” She’s great; even way before I met her, I was a big fan of hers. One of the great American voices, that’s for sure.

Here’s something I didn’t know: You’re related to Gene Autry?

Dennis Quaid: Yeah, he’s my third cousin; he’s my grandfather’s first cousin, and they grew up in Oklahoma together. He went out to California and made it pretty well, I think. He wrote, “Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer” and “Back in the Saddle Again.” If you put it in today’s dollars—he was probably the most successful artist ever. He did the cowboy westerns, Saturday westerns, but parlayed that into buying channel 5, KTLA, one of the first independent television stations. Then he bought the Angels. He and Walt Disney pretty much shared all the real estate over there in Anaheim. He did pretty well for himself. I didn’t meet him until I was 40, I think. When “Wyatt Earp” came out, he came to the premiere of it. We had a screening. He’s a great guy.

Follow editor Roman Gokhman at Twitter.com/RomiTheWriter.