Jeff Bridges brings laid-back vibe, lively country to Golden State.

Jeff Bridges was first introduced to music by his mother, who forced him to take piano lessons when he was about 8 years old. But, as is often the case when mothers force things upon their sons, he resisted.

“She said, ‘You can stop, but you’ll be sorry,’” Bridges says. “She was right.”

Bridges came back to music five years later, when he picked up a guitar as a 13-year-old after hearing rock ‘n’ roll from artists like Chuck Berry and Little Richard coming out of the room of his older brother, Beau.

He’s been writing music ever since, but with an acting career that’s spanned 50-plus years and brought six Oscar nominations (and one win), music faded into the background.

That began to change in 1994, when he says he “got shook out of L.A. by the Northridge earthquake.”

Bridges, who also has a home in Montana, moved from L.A. to Santa Barbara and decided to turn his garage into a music studio. That’s when he met Chris Pelonis, whom Bridges hired to design the studio, and they formed a musical partnership and friendship.

“I broke out my books of some of the stuff I had written, and Chris – he’s a wonderful guitarist – he said, ‘Wow, I like this stuff,’” Bridges says.

They got a band together, which would ultimately be named Jeff Bridges and The Abiders. That’s inspired by the Dude, Bridges’ legendary character in the 1998 Joel and Ethan Coen cult film The Big Lebowski, whose mantra – “the Dude abides” – has become a catchphrase.

Bridges’ musical tastes run the gamut, and the music he plays is an energetic brand of country. But unlike much country music, his tunes aren’t about sorrow or heartbreak, and are instead filled with joy. You can hear in his voice how much fun he’s having.

Bridges comes to Golden State Theatre Saturday, March 5, to share that joy, and will be playing alongside Pelonis, The Abiders’ musical director, who plays harmonica and keyboard in addition to guitar.

“This duo thing is fairly new to us, and we’ve been having a lot of fun with each performance,” he says. “It’s just sort of an improv with the audience.”

The show will mark Bridges’ first appearance at Golden State Theatre, but not the area. Aside from playing at Sunset Center a few years ago, Bridges has memories of the region that stretch back more than 40 years.

“As a teenager, I used to go up to Big Sur quite a bit in the hippie days,” he says. “I had a lot of fun up there.”

His favorite haunt, he says, was Deetjen’s Big Sur Inn, and he also spent some time in Monterey when he served in the Coast Guard Reserves in the late ’60s.

“I remember becoming interested in Buddhism in those days, and I was reading a lot of books about Buddhism,” he says.

Bridges also spent a lot of time on the Peninsula hanging out with his friend John Goodwin, a singer-songwriter who used to live in Carmel and now lives in Nashville.

Goodwin has written some of Bridges’ songs, as well as some of the songs in Crazy Heart.

His name comes up again when Bridges is asked: What Jeff Bridges song would the Dude like the most?

“The Dude would dig a lot of ’em, you know,” Bridges says after laughing, in a cadence that sounds exactly like the Dude. “He’d probably like one, a Johnny Goodwin tune, ‘She Lay Her Whip Down.’”

Bridges’ love of country music came long before Crazy Heart, and began in the early ’70s when he was making The Last Picture Show in Texas.

“It had a wonderful soundtrack, a lot of Hank Williams,” he says. “And then with the success of Crazy Heart, that really plugged my music back in.”

That film includes the catchiest song in Bridges’ repertoire, “Fallin’ and Flyin’,” which has a chorus – “It’s funny how fallin’ feels like flyin’, for a little while” – that seems to speak to his very essence.

When he talks, Bridges sounds every bit as laid-back as the Dude, and comes off as a man who has lived much, and has enjoyed the ride no matter where it takes him.

Even in the songs Bridges didn’t write, an authenticity shines through. In “Somebody Else,” the last tune in his most recent album, Jeff Bridges and The Abiders – Live, he sounds like Jeff Bridges being Jeff Bridges.

“I used to be somebody, and now I am somebody else,” he sings in that song. “Who I’ll be tomorrow, is anybody’s guess.”

It’s a song that speaks to the actor in him, and to the Buddhist, where life is a continual process of rebirth, and lived in the moment.

That spirit of spontaneity, of not knowing what’s next, will come alive as he interacts with the audience at Golden State.

“I don’t know what’s going to pop out of my mouth,” he says.

JEFF BRIDGES: AN EVENING OF MUSIC AND CONVERSATION , 8pm March 5. Golden State Theatre, 417 Alvarado St., Monterey. $38-$86. 649-1070,www.goldenstatetheatre.com