The singer will kick off his North American jaunt September 17 at Birchmere in Alexandria, Va., and spend the rest of the month making stops in clubs and theatres around the East Coast, Midwest and Canada. Scheduled stops include World Café Live in Philadelphia (September 18), Club Soda in Montreal, Q.C. (September 22), Park West in Chicago (September 27), and Fine Line Music Café in Minneapolis (September 29).

In October Lowe will head to the West Coast for a handful of dates, beginning October 2 at Safari Sam’s in Los Angeles. Other highlights include Golden Gate Park in San Francisco (October 6), the Aladdin Theater in Portland, Ore. (October 8), and Richard’s on Richards in Vancouver, B.C. (October 10).

Tickets for a few shows on the tour are available through Ticketmaster, with others going on sale in the future.

Age, which has garnered a great deal of critical acclaim since it was released in June, is Lowe’s 13th studio album and his first since 2001’s The Convincer.

The singer, who is 58, said the album represents the beginning of a new stage in his career, one he wasn’t sure he’d get when he was younger.

All through the early part of his career he was looking over his shoulder, “waiting for it to end.”

” I knew how the industry talked about artists, how they despise them and kind of regard them as morons,” he said. “So I knew my career was going to come to an end, because I was not someone like Elton John or Cher.”

Lowe thought it should be possible for pop musicians to continue their careers well into old age like it is for classical or jazz musicans, especially since the first wave of an influential generation of musicians is now the same age as he is. So he took a good look at some of his work and saw some mistakes he’d made, which led him to decide the answer is to keep it simple.

“The older I get, the simpler I want to make it,” he said. “I want to make absolutely no doubt what I’m on about lyrically.

“When you’re younger, you bluster or bluff so much because you’re impatient for the songs to come out. You can say, ‘It’s poetry, man,’ and come up with some rubbish.”