After taking a long break, Josh Groban returns to touring 

For Josh Groban, the best way for him to spark his love of recording and touring was to stay away from it for a while.

Following the release of his Broadway-themed album “Stages” in 2015, Groban made his Broadway debut in the Tony-winning musical “Natasha, Pierre & the Great Comet of 1812,” which also landed him a Tony nomination for best lead actor in a musical in 2017. He followed that up last year by starring in the Netflix sitcom “The Good Cop,” with Malverne native Tony Danza.

“I enjoy acting tremendously,” says Groban, calling from his home in Los Angeles. “But I'd never taken on the lead where I'd be the first to get there, the last to leave every single day. I had the most incredible time doing ‘Good Cop.’ I learned so much. It was so fun working with that cast. But by the end of 14 hours a day, six days a week for five months, I was missing music.”

It was the longest break from recording and performing his music Groban, 38, had taken since he was discovered as a teenager and released his quadruple-platinum debut “Josh Groban” in 2001. And he was ready to come back to his own music with his album “Bridges” (Reprise) last year and the tour that went with it. The second leg of the “Bridges” tour will stop at NYCB Live’s Nassau Coliseum Saturday, June 15.

“Sometimes doing something completely different and scaring yourself a little bit makes you appreciate even more what your day job is,” he says. “I think it's important both for yourself and for your audience that you take those diversions, that you take those sidesteps every so often so that you can widen your lane and try something new. It's a win-win because you both get to do that. And then at the same time, you also feel revitalized and refreshed for what brought you there to begin with.”

Groban says he wrote most of “Bridges” while he was on Broadway with “The Great Comet.” “I had so much time in my dressing room that it was impossible not to,” he says, laughing. “Time, a piano and nervous energy is basically just a great combo of ingredients to write songs.”

In the nearly nine months Groban spent in the show, he wrote bits of about 50 songs that he recorded on his iPhone as an outlet for his ideas. “I was singing, but I was singing the same show 275, or whatever it was, performances. So as much as I loved it, my tank was full. I was ready to express myself again.”

Groban was about halfway through recording what would become “Bridges” when Andy Breckman, best known for creating the long-running series “Monk,” wrote him a letter. “He said, ‘I'm writing a show for Netflix called ‘The Good Cop’ and I want you to be the good cop,” Groban says. “I said, ‘Man, this does not happen every day. Let's go on this ride and see where it leaves us.’”

Though the timing may not have been ideal, Groban says it all worked out for the best. “It had been five years since I had released any original music so there was a lot of living, a lot of life experience and a lot of new people that I was excited to collaborate with,” he says. “It just kind of kind of happened very organically, which was nice. It wasn't rushed because there were these other projects that I was doing, so it didn't feel like there wasn't this huge pressure of 'Oh, my God, I’ve got to keep any kind of momentum going. We've got to get this thing out there.’”

When it was finally time for Groban to hit the road again with “Bridges,” he realized that he had made the right decisions. “I think that when we take steps to go outside of our comfort zones to try things that are different, to make the conscious decision not to rest on our laurels and to be scared and to risk failure, you start to re-appreciate and unlearn and relearn certain things about your past, about what makes you unique. That's the benefit of hindsight. That's why I feel very lucky after 20 years. I'm still standing and doing this. I've had a fan base that has let me make those decisions and I feel very privileged right now that I'm kind of able to dance in a few different worlds and do them all semi-successfully at least.”