Southside Johnny and the Asbury Jukes are known for their rollicking bluesy rock and roll honed in the little bars and clubs around the Jersey shore. But today, Johnny, also known as John Lyon, is on a much more southern side than usual.

“I was in Alabama looking for blues records - old 45s, old 78s, rhythm and blues. It’s more of a chance to see more of the country. Today I’m in the Blackwater River State Park in Florida. I’m gonna take a hike,” Lyons says by cell phone. “Right now, I’m on the south side of the country!”

It turns out that in his off hours, Lyons, who came up on the same scene as Bruce Springsteen, Little Steven Van Zandt and others, likes to explore the roots of the music he and his band have taken all over the world. That includes places like Florida, where the Asbury Jukes will grace the Duncan Theatre at Palm Beach State College on Thursday night.

“I love the South. It’s a different world from up north. The people are different, the landscape is different,” he explains. “I started out in Georgia, then Alabama, then did some of Florida and was back in Alabama and then Florida. It’s a big circuit, wherever the mood takes me.

“If I see a sign for a thrift store or a junk store, I stop and ask. It’s a chance to clear my head. When you’re at home there are a millions things you think you need to do. This gets away from all that. When I’m not traveling with the band I’m free to do what I want.”

But for four decades, traveling with a band is what the Neptune Township, New Jersey native has been doing, and he says that even after all this time “It’s always an adventure. There were times in my career that we were on the road for months and months at a time. It’s still getting in a bus or a plane or whatever we’re traveling in. We play a lot in New Jersey, but playing outside of it means going somewhere else. That’s a perk of being a musician.”

Before last fall, being from New Jersey sometimes meant sideways glances and jokes about big hair and over-muscled guys on the beach. Lyons acknowledges that “it’s always been a joke state. That made us a little more aggressive, given us a chip on our shoulder to prove to the world that we could make music. It’s a plus for us, really.”

Then Superstorm Sandy happened, and obliterated some of the places Lyons, Springsteen and others on the scene “grew up gigging as teenagers. We played at all these bars along the Jersey shore in some of these towns that were very hard hit. It’s very difficult. All the towns around me were hit very badly. Some of the southern towns got devastated, and there are questions about whether to rebuild at all. There’s not gonna be a quick fix.”

In the meantime, the state that was always a joke has become the beneficiary of some very serious benevolence from other states. Lyons recalls driving around “after the storm and seeing all these out-of-state utility trucks from places like Texas, who came on their own trying to get the power back on. I was out of power for two weeks, but I liked it. I could sit and read and not have to make excuses. But we’re grateful. When Katrina happened, my manager and I filled a truck of food and diapers and drove it down there. It’s kind of what you do, and now people are doing it for us. People in America do care for us.”

That belief in the connectedness of the country extends to the music that Lyons plays, good old American music derived from some of those places that he’s been traveling and translated through the grit and the salt water of the shore. For his part, Lyons thinks that people relate to the “honest emotion” of his music, “adult emotion that’s in most of rhythm and blues. It’s not teenager stuff. People gravitate to the things they emotionally connect with. When you hear Ray Charles, or Sam Cooke, they’re singing from way deep inside of them. There was a way to tap into what you are and express that, and people respond to it.”

Lyons discovered gospel, the world where Cooke and other famous R&B soul singers came from, by flipping stations on the radio as a child. What he found ‘sounded like people who were living their lives, getting a lot out of their lives. It was not controlled,” he says. “In our church we didn’t make too much noise. They sounded like they were having the greatest time, and what’s why we radiated to it.”

By the time that he and guys like Springsteen and Van Zandt were storming the shore translating their love of this music, “we were all teenagers, lusting after girls,” he says. “There is a certain thread that goes through American music that is much more open and emotional and expressive. There’s a certain freedom that comes right out in our music. Seeing how we all turned out is kind of amusing.”

In honor of that shared heritage, Southside Johnny and the Asbury Jukes recently released “Men Without Women,” a live version of a 1978 Little Steven record that they staged at the famous Stone Pony.

“I had forgotten how much I loved that record, and I called (Van Zandt) and said ‘This is what we’re gonna do. Maybe you wanna come down? And he did,” he says. “The guys from the original record were there. There were all these people onstage, and the audience was having a great time. It turned out well enough that we put it out. I’m skeptical about live albums, but this was one of those magic nights.”