It took scaling things back a bit to finally get electronic music pioneer Howard Jones to Hawaii for a show.

“Normally when we tour the states we have a full band and a crew and everything, which is a little difficult to take to Hawaii,” Jones said from England in a phone conversation. “But the trio … a little bit easier, so it’s quite a rare gift.”

Some 35 years after hits such as “Things Can Only Get Better,” “New Song” and “No One is to Blame” made him a star, the Brit plays his first concerts in the islands Friday and Saturday at the Blue Note Hawaii, at the end of a series that saw him appear in eight shows and four states over 10 days. This summer, he embarks on a larger theater tour including North America and Europe.

Configuring his stage lineup as a trio allowed Jones to fulfill a long-held desire to perform in Hawaii. Robin Boult on acoustic guitar and Nick Beggs on chapman stick round out the threesome.

“Nick Beggs is one of my buddies from the ’80s,” Jones said. “He’s always playing with somebody. It was just finding a time when he wasn’t busy. Robin is in my regular band. When the three of us get together it’s a lot of fun.”

But Jones is no stranger to the islands, having made it out to Hawaii a few times to visit friends — including a trip to Kauai that netted him a speeding ticket “for going 23 in a 20,” he recalls.

He jumped at the chance to return for work (and some pleasure) when he conceived the trio tour.

Jones said it gives him the opportunity to explore different approaches to some of his well-known songs, as well as perform some album cuts that are a better fit for an acoustic show. Stripping away some bells and whistles gives the songs themselves a chance to shine.

Included in the set this weekend will be one song from Jones’ upcoming release “Transform,” his first traditional album in nearly a decade. Scheduled to drop in May, the album takes Jones a step (and a letter) beyond his normal electronic sound into electronica, including a few collaborations with BT, a seminal artist in the genre.

Given its incorporation of computers and soundscapes, most of “Transform” would not translate easily to the largely acoustic show Jones has planned for the Blue Note, he said.

“I will do one of the songs that does work at the piano, so I can give people a little taste of it. … People who’ve heard (the album) have said it’s like me going back to my roots, which I find sort of amusing really; synthesizers have been around so long we can say that now.”

“Transform” is plotted as the second project in a series of four.

The first, “Engage,” was “more of an audio-visual stage show with a theme,” Jones said, “but the message of it was, ‘Don’t be a passenger. Be somebody who’s really engaged and involved in society and life.’

“‘Transform’ is about if you wanna change things, we must look at ourselves first and it must come from there. It’s easy to make pronouncements about how good or bad things may be, but until we make the changes personally, nothing’s going to alter.”

Albums called “Dialogue” and “Global Citizen” will round out what Jones has planned as a quadrilogy.

Speaking with Jones, his excitement over the new project is evident. Any artist is eager for people to hear his work, but the mutual-admiration experience of recording with BT (who produced three tracks on “Transform”) clearly was enjoyable for Jones, who had long respected the American from afar. When they met at a BT show in Miami, Jones learned of the influence he’d had on the electronica star.

“He invited me to his studio (in Washington state) and we hung out for a weekend,” Jones said. “I found out one of his first concerts he went to when he was 14 was my one-man show and that he was influenced by that early work.”

The two hit it off so well that they will tour together this summer as part of a bill that Jones assembled.

Jones has done his share of concerts that pile on the ’80s nostalgia. While he enjoys seeing some of his old chums — he’s particularly close with the fellow Brits in ’80s hitmakers Orchestral Maneuvers in the Dark — he said he’s now shying away from such enterprises.

“I really want to sort of try and move things forward,” Jones said, “like this tour I’m doing in the states in the summer.

“I’ve curated the tour. It’s Men Without Hats (‘The Safety Dance’ and ‘Pop Goes the World’). I’ve invited All Hail the Silence, which is BT’s band, for a different generation, so I’d like to follow that, curate a tour every couple of years, invite young electronic bands. I’m done with those ’80s things.”

While Jones is spurning ’80s music festivals and has updated his sound, strip away some of the 21st-century production from “Transform” and you find songs that are similar in approach and attitude to those he is best known for.

Songs such as “Take Us Higher” and “Hero in Your Eyes” show Jones is as positive and philosophical as ever.

In the ‘80s, people mistook some of his lyrics as signaling an affiliation with the Buddhist faith, he said — and later, in a case of life imitating art, Jones found an affinity with the practice. In the early ’90s, he took a liking to its tenets and has been involved in it ever since.

“People thought I was a Buddhist with those early albums, so when I met the practice, it just felt very natural to me,” he said.

“When I actually met Buddhism, I just realized that I agreed with everything that it was about,” Jones said. “It sort of made total sense to me … and gave me a practice that I could actually do every day to stay positive within myself and to become strong.

“If you’re strong within yourself, you can be useful to other people and help other people realize their full potential.”

IN CONCERT

Howard Jones

Where: Blue Note Hawaii

When: 8 p.m. Friday and Saturday

Tickets: $45-$75

Info: bluenotehawaii.com, 777-4890