Like a classic car before it’s taken out for a spin, Roger Daltrey is giving his tonsils a tuneup.

The iconic singer says he simply had to get back on the road or risk losing his voice for when the Who gets back together again next year. At 65, Daltrey says it isn’t easy getting back in gear after a long layoff.

This time around, the Rock and Roll Hall of Famer is playing more intimate venues, such as the Music Box at the Borgata in Atlantic City on Friday and Saturday. He calls it – no surprise – the “Use It or Lose It Tour.”

“It really did feel like too long a stretch not to sing,” says Daltrey, who stopped performing with the Who at the beginning of April. “So I had to get out there and exercise my vocal cords. I’m not ready to stop.”

This new format is also unique. “I get to see [fans] up close and they get to see me,” he says. “We talk. Sometimes, they shout out requests and I do them. The beauty of the show is that we never quite know where it’s going. The running joke with [his touring] band is that I’ll start and they’ll catch up with me.”

Some of the playlist is admittedly obscure. “A Second Out,” for instance, was a demo that never got onto an album. But there are also the bouncy “Days of Light,” “Who’s Gonna Walk on Water,” “Baba O’Riley” and “Pictures of Lily,” the Who’s homage to raging teenage hormones.

Surprisingly, there’s only a sprinkling of “Quadrophenia” and even less of “Tommy” in the show. “‘Tommy’ is not an easy show to put together,” so taking numbers out of context doesn’t work, Daltrey says. “But every now and then we’ll do ‘I’m Free.’”

In California, he had some trouble with “Blue, Red and Grey,” and abruptly restarted the song. “I didn’t get it right so I decided to start over. The Who is quite famous for stopping and restarting.”

It was back in 1964 that Daltrey, Pete Townshend, John Entwistle and Keith Moon formed what would become one of the great British rock bands of all time. Entwistle and Moon have since died. Today, after breakups and reunions, the Who consists of Daltrey, Townshend, Pino Palladino, Zak Starkey (Ringo Starr’s son) and Simon Townshend, Pete’s younger brother.

While Daltrey and the elder Townshend have been bandmates longer than most rock acts, they’re not necessarily bosom buddies. “Pete and I have been together for a very long time – longer than most marriages,” says Daltrey. “We don’t socialize a lot. We don’t need to. We like each other for who we are.”

But it is still up in the air as to when the Who will actually get back in the studio. “I don’t know,” says Daltrey. “Sometime in the spring, I would think. We are living in very tough times. So if we can give people a time out and send them out smiling, then we have accomplished something.”

Yet even if he had to do it alone, Daltrey says, it was important for him to get back out again. “If you’re a fighter, you have to get back in the ring,” he explains. “I’m a singer. I had to get back on stage.”

(Daltrey also plays the Wellmont Theater in Montclair, N.J., on Wednesday; the Count Basie Theater in Red Bank, N.J., on Nov. 17, and the Nokia Theater in Manhattan on Nov. 20.)

Roger Daltrey’s tour is a tuneup for a Who reunion.