SAN JOSE, Calif. — Christmastime is Dave Koz time.

It’s been that way for decades, beginning way back in 1997 when he ventured out on his very first holiday season tour with legendary pianist David Benoit and some other talented musicians.

This year, Koz — the extremely popular and talented smooth-jazz saxophonist — is heading out on his 28th annual Christmas Tour with another talented crop of artists, including vocalist-guitarist Jonathan Butler, vocalist Haley Reinhart, multi-instrumentalist Casey Abrams and pianist Kayla Waters.

Koz and crew will perform five shows in four cities in California — Dec. 19-20 at Cerritos Center for the Performing Arts, Dec. 21 at the San Jose Civic, Dec. 22 at the Gallo Center for the Arts in Modesto and Dec. 23 at the Luther Burbank Center for the Arts in Santa Rosa.

For ticket details and other information, visit davekoz.com/tour.

We recently had the chance to chat with Koz, the Grammy-nominated musician who has sold millions of albums during a recording career that dates back to his self-titled debut in 1990. The musician — who is also the host of the syndicated “Dave Koz Radio Show” — was at his home in Beverly Hills at the time of the interview, but he also owns a place in Sausalito.

Q: You’re kind of known as Mr. Christmas Music. Do you ever wake up in the morning and wonder, like, “Wait, how did I get here?”

A: I think about that — especially this time a year — a lot. We are about ready to start our 28th annual Christmas tour. And it’s mind-boggling. I would never have thought, this many years ago, we would still be doing this. But here we are.

The ironic part of this is that I’m Jewish — a nice Jewish boy. I have eight Christmas albums and this is 28 years of Christmas touring.

But, as a musician, the repertoire of Christmas music is so rich that you could do 28 years plus and not do the same music every year and still not get to the bottom of the barrel. There is so much music.

Q: No doubt about that. The Christmas music catalog is very deep.

A: And a lot of this music — which is what keeps me coming back year after year — has a lot of meat on the bones. So, you can take these songs, which have been heard millions of times, and every year you can paint a new picture on that canvas. They give you so much to work with. So, you can push and pull them in a lot of different directions musically and they still hold up.

Q: Are there challenges that go along with having that kind of leeway with the music?

A: The challenge is, every year, how to find that right balance. During the holidays, a lot of people like the same thing over and over again — every year. That’s one of the reasons why, I think, we are still around after all these years — because people have made us, thankfully, part of their holiday tradition.

So, the challenge for us every year is how do we make the show new and interesting? But, at the same time, not change it too much, because people want to hear their favorite songs and the way that we do them.

Q: I’m guessing you grew up celebrating Hanukkah in your home. But how did your love for Christmas begin?

A: You’re right. We didn’t have a Christmas tree. We did celebrate Hanukkah. And my parents were pretty religious about celebrating Hanukkah every night — all eight nights. God bless them. There were three kids in our family and every kid got a gift every night. So, that’s three times eight equals 24 — 24 gifts! They weren’t all extravagant gifts. But you have to hand it to my parents for doing that. I love that.

I didn’t have any Christmas accoutrements around me growing up, so I would always go to my friend’s house. There was one friend whose family did Christmas really great. It was trimming the tree and the music and the food — the ham, the turkey, the stuffing. Everything about it was like right out of a storybook. So, every Christmas, while my family was not doing any of that, I would go over to my friend’s family and get inspired that way. That’s kind of where my love for Christmas began.

Q: How did this whole Christmas tour endeavor get started?

A: It goes back to 1997. I was doing an interview with David Benoit — I was interviewing him for my radio show. He had just lost his mom and it was about two weeks after I lost my father. We got to talking on this interview and he was just very real and authentic about where he was at. And I was like, “I feel the exact same way, too.”

So, it was his idea. He said, “Maybe, this holiday season, we should just go out and do a few shows and make some music — not just for the audience, but for ourselves, to kind of comfort ourselves in dealing with this monumental loss of losing a parent.”

We called the agents — we had the same agent — and we said, “Let’s do some Christmas shows.” We had maybe six or seven shows that year — very sparsely attended. But the show was good and the promoters liked it and they invited us back the next year. And before we knew it, this became like a tradition. But it wouldn’t have happened had that conversation not have taken place with David Benoit, whose idea this whole thing was.

So, the tour started with this very real, familial thing that most people eventually have to go through — the loss of a parent — and the power of music to heal. Over and over again, I have been blown away — humbled — by this massive power that music has. Nothing else has quite the same power to heal. That’s the DNA of our Christmas Tour that is in every show that we do.

Q: It’s fascinating to me how Christmas music connects so strongly with loss. Last year, I lost my dad — “Big” Jim — and he was a total Christmas guy, putting up all the little houses and creating a Christmas village and whatnot. And listening to Christmas music this year is just bringing up such strong emotions and memories about him.

A: I’m sorry about your loss. That’s a tough one. It’s a club that none of us want to be members of, but we all have to join eventually.

Q: When did you realize that this tour was going to be an annual thing for, basically, forever?

A: Well, I don’t know if we’re going to do it forever. I would like to get to 30, which is a couple years away. And I would like to do it with the original people who were on the first tour. And we’ve come back to that lineup — which was David Benoit, Rick Braun, Peter White, myself, Brenda Russell was part of the early touring years. I would love to move toward making the 30th annual tour the last one — and then sort of hand the baton over to someone else to do it. There are so many incredible young musicians who deserve to have the opportunity.

Q: Whoa. I didn’t have any idea you were even considering stepping away from the Christmas tour.

A: If I were to walk away from it, I wouldn’t walk away from it lightly. I would feel it a lot.

It’s not that I get a chance to be with my family during the holidays, but I get to be with all these families — thousands of families — every holiday season. So while on the personal side of it, there is a little bit of a depletion – all these years of not getting a chance to be with my own family. But being a part of all these other families’ holiday traditions has given me energy, inspiration and has kept me going all these years too.

It’s a powerful thing to be onstage feeling all that energy and all that love.

Dave Koz

Age: 62

Profession: Smooth/contemporary jazz saxophonist, syndicated radio show host, businessman

Residence: He has homes in Sausalito and Beverly Hills

Dave Koz 5 things:

1. Foo in the family: Koz is the godfather of Dave Grohl — yes, that Dave Grohl, of Nirvana and Foo Fighters fame. The saxophonist has even recorded on a Foo Fighters album and appeared with the band in concert.

2. He really loves Sausalito: “I grew up in the San Fernando Valley, and I am a Southern California boy, but my heart lies in Sausalito. That’s my spiritual home.”

3. Crosswords run in his blood: His father was a big crossword puzzle fan and — now that he’s passed — Koz carries on the tradition. “I do it pretty much every day.”

4. He joined the club: “I was a very lucky recipient to be inducted into a cigar club that was headed up by the late great Norman Lear. It was a group of just eight guys who got together every couple months at Norman’s house.”

5. Metallica inspires him: “Most people wouldn’t think that I could look to other genres — like heavy metal — and learn from the example that those guys, in particular, have set and how I could use some of those properties and put them into my career.”

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