J.R. Richards, original lead singer of alternative rock band Dishwalla, plans a career-spanning performance Saturday at the Signature Event Center, Erin Lane, Brodheadsville.

“I will play songs from all my eras,” said Richards, who recorded four studio albums with Dishwalla from 1995 to 2005. “Dishwalla, solo and a few covers. Whatever I can make sound decent on an acoustic guitar or piano is open game.”

“Counting Blue Cars,” Dishwalla’s biggest hit, topped Billboard’s Modern Rock airplay chart. The single — which also reached the top five on the Mainstream Rock, Mainstream Top 40 and Adult Top 40 charts — was Billboard’s No. 1 Mainstream Rock Track of 1996.

Born and raised in Santa Barbara, California, Richards released his debut solo album, “A Beautiful End,” in 2009. He plans to release “My Darkest Hour,” the follow-up to 2019 covers album “Under the Cover,” initially via his online merchandise shop in early June.

Richards, currently living just south of Oxford in the U.K. with wife Min, grew up in a musical family, with everyone singing and playing an instrument.

“I started singing before I could speak,” he said. “My father was a musician and a huge fan of good songwriters. He was my main influence. He started teaching me piano at age 4 and eventually guitar, as well as songwriting. I started writing songs when I was 9.”

Learning to perform

Richards’ first band — the three-piece Kids in Concert, aka KIC — played its only gig at his sixth grade graduation. Richards’ many bands thereafter, leading up to Dishwalla, played genres such as progressive rock, funk and techno.

One of Richards’ pre-Dishwalla bands, Life Talking, “was the one band where I started to first experiment with integrating real drums, bass guitar and electric guitars in with the keyboards, sampling and programming.”

Dishwalla, Richards noted, “had a bit of all those things mashed together.” The band name “came from a Wired magazine article about these folks in India who were pirating satellite TV and were called dishwallahs. We dropped the h.”

With Dishwalla’s members having plenty of prior band experience, “I think we were smarter about how we approached Dishwalla,” Richards said. “We spent some serious time getting our act together.”

Dishwalla signed to A&M Records six months to a year after the group started performing. Debut album “Pet Your Friends” included “Charlie Brown’s Parents,” “Give” and “Counting Blue Cars.” Richards’ conversation with a 10-year-old boy inspired the latter.

“Children are amazing in the way they see things,” Richards said. “They have yet to be ‘told’ how to think about what they see, and are therefore very honest and sometimes more accurately aware than adults. I think we lose that ability as we get older.”

“Counting Blue Cars,” the singer-songwriter/producer explained, “is about a young boy’s spiritual journey as he walks from one side of town to the other in search of God. He hopes to ask questions like, ‘Why we are here?’ ‘What is our purpose?’ etc.”

Furthermore, Richards flipped God’s traditional gender in the song.

“This was long before gender became a thing,” he said. “My thought was, being that God is an omnipotent being, it should therefore be a bit of everything, including the feminine. Still, I received my fair share of death threats.”

Following the release of a self-titled album in 2005, Dishwalla took a break the following year. Richards, though, saw it as “more of a breakup. Our label had just folded and we had just lost our second member in a year’s time. Our whole rhythm section was gone.”

Richards took the opportunity to write songs “just for myself. I think we were all trying to decide what the next move was. I kept writing and that evolved into my first solo album.”

Dishwalla re-formed in 2008, though Richards “was not in a place physically timewise or emotionally ready to do that. I was enjoying playing solo. I still am. It’s a little more complicated than that. I’d rather not rehash too much. Water under the bridge and all that.”

Music helps the soul

As for Richards’ upcoming “My Darkest Hour” — formerly titled “Safe & Sound“ — “I think this one is a step further from my other solo albums. Hopefully in the right direction.”

“I try to write each record in a way that some songs reach some new directions,” he continued. “A few songs sound like they’re from past albums, both solo and Dishwalla, and then a few land in between. I find that’s a good balance.”

Richards, who has composed music for film and TV projects, has favorites in his catalog. He wrote “Until I Wake Up” first appearing on Dishwalla’s 1998 sophomore album, “during a time when I was dealing with depression. Writing it helped me get through it.”

Other favorites include 2002’s “Every Little Thing,” 2005’s “Collide” and 2009’s “A Beautiful End.” The latter, about a dear friend’s daughter’s passing, “is the only song I’ve ever written on an airplane,” Richards said. “Lyrics scratched out on napkins and sick bags.”

While “it would be awesome to write another No. 1 hit, that’s not why I write,” Richards said. “I write a lot of songs because I know most of them won’t be very good. Occasionally, if I write enough, a good one will show up. For me, that’s a huge accomplishment.”