After royal treatment with the Earls of Leicester, is it time to fly solo again?

As his touring year winds down, Jerry Douglas senses a calling.

An internationally recognized ambassador of the resonator guitar known as the dobro, he has devoted much of the past few years to celebrating the storied bluegrass legacy of Lester Flatt and Earl Scruggs by way of his band the Earls of Leicester (the group moniker being a play on the names of the two bluegrass giants.) The tribute has covered considerable musical ground, including a generous nod to the playing of Josh Graves, the renown Flatt & Scruggs dobro player who served as a major mentor for Douglas.

But in the final months of a year that has seen the number of performances by the Grammy-winning Earls nearly double, Douglas is looking inward again to his own musical profile.

“It seems to me that we’ve gotten our point across,” said Douglas, who will bring the Earls back to Lexington for a Sunday evening performance at the Lyric. “What we wanted to do was reintroduce the sound of Flatt & Scruggs and the importance of it in bluegrass music, and it worked.

“When I hear this music, I’m reminded of how complex it was. That was before anyone started messing with the ingredients or the whole recipe. But lately, I’m feeling like I need to get back to me a little bit more. When I’m doing it, I’m trying to be as true to Josh Graves as possible, but I think even he would go, ‘Hey, man. You need to go be you.’”

That’s why Douglas foresees the Earls’ maintaining a less visible presence in 2020. After all, it’s not the only artistic project on his plate. His vast career continues to include membership in the currently dormant Alison Krauss and Union Station, his own progressive fusion ensemble (The Jerry Douglas Band), a new all-star bluegrass troupe called The Ringers and the cross-continental Transatlantic Sessions along with an active itinerary of solo acoustic concerts. And that doesn’t include a dossier that, over the past four decades, has encompassed recordings with the likes of Paul Simon, John Fogerty, Elvis Costello and hundreds of country and bluegrass artists.

But for his own musical vision, Douglas is looking from one extreme to the other. At one end sits the bluegrass tradition he grew up with and the inspiration gained from masters like Flatt, Scruggs and Graves. That boldly surfaced during the mid ‘70s when Douglas was based in Lexington while working with J.D. Crowe’s immensely influential first lineup of his New South band and, later, his own bluegrass group Boone Creek (both of which featured a young Ricky Skaggs.) That set the stage for wildly progressive adventures where his dobro playing sought out the same kinds of multi-genre preferences favored by contemporaries like Bela Fleck and Sam Bush.

“Bluegrass music is going to evolve,” Douglas said. “But as it becomes more popular, I’m feeling like maybe I need to move back into my own body for a little while and see how badly I can twist it up again. You can only recreate something so many times before it starts to become work and your mind starts wandering around. When my mind starts to wander while I’m playing a Josh Graves solo, I need to change something.”

But tradition will never be far behind in whatever project Douglas devotes himself to next. He recognizes that especially with his return to Lexington, a one-time base of operations where, during his days with Crowe, Douglas helped forge the local evolution of bluegrass while furthering his own musical voice.

“When I worked with J.D., he could never say enough about what it did to him being able to go down to the tobacco areas in Lexington and Versailles to watch Flatt & Scruggs when they played there. There was no better educational ground for a young J.D. Crowe. I mean, they were playing in his hometown, for God’s sake.

“J.D. is an extension of that in the sense that I’m an extension of him. I learned so much from J.D. Crowe, and I tell you, those things move with you. They go with you for life and become part of everything you do.

“When I played with Eric Clapton as his Crossroads Festival a few weeks ago, J.D. Crowe, in a way, was there. He was there because I was there. We take these people with us.”

If you go: The Earls of Leicester

When: 7 p.m. Oct. 20

Where: Lyric Theatre and Cultural Arts Center, 300 East Third St.

Tickets: $45.50

Call: 859-280-2218

Online: lexingtonlyric.tix.com, earlsofleicester.net, jerrydouglas.com