Noel Paul Stookey is a gently funny fellow. He’s good at making jokes about himself, his life and times. So it makes sense that of Peter Yarrow, Paul Stookey and Mary Travers, it would be Stookey who would be issuing a humor album.

“Virtual Party” came out April 1. Of course. That’s when the kids busied themselves putting squirmy things in shoes and prickly things on chairs, innocent jokes that scarcely are discovered before the perpetrators are doubling up in giggles.

Some of Stookey’s humor is just that kind of kid stuff. There’s the bit about asparagus, and how its perfume tends to linger on a person long after the dinner has been consumed. And then there’s the piece about his childhood focus on imitating sounds. You know, lawn mowers, cars … toilet flushes. But even that tale is mostly one told on himself, and that’s where much of Stookey’s humor lies.

After 44 years with Peter, Paul and Mary, after numerous group and solo albums, Stookey has come to a place in his life where what matters is caring: caring for his world, for friends and family. But caring, in Stookey’s mind, isn’t overly pious. A great part of it is about simple enjoyment.

On the morning of his 66th birthday, last Dec. 30, Stookey extended that caring to a complete stranger, settling in the living room in his Blue Hill home, where a scattering of grandchildren had left their post-Christmas traces. For about two hours, he reminisced about what had gone into this first comedy album, and talked about the very busy year ahead of him.

“Virtual Party” is the third album Stookey has been involved with already this year. In February, the trio released two albums. “In These Times” is filled with union and protest songs such as “Which Side Are You On?” and “Have You Been to Jail for Justice.” The other release, “Carry it On,” is a boxed retrospective containing four discs of the trio’s highlights, plus a bonus DVD with cuts from past performances. Meanwhile, just in case Stookey hasn’t been busy enough, a live performance for public television is wending its way through fund-raisers across the nation.

The comedy album, however, is a solo affair. It harks back to Stookey’s days before Peter, Paul and Mary, when he was a lad of 20 and came to New York City hoping to make it as a stand-up comedian.

He never did – or not yet, at least. “I’ve never done a comedy album, especially one that includes music. It’s very exciting,” says Stookey, his long legs crossed at the ankles, comfortably perched beneath his large stone fireplace. There are paintings and prints on the walls, a toy here and there, but nary a mention of his fame, not even photos of his many tours. In one corner of the expansive living room stands a small upright piano. That, and a guitar on a stand, are the only indications of Stookey’s life in the limelight. For this man, what’s important lies much closer to the heart.

“I can’t tell if I’ve always been this way, or whether Peter, Paul and Mary have taught me that everything has redemption, even if the redemption is just knowledge,” he says. “I think nothing is worth doing artistically, unless it’s transformative, unless it’s taking someone from one level of awareness to another. You do that through information, or through an emotional experience,” he adds, gazing across his living room to the stretch of Blue Hill Bay beyond.

Though this is his first comedy album, Stookey has added comedy bits to his past albums before realizing that the eclecticism that was typical of his early listening days, when he says, “disc jockeys could go from the Rolling Stones to a string quartet, to a Bob Newhart stand-up routine, to country music, to spoken word by Robert Frost, back to gospel music,” is not appreciated today. These days, people like to get into a mood and stay there.

The central piece of the album features a man who logs onto the Internet and unbeknownst to them both, meets his lawful wedded wife in a chat room. They’re both there under aliases. “Through that drama, we are reminded of the ways in which reality has a very flexible face. The whole album is a little ephemeral,” says Stookey.

The ephemerality, along with the reference to a space journey, reminds Stookey of the Beatles’ fantasy journeys in some of their later albums. Another influence, he says, has been the television drama “The West Wing.”

“I laugh out loud and I cry at just about every episode. They’re so human and vulnerable,” he says, adding, “Comedy is really bittersweet. This album carries a warning of the disenfranchisement of community, real community.”

He doesn’t, however, find any disruption in his Maine community. Stookey moved to Blue Hill in 1974, during a break in Peter, Paul and Mary’s touring schedule. His daughters went to school in town, and he remains active in the community, though most of the year he and his wife live in Northfield, Mass., where his wife, Elizabeth Stookey, serves as school chaplain at Northfield Mount Hermon.

But Maine is so central to Stookey’s life that he’s building a new home, just down the hill from this one. Maine is where the family retreats to, on holidays, when they can. “I remember saying once – and it was in a comedy routine – about how we move to the country thinking it will answer our questions,” says Stookey. “It doesn’t answer anything, it just asks them more loudly. I’ve learned a lot from this warm, wonderful, Blue Hill community.”

Donna Gold runs Personal History, helping families and communities record their stories, from her home in Stockton Springs. She can be reached at 567-4172.