Generally, one thinks of jazz musicians as writing riffs or tunes or, if we want to get all vernacular, heads. But, talking to bassist and bandleader Ben Allison, I find myself asking a question about his songs—and it turns out to be an inspired mistake.

“It’s funny you should say songs,” the New York City–based musician replies, by phone from a tour stop in Fort Bragg, California. “I have, for almost my entire professional career, written almost exclusively instrumental music. But, you know, in the last 10 years or so, I’ve been increasingly thinking about the tunes almost as if they were songs, only without lyrics—and sometimes I actually write lyrics that I don’t perform. The idea of writing music that you could sing, in a way, forces you into a certain kind of lyricism, with melodies that have a certain character.

“Actually, I had an interesting conversation with Paul Simon about that recently,” Allison continues. “We were talking about songwriting and song phrasing. You know, we were comparing our two approaches, him obviously being a songwriter. And he’s like, ‘The lyrics are the first thing I work on, and then I can put a melody to that.’ And I’m the other way around; I think of melodies and maybe see if I can find some lyrics. But now I’m starting to approach it more along the lines of what he does: thinking about actual words first, and then seeing what notes might go along with them.”

Wait a minute: Paul Simon? Now there’s a New York story.

“I was walking down the street with my bass, and he called me from the other side of the street,” Allison says. “Like, ‘Hey, bass player!’ Sometimes that happens and you’re just like, ‘Yeah, whatever, dude…’ But this time I looked over and went, ‘Wow, that looks like Paul Simon,’ so I walked over and said, ‘Hey, man, what’s going on?’

“He said, ‘You know, my dad was a bass player.’ And then 45 minutes later we’re still hanging out on the corner, talking about music. But New York is like that. If you live in New York long enough, you just kind of get used to it.”

Despite Simon’s input, Allison isn’t about to start singing on-stage. “I would never inflict that on anyone,” he says, laughing. “I don’t see that happening.”

But even those who prefer their songs to be sung would do well to check his music out. For one thing, his touring band has two sublimely melodic soloists in the form of guitarist Steve Cardenas, Allison’s bandmate for more than a decade, and trumpet player Kirk Knuffke, a relatively new addition who can pivot from sweet tunefulness to abstract sound with impressive ease. (Versatile drummer Allan Mednard rounds out the quartet.)

Making things even more rock- and pop-friendly is that on this tour Allison and band will be concentrating on new material, much of which finds the leader on electric bass for the first time since he was in high school. There’s a story behind that, too.

“For the last few years, Steve Cardenas and I have been going to the Philippines every year to play,” Allison explains. “And in the Philippines, it’s like 95 degrees and super humid: not conducive to acoustic basses, which are held together with hide glue. There was no way I was going to subject my bass to that, so I thought, ‘Well, why don’t I pull my electric out of the closet?’

“I started to really dig into it, so on this tour I’ve been playing quite a bit of electric—and it’s been so much fun! It’s a very different instrument, but it has its own set of possibilities.”

Ben Allison plays the Western Front on Friday (March 10).