Courtesy of HiFi Records "I've got my audience trained not to expect any particular thing, but we try always to give a really good show," Todd Rundgren says. "We want people to feel invigorated afterward."

Courtesy of HiFi Records Todd Rundgren's new CD, "Arena," is due out sometime this summer. The hard-driving disc, an old-school rock 'n' roll effort, will feature such songs as "Mad," "Afraid," "Mercenary" and "Gun." "It's extremely guitar-oriented, with few keyboard parts of any significance," he says.

Guitar god Todd Rundgren will undoubtedly play something old and something new from his vast body of work when he stops by The Canyon in Agoura Hills for a Saturday night gig. His latest album, his zillionth, is "Arena." According to the man himself, the upcoming album is an old school rock 'n' roll effort, hopefully conducive to a fist-in-the-air scenario.

Rundgren, 60, was a member of the Nazz, Utopia and, recently, the newly tuned-up version of the Cars. He's also performed in numerous incarnations as himself and worked as a producer. Rundgren is clearly a musical Renaissance man, as evidenced by his thoughtful and witty answers to many of the same old questions.

The proud rock star and baseball dad discussed the latest during a recent phoner from Canada.

What's the latest news from Todd's world?

We're out on the road flogging the record, even though the record isn't out yet.

How have you survived on the road all these years?

I have a regimen that has to do with the number of gigs we do in a row. I don't mind two in a row, then a day off. It's the ridiculous gigs like those we just did in Japan that test your mettle: 10 shows in five nights. Also, I don't tend to party a lot. Sometimes I'll go out if I have friends or fans in a town, but if I'm alone, especially recently, I'll be in my room listening on the Internet to one of my boys play baseball. That keeps me from carousing too much.

What teams do they play for?

Rex, the oldest, plays for the 51's — the Dodgers' Triple-A affiliate in Las Vegas — and my other son plays in the North Woods League.

How do you think the Internet has changed the music business?

Part of it was the Internet changing it, and part of it was old practices and habits that the record companies refused to change. An equally or more radical thing is that recording technology became cheaper, so people could do it at home. I can do pretty much anything I need to on my laptop with an audio interface.

How have your rock dreams compared to rock reality?

The rock 'n' roll dream part, at first, wasn't necessarily grandiose. I always felt privileged to be a musician. When I started out, I was a guitar player, and that was all I wanted to be. I wanted to become as good as my idols. As time went on, I started to dabble in other musical things. I began to write songs, play other musical instruments and understand a lot of the techniques involved in record making. I've come to realize that my true musical idols are not those who play one particular style of music but who play music for their entire lives — people like Tony Bennett and B.B. King, who never retire.

My new album is more of an old-school rock record. I'm not playing Chuck Berry songs, but it's extremely guitar-oriented, with few keyboard parts of any significance. It's very concise, sing-along, fist-pumping. I'm playing the kind of music that a lot people still in the business can't play anymore because there's not a great audience for it. I have a unique situation in that I have a dedicated cult following.

You've carved out your musical niche and can do what you want.

Exactly. We can tour forever. I've got my audience trained not to expect any particular thing, but we try always to give a really good show.

We want people to feel invigorated afterward. They feel young, not because they listen to old material from their youth, but because we're trying to demonstrate that no matter how old you get, you can still throw yourself into something and do a good job.

You've worked with so many people as a performer and a producer. How do you decide what's next?

There's a lot of performing ahead for me. I've been working so hard recently that the next thing I'm looking forward to, which probably won't be until September, is going home and staring off into space for a week.

We're going to Europe in November, then back to the U.S. We've already been to Japan.

Anything about Todd Rundgren that is particularly of Pennsylvania?

Pennsylvanian-esque? I occasionally notice artifacts in my language from Philadelphia, although I don't sound anything like the rest of my family, who all have thick Philadelphia accents. And then there are the people who are convinced I'm from England, but I'm from the suburbs of Philadelphia.

What is your place in rock 'n' roll cosmology?

I've never liked the term "rock 'n' roll," even though I use it to make myself understood. Rock 'n' roll to me is Chuck Berry and Little Richard — the originals who invented the term. There was a break when The Beatles came around, but even they cut their teeth on the same stuff. By the time they hit their golden years in terms of making music, they were incorporating symphony orchestras, weird tape loops and all the stuff that by definition isn't rock 'n' roll because you can't carry it around in a guitar case. But people have persisted in labeling anyone who played an electric guitar a rock musician. I wound up in that space, but never thought of myself as strictly a rock musician. I like to make all kinds of music.

Any advice for the new guys?

Learn how to play.

Oh, not that!

A lot of people think they can get by with the minimum — a couple of bar chords. But at some point, that will no longer be acceptable and you won't be a musician anymore. As the trends change, the musical demands change, too. For anyone who wanted to be a musician but didn't want to invest the energy in learning how to play, punk rock came along.

— E-mail music writer Bill Locey at blocey@pacbell.net.