Roger McGuinn could have retired from music in 1968, gone to live on a private island or ranch in the middle of nowhere, lived on his royalties earned as founder and leader of the Byrds, and been remembered as one of the most influential guitarists of the 1960s — but he didn’t, and both his passion for music and his musical legacy live on.

McGuinn’s imaginative use of banjo-style fingerpicking coupled with some recording studio mixing board finesse gave the group an arresting and instantly recognizable sound — play the Byrds’ first single, "Mr. Tambourine Man," and it resonates today. No disrespect to Bob Dylan, who wrote the song and was the first to record it, but the Byrds did a superb job with their arrangement. (They did a good job with another Dylan composition, "All I Really Want to Do," as well.)

That first hit, "Mr. Tambourine Man," will be 50 years old this fall. The Byrds officially disbanded in 1973. McGuinn has been playing music now for even more than a half-century. He comes to Honolulu as a solo performer Wednesday to share his music and tell the story of his life.

"What I do is kind of a one-man play. Its historical, it’s my autobiography," McGuinn said speaking by phone from his home in Orlando, Fla. "I tell people about how I got started and the songs I learned along the way, and the people I ran into."

Of course, the story includes the other members of the Byrds. The Byrds’ songs are what a lot of fans want to hear him do, and they’ll be a big part of the evening.

"I’m very happy to do those songs," he says. "We really didn’t do bubblegum music. We were deeper than bubblegum, so there’s nothing embarrassing and I’m happy to do it, but I don’t do just a program of that. I weave it into the other things that I do."

Byrds fans can go to his website, mcguinn.com, for answers to the questions people have been asking him for 50 years, such as:

>> Who were the other founding members of the Byrds? (David Crosby, Chris Hillman, Gene Clark and Michael Clarke)

>> Who were the musicians who played on the Byrds’ first single? (McGuinn plus five top studio musicians)

>> Who had a Billboard No. 1 hit with a Dylan composition first, the Byrds or Dylan? (The Byrds)

>> Is he the McGuinn who’s mentioned in the line about "McGuinn and McGuire still getting higher" in the Mamas & the Papas’ hit "Creeque Alley"? (Yes, and "McGuire" is Barry McGuire of "Eve of Destruction" fame.)

"I was honored" to be mentioned, McGuinn said. "I thought it was amusing. I’d known John and Michelle Phillips in Greenwich Village when John was in the Journeymen, and he’d just married Michelle. I used to hang out with them in Greenwich Village all the time.

"Then I went out to California and got the Byrds together. We got a couple of hits, and John was still scuffling. I think he was in St. Thomas by that time trying to get something together. And then Barry McGuire had a No. 1 hit with ‘Eve of Destruction’ — but we were all buddies in Greenwich Village, and that’s what the song was about."

McGuinn’s interests these days include researching European-American folk music and recording the songs for his online musical archive, "The Folk Den Project" (ibiblio.org/jimmy/folkden-wp). His most recent find, "Cold Rain and Snow," a song from the southern Appalachians, was posted there at the beginning of August.

"I have a lot of fun researching the old songs," he said.

"I was really surprised by ‘The Yellow Rose of Texas’ because I’d just heard the Gene Autry version in the ’40s, and Mitch Miller’s version; I had no idea that it was something so politically incorrect that had to be sort of whitewashed," McGuinn said with a chuckle. In fact, the lyrics of the earliest known version of the song date from 1853 and are written in stereotypical "minstrel show" African-American English. The singer is a self-described "darkey" who wants to return to a light-complected "yellow" woman.

McGuinn was also surprised by the story of "Follow the Drinking Gourd."

"It’s a song I learned just kind of phonetically, and learned the melody and everything, and then when I got into doing it I learned that it was about the Underground Railroad and (fugitive slaves) following the North Star to get up to freedom."

McGuinn released a four-CD collection of "Folk Den" songs in 2005 to commemorate his first 10 years of work on it. He’s working on a second four-CD boxed set as a 20th-anniversary release.

"There’s still some people who like CDs — and they come to our concerts — so that’s a project I’m working on. It’s a lot of fun for us to do the research and put a booklet together with the four CDs," he said.

McGuinn said that he has not yet found a folk song or sea chantey about Honolulu’s fast-fading four-master, the Falls of Clyde, but he has come across a song about Maui-based whalers, "Rolling Down to Old Mohee," that dates from the 1850s.

He adds that although it sounds like the whalers had a great time on Maui, the collapse of the whaling industry was for the best.

"I feel the same way about oil. It’s interesting that so much oil has popped up lately. We were looking at the end of oil about eight years ago, and now we’re suddenly awash in it," he noted, making reference to another long-standing interest, social change. "The legacy energy people have a vested interest in not allowing green energy to take place."