There is still a lot Dan Hicks would love to do.

“There’s something I aspired to when I was young – to be a jazz singer,” said Hicks, the longtime singer and bandleader of his group, the Hot Licks. “I’d love to call myself a jazz singer.”

Hicks is best known for his funny, quirky songs that fit everything from jazz to bluegrass and swing to folk into them. He’s been performing since 1959 – and said that if you told that version of himself he was still performing in 2011, including a show Saturday at Lake Worth’s Bamboo Room, he probably would be stunned.

“I would say, ‘Really?’” Hicks said in a telephone interview. “I’d see my name on the schedule of shows, and when I played people show up, and I’d even be selling some records, though it’s hard to judge how that’s going. Now, if you ask me if I’d be performing in the year 2030, well, I’d be about 90, so…”

Directions, invite a friend, buy tickets

Hicks, who just celebrated his 70th birthday, is currently playing a few dates with a more holiday-oriented playlist. While his fans are more used to such songs as “How Can I Miss You When You Won’t Go Away?” and “I Scare Myself”, Hicks said for him, singing holiday songs is nothing new.

“I’ve been doing Christmas tunes for a while now,” he said. “I’ve got another little band in my hometown of Mill Valley (in California), and we get together every year. It’s called the Christmas Jug Band. I got interested in those songs with those guys, and I’ve had that interest all along. A lot of tunes emerged from that. We have quite a repertoire – a song called ‘Someone Stole My Santa Claus Suit’ which I wrote way back when is part of it.”

His record label, Surfdog, encouraged Hicks to put out his first-ever Christmas album last year. He wasn’t wild about it at first, but he’s happy with the finished product, Crazy For Christmas.

“I didn’t want to put the effort into it,” he said. “But I liked the way it turned out. We recorded it in spring and early summer, which is always a little weird. It’s basically a Hot Licks album, just the subject matter is a little different. If you weren’t listening to the words, it’d be my style.”

Many of those songs will be performed Saturday with his latest incarnation of the Hot Licks, a group he first put together in 1968 after making a name for himself in the San Francisco folk scene. These days, they include Benito Cortez on violin and mandolin, Paul Smith on bass and two vocalists – the singularly named Daria and Roberta Donnay – who also play percussion.

“The girls who travel with me now sung on the album,” Hicks said. “I think you have to have a little change in personnel every now and then. Hey – if you contacted any of the original people, they’d be, like, 65 years old, and living in Texas now. I’m the only one of the original folks, which is OK. I wouldn’t subject those people to what I’ve had to go through.”