Versatile Michael Nesmith is getting back to the business of performing.

Michael Nesmith has made a career out of walking a few steps ahead of the crowd. A member of one of the most popular bands of the 1960s, a pioneer of country-rock music and winner of the first video Grammy award, Nesmith has parlayed his visions of the future into a business empire that’s still on what he calls a “rocket ride” of growth.

He’s not the sort of fellow you’d peg to spend much time reminiscing about his salad days. Yet that’s just what Nesmith is doing this month with a series of concerts that mark his first public performances in more than a dozen years, not counting a couple of on-stage cameos he did with his fellow Monkees during the group’s reunion tours in the late 1980s.

His four-weekend, eight-city tour opens today at the Strand Supper & Dance Club in Redondo Beach. Nesmith will be showcasing his own music, which he hasn’t done since touring in the late ‘70s to promote his last solo album, “Infinite Rider on the Big Dogma” in 1979.

He’ll look back even farther than that on this tour, drawing songs from six solo albums he released after the Monkees broke up. Not coincidentally, it’s the same period (1970-73) surveyed on a compilation album entitled “The Older Stuff,” released recently by Rhino Records.

“I’m very interested to see if there is a broad base of interest in this music now,” Nesmith, 48, said during a phone interview from his home in Beverly Hills.

That question has been partially answered by the enthusiastic reception those albums received in Europe after he licensed them in 1989 for re-release on compact disc. Ultimately, he said, all his individual albums will be re-released on CD in the U.S. as well.

“The press sort of went gaga. . . . Keep in mind, these were albums that sold about 20,000 copies each--we’re not revisiting (Jimi) Hendrix or Rolling Stones masters. These are records that basically nobody ever heard (originally). They were received so warmly, and so uniformly, it was wildly encouraging to me.”

Those solo albums also anticipated work by Linda Ronstadt, the Eagles, the Flying Burrito Brothers, Emmylou Harris and others who reaped more commercial rewards for bridging country and rock.

Although Nesmith had to buy his way out of his Monkees contract in order to make music the way he wanted, he says “it was a business struggle. As such, it didn’t have very far-reaching emotional effect. . . . I don’t count the Monkees as a burden in any sense. . . . I’m real peaceful with what that was.”

After the series went off the air in 1968, the group starred in the cult film “Head,” then disbanded in 1969. On the heels of his six critically admired albums for RCA Records, Nesmith formed his own Pacific Arts label in 1974 and released “The Prison,” a “book with a soundtrack” concept album. In 1979, he created and starred in “Elephant Parts,” a long-form music video that won the first video Grammy Award.

It was also in the late ‘70s that he concocted “Popclips,” a music video series that aired for a time on the Nickleodeon cable channel. Officials at Nickleodeon’s parent company, Warner-Amex, used Popclips as one of a handful of models when they sat down to create MTV, said Robert Pittman, former president and chief executive officer of MTV Networks.

Nesmith continued building and expanding Pacific Arts. His company has since produced several movies, including “Repo Man,” “Tapeheads” and “Timerider,” and distributes such art-circuit films as “Koyaanisqatsi” and “My Diner With Andre.” In 1990, Pacific Arts took over distribution of PBS Home Video programs including “I Claudius” and “The Civil War.” It was because of increasing business as a distributor that Nesmith relocated the company’s headquarters from Carmel to Santa Monica last year.

In fact, the PBS Home Video deal has panned out “beyond anyone’s wildest dreams,” he said. Though he declined to reveal hard figures, Nesmith said it has generated more than $20 million for his company. “I’m doing more business now on a Wednesday morning than I used to do in all of 1986,” he said with a laugh.

“I think we’re still in a very steep gradient of the ascent curve, and while it’s fun to get the rocket ride, I don’t think you can ever lose sight of the fact that you’re on a very sheer face of the cliff.”

Besides the concert tour, he’s also working on a new album entitled “The Garden,” another “book with a soundtrack” that he describes as the second part of “The Prison.” Now that he’s carved out more time for music, Nesmith says he’s found a virtually ideal balance.

“If I can go out and make concerts, do movies and films and still work at Pacific Arts 9 to 5 Monday through Thursday,” he said, “that’s a real happy life.”

What: Michael Nesmith concert.

Where: The Strand, 1700 S. Pacific Coast Highway, Redondo Beach.

When: Tonight, 8:30 p.m.

Admission: $21.50.

Information: (213) 316-6076.