After playing some 200 shows per year for the last six years, Massachusetts musician Ryan Montbleau slows down to make more music, and to talk about his eclectic new CD, his steady musical growth, and his recent work with Martin Sexton.

Ryan Montbleau and his six-piece band are taking a little downtime in January and February to concentrate on songwriting instead of gigging. After playing some 200 shows per year for roughly the last six years, they could use the break. It’s part of a new philosophy the Massachusetts-based sextet is adopting in 2011, focused on “creating music instead of just touring our faces off every year,” Montbleau said.

But Montbleau has already grown significantly as a musician. The vocalist and guitarist released his debut album in 2002, by which time he’d only been singing for a few years. Now 33, Montbleau’s musical pursuits began when he was 21.

“It’s just been a constant learning process since then. When I listen to those first recordings I just cringe,” he said. “Hopefully I’ve improved in all ways—the writing, singing and playing.”

He has. The evidence is in his latest release, “Heavy on the Vine,” which came out late last year. Produced by Martin Sexton, the disc includes 14 original songs that stylistically keep listeners on their toes, bouncing between country-Americana tunes, funky R&B numbers, and a couple of folk-rock anthems. “Songbirds” is a reggae composition, while other tracks feature jazzy instrumental qualities. According to Montbleau, the lack of genre consistency was not deliberate.

“I didn’t set out to do that, I just wrote songs,” he said. “When I write, I just try to go with whatever’s coming out, and I’m fortunate enough to have a good group of guys who do the same.”

That group consists of James Cohen on drums, Jason Cohen on keyboards, Matt Giannaros on bass, Laurence Scudder on viola, and Yahuba on glockenspiel and percussion. The entourage embarked on a national tour in support of the album in September and kept at it through the New Year. Now they’re resting up in Lawrence, Mass., where Montbleau lives with several of his band mates.

Although Montbleau is still not a household name, he has enjoyed rising success over the last few years, including a live feature on National Public Radio on Thanksgiving Day. When the group first started playing outside of its hometown, catering largely to the jam band crowd, a gig in Buffalo seemed like an epic journey. These days, Montbleau said, Buffalo means they’re almost home from travels around the country. The entire Northeast now feels like his home turf.

The group has also started filling slightly larger rooms, including regional venues like The Paradise in Boston and the Port City Music Hall in Portland, Maine. They’ve also sold out shows (or come close) at mid-size clubs in Philadelphia, Denver, Seattle, San Francisco, Chicago and Austin.

The group got a welcome crash course in playing large venues last year while touring with Martin Sexton, one of Montbleau’s personal heroes. He first met Sexton several years ago at a radio station and gave him a CD. They later crossed paths again at the Gathering of the Vibes festival in Connecticut. Montbleau opened for Sexton at a few shows in the fall of 2007 and toured with him the following year. In the spring and summer of 2010, Montbleau’s band opened for Sexton and served as his backing band throughout a tour that included a run of stadium shows opening for the Dave Matthews Band, as well as slots at Bonnaroo in Tennessee and Jazz Fest in New Orleans.

The band’s work with Sexton helped prepare them for shows in front of larger audiences. While he was initially nervous about playing at sold-out stadiums, Montbleau soon reached a comfort level with the veteran pro.

“Part of touring with Martin was getting used to playing those bigger venues consistently,” he said. “All we had to do was just follow his lead and let him do his thing and not screw it up.”

The tour was filled with memorable moments for Montbleau and his band mates. Once, during a show in Portland, Ore., Sexton unexpectedly dove into a rendition of Santana’s “Oye Como Va,” surprising the band as much as the fans.

“We’d just have these great moments onstage in front of a crowd somewhere, and he’d throw these curveballs at us,” Montbleau said.

For Montbleau, riding on the tour bus with Sexton and performing with him onstage was a surreal experience. It was equally rewarding to work with Sexton in the studio after he offered to produce “Heavy on the Vine.” Sexton tweaked the arrangements of certain songs, but mostly let the group’s sound develop organically.

“His thing from the beginning was he didn’t want to put his fingerprints on the album, he wanted it to be us,” Montbleau said.

Although the range of styles on the new CD is eclectic, the songs all share the distinctive mark of Montbleau’s soulful vocals and insightful lyrics. His strong voice, equally fitting for folk and R&B, has always been a natural asset. But his writing has steadily evolved, reaching new heights with each of his six albums. The 2007 release “Patience on Friday” established Montbleau as a mature and skilled songwriter, and “Heavy on the Vine” demonstrates his continued growth.

Montbleau’s lyrical content also has gotten broader. While “Patience on Friday” dealt largely with personal themes of getting older and gaining experience, the new disc touches on a variety of substantive topics.

“I hope that my writing is getting a little more objective as I go and not so subjective to me and my life,” he said.

An example is “More and More and More,” in which Montbleau analyzes the excesses of consumerist culture and the baffling array of marketed products that bombard us every time we leave our homes. He said he came up with the idea after slamming his finger in the door of his van while on tour in Atlanta, then choosing between Walgreens and CVS for his medical supplies.

“We have so many options in so many areas of everything that it’s just overwhelming, and it can be really wasteful,” Montbleau said. “You see it everywhere you go, and we see it a lot traveling all over the country.”

Montbleau does strike a personal note in “Chariot (I Know),” in which he discusses his desire for worldwide exposure but also confronts the practicality of that dream. In a way, the song is emblematic of Montbleau’s career to this point. He’s toured around the nation and performed in giant stadiums, but he hasn’t forgotten about his past gigs in small Seacoast clubs like The Barley Pub and The Stone Church.

“I just try to be as truthful as I can as I keep going, and I’ve always tried to stay truthful to myself coming up in such a wacky business,” he said “It pays to be more realistic, I think.”

Montbleau is not sure when he’ll next play on the Seacoast, but he doesn’t expect it to be too long. He’s got shows booked in Massachusetts and Maine in March, and other dates will follow. In the meantime, Montbleau continues to fine-tune his craft.

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