“Weird Al” Yankovic is a singer, songwriter, parodist, comedian, actor and producer — most every task you can think of in the creative realm.

But there’s one thing he likes doing more than anything else.

“I like performing, which is why I’ve done a lot more tours than I have written new songs,” Yankovic, 65, says via Zoom from the back of his tour bus in Kansas City. And he’s playing live quite a bit this summer.

The 67-city Bigger & Weirder Tour brings Yankovic back to large venues and full-production shows for the first time in six years, following the smaller-scaled …Vanity Tours of 2022-2023. “It’s the props and the costumes and the big LED video wall and all that,” he acknowledges. “There’s part of it that feels like getting back to my main job. I’ve been trying all sorts of iterations of touring and this particular iteration is similar to the big tours we’ve done in the past.”

Yankovic adds that for Bigger & Weirder, “the idea was to get back to playing the hits. It’s a big-tent show. It’s not only for the hardcore fans; it’s for all the fans, anybody that’s even just casually interested in what I do. So I made sure that we’re playing all the hits on this tour.”

And rest assured there are plenty of those.

The Los Angeles area native went from having his songs played on the syndicated “Dr. Demento Radio Show” when he was just 16 to becoming the top-selling comedy recording artist of all time, according to Billboard. He’s won five Grammy Awards for his hit parodies, including “Eat It” and “Fat” (Michael Jackson’s “Beat It” and “Bad,” respectively); “Like a Surgeon” (Madonna’s “Like a Virgin”), “Polka Face” (Lady Gaga’s “Poker Face”), “White & Nerdy” (Chamillionaire and Krayzie Bone’s “Ridin’”) and the “Star Wars”-themed “Yoda” (the Kinks’ “Lola”) and “The Saga Begins” (Don McLean’s “American Pie”). His last album, 2014’s “Mandatory Fun,” was the first comedy album ever to debut at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 chart.

In addition, Yankovic has had success as a music video director for Hanson, the Black Crowes, Ben Folds and others). He’s made two films — “UHF” in 1989 and the Emmy Award-winning “Weird: The Al Yankovic Story” starring Daniel Radcliffe in 2022 — and hosted and produced the 1997 TV series “The Weird Al Show.” In 2018, he received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

“It still boggles my mind that I have a career,” Yankovic says, with a laugh. “When I wrote some of these songs in the early ‘80s, I never thought I’d be playing them 40 years later on stage, and (that) the audience would be bigger than it was back then. It’s hard for me to piece that together in my head, ‘cause I never thought I’d be lucky enough to do what I’m doing.”

While the hits are indeed being celebrated on the Bigger & Weirder Tour — including the return of the Jackson parodies, which he put on ice during the late star’s legal controversies — Yankovic also is including some of the “deep cuts” that he rolled out for the …Vanity Tour shows. “Every time I did a Vanities show, 99 percent of the people there were thrilled I was playing these deep cuts, but there’d always be a few people in the back going, ‘How come he’s not playing ‘Eat it?!’” he explains. “But I wanted to play some semi-deep cuts and some songs that weren’t necessarily huge hits.

“I call it the best of both worlds, ‘cause there’s all the big hits plus there’s all these songs fans have wanted me to play for a long time but I was never able to.”

Those fans can count on hearing “Like a Surgeon,” however, which turns 40 this year along with Yankovic’s platinum third album “Dare to Be Stupid.” He confirms that Michigan native Madonna helped inspire the parody. “She was talking to a friend of hers one day and wondered out loud when I was gonna do ‘Like a Surgeon.’ Her friend happened to know somebody who knew my manager, so it was a game of telephone and it got back to me and, ‘Oh, not a bad idea.’

“That was fun to do, and the video was a blast. … A wild day or two, working with a live lion and with my band, of course, and a lot of extras.”

When it comes to adding to his catalog, however, Yankovic is circumspect.

His last full album, “Mandatory Fun” — the first comedy album ever to debut at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 chart — came out 11 years ago. Since then, he released “The Hamilton Polka” medley in 2018 and followed last year with “Polkamania!,” which knitted together hits by Taylor Swift, Ariana Grande, Bruno Mars, Olivia Rodrigo and others.

But Yankovic does not promise or predict what will come next, or when.

“With songwriting in general, I’ve slowed down a lot,” he says. “I’m sure I’ll be writing parodies in the future, but I haven’t really written a full-on song parody since ‘Mandatory Fun.’ And the longer I wait, the more pressure there is — ‘Oh, this is his first parody in so many years!’

“I’m certainly not drawing any lines in the sand, but I’ve never been somebody who wakes up in the morning and has a cup of coffee and writes 10 songs. Everything I do is very calculated, and I spend a lot of time on it. So it’s hard to say what I’ll do in the future.”

Yankovic does have “several things in various stages of pre-production or development, which may or may not happen” — which is about all he’ll say about them. For now, he’s focused on the Bigger & Weirder Tour, and “after that, fingers-crossed, we’ll see what happens.”

“I’m at the point of my life, my career, where the only thing that drives me is trying to amuse myself,” Yankovic notes. “I’ve always said if it starts to feel like a job, I would probably quit. But right now, it’s just a great hobby I’ve had for the last four decades.”

“Weird Al” Yankovic and Puddles Pity Party perform at 8 p.m. Wednesday, July 2 at Pine Knob Music Theatre, 33 Bob Seger Drive, Independence Township. 313-471-7000 or 313Presents.com.