Stelth Ulvang is a musical cornucopia unto himself.

The resident of rural California can play a dozen instruments—and he showcases that versatility routinely thanks to his main gig as a touring member of mega-headlining folk act The Lumineers. He’s also a well-traveled solo act, with a multi-album discography all his own and a conversational lyrical style that flows freely and engages easily.

His songwriting has an unconventional point of origin: the middle of the Pacific Ocean. Before he’d committed to his current line of work, Ulvang and a friend set out to sail from Hawaii to Seattle and passed the time by writing faux sea shanties. That source of amusement quickly turned into sincere songcraft, and the two founded a band called the Dovekins that was based in Denver. There his path crossed with that of Wesley Schultz and Jeremiah Fraites, who had recently begun establishing themselves as The Lumineers.

That band is on the cusp of its biggest tour yet supporting a new album called “Automatic.” Several of those shows will take place in baseball parks—another step up for a massively scaled live act accustomed to playing arenas, with the occasional stadium show thrown in, as was documented on a live album released last year titled “Live from Wrigley Field.”

Yet just before that tour kicks off, Ulvang will do a short run of his own alongside Al Olender, who brought her frank, unguarded songwriting to The Broadberry stage last April as opener for married folk duo Shovels & Rope. Despite The Lumineers’ sprawling scheduling demands, Ulvang often books impromptu solo shows on nights off, a practice that introduces serendipity into life as part of a well-oiled touring machine.

“Every time, it feels like I come out on top by forcing myself to find places to engage with people and share my music,” he says. “I’m always finding stranger venues because of that last minute-ness.”

Ulvang will perform in Richmond on Friday, April 18 at Révéler Experiences, a venue hundreds of times smaller than the ones he’ll play just days later. He sees intimate performances like this as a way to test his mettle as a distinct creative force.

“I think everybody deserves to put their soul on the line to cross-check themselves and what they’re doing as a musician or any form of artist,” he says. “Always make yourself uncomfortable enough, otherwise you probably get lost a bit.”

Style Weekly: How did this tour with Al Olender come about?

Stelth Ulvang: I met Al Olender at this show in Los Angeles, with Shovels & Rope playing at The Teragram Ballroom, and loved the show. Love Shovels & Rope. Very inspired by what they do. My wife and I play music together and have a lot to learn from a band like Shovels & Rope. Talking to Al after the show, learning her and her partner, James Felice—she’s been dating the piano player in the Felice Brothers almost a decade—the way they play music together was very similar… We’re hitting New Orleans, Atlanta, up to Richmond, and then I’m flying out of DC to start The Lumineers tour the next day.

I saw online that you’re looking to lean into piano when you play Révéler.

With The Lumineers, onstage throughout the night, maybe I play a dozen different instruments, and that’s fun. I love doing that, and I probably will, at this show, bounce between whatever instruments are around. So if Al is playing guitar, I’ll probably play on that guitar. She might travel down with a banjo, [so] I might play a banjo. But because this place has a grand piano, and it’s tuned up regularly—few and far between, to find a place that has a nice grand piano—that’s kind of shaped the entire night. I like doing that, because there’s songs I haven’t played in ages …

Lumineers’ first show that we played in Richmond, I think, was at Balliceaux, and it was like half-filled at that point, the back room. And I remember us going across the street and eating at Kuba Kuba, And I’d come back solo. I played at Balliceaux as well… and [Strange Matter]. Those were the two spots that we played back in the day in Richmond… There’s a special spot in my heart for Richmond.

What motivates you to work in solo dates with such heavy touring around the corner?

I’ve been playing with The Lumineers for 15 years, and I’ve never written a song for them… Wes writes these songs, and I don’t know what it is about being a musician—maybe it’s narcissism or self-absorption, or maybe it’s just true passion of wanting to connect with people personally—but I really value sharing my own music, too. I think if I were writing songs with The Lumineers, and those songs were on the line, they [would be] up against the level of success—the pressure to fulfill. The stress that Wes feels is insane, writing new songs and hoping that it hits this mark. For the most part, I know that he writes from the heart, and he’s not worried about that. But I’m sure it’s in there. What a relief, I guess, that I get to write freely.

But the hard part is then, how to share that music? To put the proper time and energy into an online campaign is still impossible for me. Even to book a show a few months in advance, which would be the norm, is impossible, because The Lumineers’ schedule takes precedent for me, so I do have to book stuff so last minute like this. With that, I find very creative venues… We’re about to tour for the next six months, pretty nonstop. If we have three days in a city, and two of those days we’re playing a show and I know that far enough in advance, I love finding a strange little venue that will let me play a solo set the night before I play at, say, the Nationals Park in DC.

When did you get your start as a songwriter?

That was now pushing almost 20 years ago… I got into music almost as an excuse to travel. I started busking, started playing accordion as a way to travel and then make money on the road last minute. And the friend that I was sailing with—his name is Griff Snyder—[we] started writing joke sea shanties. One night, him and I actually go deep and we work on a song that’s intimate and real and untouchable to the sea shanty world. Then we get stuck in Hawaii—we’re not able to sail to the mainland like we had hoped—and so we have to hitch this ride on a plane where somebody would give us a free flight to to Seattle, which was far from Colorado, where we were trying to go.

We ended up busking our way down, setting up little shows last minute just in order to make our money, get a bus ticket, hitchhike, hop some trains. We worked our way back to Colorado, and when we got to Colorado, we’re like, “Fuck, we’ve written so many songs that aren’t even joke songs.” Even a month ago, when we were on this boat, we only had joke songs, and over the course of this adventure, we had written really beautiful, heartfelt songs and recorded the Dovekins’ EP. That was kind of the start of this world, but it was always rooted still in that busking, very manic mentality of performing and reaching out and grabbing people.

How did you first connect with The Lumineers?

When we had first met Wes and Jeremiah, when they had moved west, I was one of the first musicians they had met. They had reached out to all these people in town, and when we had met them, we played this party. [The Dovekins] were already a year, maybe a year and a half into this nonstop project of writing and playing. We were [near] the end of the folk-punk era—just thought we were hot shit and got them to come play the show with us at a party and just obliterated, musically, the room. And then we’re like, “Cool, your guys’ turn now.” It was just Wes and Jeremiah that time. They set up and held up in such a way that everybody that was in that room became friends with them. That’s where Wes met his wife, that night at this party.

That’s when everything shifted, because then as that band that didn’t know how to take breaks and didn’t know how to stop since we were stranded on this boat—as it slowly came to a tumultuous breakup of that storm, I, not ceasing to slow down, just jumped on and became like a third, fourth at that point, playing with the Lumineers. They had picked up a cellist at that point. I moved in playing bass, then bass and keys, and then bringing accordion and mandolin and stuff.

Are you likely to play any new material at Révéler?

I think it’s gonna be a lot of new stuff, although my most recent record is more guitar than piano. I released an album last year that was called “Stelth Ulvang and The Tigernips.” The Tigernips was basically our makeshift, last-minute band that I whipped together in New Orleans with all these folks that played together but didn’t have a band as themselves… We recorded live through tape, so everything, vocals and everything, was very raw, earnest and exposed… These folks are learning the songs an hour prior and then setting it to tape, and that is a challenge. As a perfectionist, that’s hard to do. But also that energy is truly what I’m striving for most of the time.

I should have been doing this all along, and I really want to lean further into recording like that. When I play shows, that is what I’m also striving for: how to reach out.

Stelth Ulvang and Al Olender will play Révéler on Friday, April 18. An early show will take place at 7:30 p.m. and a late show will take place at 9:30 p.m. Tickets range from $15 to $20 and can be purchased at revelerexperiences.com.