Clint Holmes has often recalled his decision to hire Santa Fe & The Fat City Horns as his backing band during his headlining run at Harrah’s. It was the fall of 1999, and Holmes had just ended his residency at Golden Nugget to swing into a headlining run on the Strip, and he hit a Santa Fe show at the lounge at Palace Station.

Holmes watched for a time, and was blown away by Jerry Lopez and the powerhouse Santa Fe lineup. Holmes’ manager, sitting at his side, leaned over to say, “That’s your band.”

Holmes responded: “Are you kidding? There are 12 guys up there. I can’t afford that band.” He was then told, “You can’t afford not to have that band.”

Thus, Lopez and a Santa Fe band that swelled to 16 for Holmes’ residency became a fixture in Holmes’ autobiographical production at Harrah’s. Boosted further by Holmes’ longtime friend—pianist, vocalist and music director Bill Fayne—Holmes became a well-known and highly respected artist on the Strip over the next six years.

That run ended in 2006, when Holmes embarked on the development of his musical Jam, and later a monthly residency at the Smith Center’s Cabaret Jazz that continues today. But through that path of career and life, Holmes has remained a serious supporter of “the guys,” as he calls Lopez and Santa Fe. There have been a few occasions when Holmes has hit Santa Fe performances at such locales as Tropicana, Palms and South Point. When he’s in the crowd, Lopez often finds him and says, “Clint? Come up?” and the result is a wild run through “Wishing Well.”

Holmes will once more join “the guys,” this time for a formal performance, April 23 at M Resort. It will mark the first ticketed show featuring Holmes and Santa Fe since the Harrah’s run ended a decade ago, and it took several months to coordinate, as everyone involved in the production is busy in other shows. Santa Fe’s band is populated with band members from Jersey Boys, Donny & Marie, Rock of Ages and Celine Dion. Helping helm the music is Holmes' music director during most of his run at Cabaret Jazz, expert pianist and arranger Jeff Neiman.

For Holmes, the performance arrives at a particularly meaningful moment. He has finished his new album, yet to be titled but due for release sometime in May. This recording process has covered two years; Holmes’ chief collaborator during that entire period has been Gregg Field, a masterful producer and musician who has won seven Grammy awards. Field performed with Ella Fitzgerald in the 1980s and with Frank Sinatra from 1991 to ’95, a run that included Sinatra’s final world tour.

When Field, not so easily impressed, records Holmes in the studio, he’s apt to say, “He can sing anything.” Backed by musicians Holmes jokingly refers to as “a good little band,” the Count Basie Orchestra, the release is peppered with great guest artists: the terrific jazz singers Dee Dee Bridgewater and Jane Monheit, R&B vocalist and actress Ledisi, sax great Dave Koz, and Hammond B3 ace Joey DeFrancesco among them. All that creative energy was bottled at Capitol Records’ Studio A, the famous spot where greats like Sinatra, Dean Martin, Nat King Cole and The Beach Boys, among many others, have recorded.

Taken en masse, these events in Holmes’ life are meant to satisfy his need to perform with the very best and, yes, achieve some measure of acclaim at this point in his life. He turns 70 in May, a demarcation that even his closest friends find stunning. The process of recording such an album is lengthy and expensive, and a Grammy nomination would be a fitting outcome.

But Holmes is just as dedicated to generating wonderful music at M Pavilion with “the guys,” or at Cabaret Jazz with his three-piece backing band (led currently by vibe genius Christian Tamburr). We often forget that Holmes hit No. 2 on the Billboard charts in 1973, with “Playground in My Mind,” a song that seems a quirky afterthought today. Holmes didn’t even sing it during his stays at Harrah’s, but will occasionally sweep through “Playground” now. “I do have one hit song,” he says, “and that’s one more than you have.”

Clint Holmes with Santa Fe & The Fat City Horns. April 23, 7 p.m., $20-$30. M Resort, 702-797-1000.