Even when filtered through telephone lines, Carly Simon’s voice is distinctive; those warm, husky tones laid over bright backgrounds cause a listener to leap immediately to her songs, her albums — you know that voice.

It is the voice that propelled her to fame and fortune, and the same voice that is now filling hospital rooms and children’s wards through her newly launched Carly Simon Music Therapy Initiative. And it is the same voice that graces the 12 songs on her latest album, Never Been Gone, a reworking of many of her classic hits, to be released on Oct. 27. Never Been Gone is at once a reflection by the singer on the thoughts and dreams of her younger self, and in many ways, a tribute to the Island that has long been the wellspring of her creative process.

The new album comes on the heels of a difficult legal dispute with the Starbucks label, Hear Music, which underwent a major corporate restructuring just as Ms. Simon’s previous album, the Brazilian-tinged This Kind of Love, was released.

“I was caught in an uncomfortable situation. Starbucks pulled out of the distribution four days before the album was launched. They dismantled their music arm, Hear Music, and so there was no guts behind the work, no promotion. They shunted the album over to Concord Records, who are great people, but they didn’t quite get it because they weren’t there from the beginning. So I didn’t really have a home, and on top of it, I was still legally bound to Starbucks for one year,” she said.

The dispute remains unresolved.

But there was a silver lining: Ms. Simon suddenly had a lot of down time as she waited out her contract. Her son, Ben Taylor, an accomplished musician in his own right and co-owner of the label Iris Records, called his mother and urged her to join him on a new project, which eventually became Never Been Gone.

“Ben said to me . . . ‘I’ll save you! David [Saw, a guitarist] is here, we’re all here. Let’s just do this.’ Starbucks still had my record legally for a year, so I couldn’t make a deal with another label, but Ben and all my friends were willing to do this thing for free,” she recalled.

Never Been Gone revisits classic Simon songs, as well as a few deeper cuts, but this time around the songs are reworked into more laid back, largely acoustic arrangements that feature less production and place more emphasis on vocals than the originals. David Saw, the guitarist and songwriter who is a part of the Ben Taylor Band and performs on Never Been Gone, told the story of how it all began.

“We all did it for free because we all loved the songs and because of all that she’s done for us,” he began. “Ben and I had got most of these alternate arrangements down on our own by that point, and we had been kicking around the idea of doing an album of Carly’s works, reworked in an acoustic fashion, for awhile. But the idea to actually make the album with her came up around Christmastime last year. Me, Larry [Ciancia, drummer and co-founder of Iris Records] and Ben and Carly were sitting around the kitchen table on the Vineyard and decided, ‘Why don’t we do this thing?’ It all happened very naturally,” he said.

After that meeting things began to come together quickly, with Ben largely at the helm of the project. Friends old and new came together. “The band was made up of, for the most part, Ben, David, Peter Calo, who has been my guitarist for about 20 years, and Teese Gohl, who is a pianist and keyboardist who I’ve known equally as long,” Ms. Simon said. She continued:

“The bulk of the recording was done on the Vineyard, and, again, no one was paid; it was a freebie. We did it through Ben’s record label, Iris, and I wasn’t resposible for paying anybody. About five to seven per cent was not done at home. The rest of it was either recorded in my bedroom, in the studio in Ben’s house or the studio in [daughter] Sally’s house.”

The songs that came out of it are naturally inspired by the Island. “The title track, Never Been Gone, is a song I wrote coming back home to the Vineyard on the Islander,” Ms. Simon said. “It was just after some sad relationship or tour or something, and there’s this line that still really resonates: Great ambition is all a dream/Let me drown my pride in the sea/I’m bound for the ocean/The tide is with me/I think I can make it by dawn/It’s night on the ocean/I’m going home/And it feels like I’ve never/I’ve never been gone.”

Just how much of her work over the years is related to the Island? “Well, nothing ever isn’t, really, “ she said. “My first album was written on the Vineyard, and many, many of my songs were written either on the Vineyard or coming to the Vineyard. You’re So Vain was written on the Vineyard.”

On the new version of that classic, a loping, sinewy guitar rhythm sets the stage for a vocal performance that has all the emotion and range of the original, but with a depth and huskiness that give the lyrics new weight, perhaps wisdom. “I never thought I’d be able to sing it in the same key, but the lower key didn’t have the thrill,” Ms. Simon said. “It didn’t matter that the notes were so strong; we needed to get at that thrill. So Ben really pushed me to get in that range and I’m pleased with how it came out. And I love the arrangement that David and Ben came up with; it’s sneaky. I like that about it.”

Mr. Saw said reimagining the classic songs gives them new life, this time with seasoning. “Like any artist, you grow with your art, and you learn how to make it work for you. In my opinion, it’s the best vocal performance she’s done yet,” he said, adding: “Carly can convey an emotion in her voice; there’s no lie, it’s totally honest. She’s not putting it on, she’s just saying what she means to say.”

That honesty may spring from the way Ms. Simon began singing in the first place. “When I was a young child, I had a stammer, and the only time it went away was when I sang. One day, my mother said to me, ‘Don’t speak it, sing it.’ And that’s what I did.”

The formative experience attracted her to the field of music therapy about 30 years ago. Now she plans to give a percentage of her take on this album to a program she has set up in conjunction with the Berklee College of Music, called the Carly Simon Music Therapy Initiative.

“The way that music can be used as a healing tool is remarkable. I will sing while holding the hands of people who are about to go under anesthesia, sometimes I sing I Haven’t Got Time for the Pain, as doctors are counting down from 17, and the look of peace I can see wash over them really proves to me the power of music to tap into the core of the human psyche. I love doing that. I’ve always had some kind of fear on stage but when I’m with someone one-on-one and I’m really helping, there’s no fear. I love doing it,” she said.

Ms. Simon’s philanthropy is also inspired by the love she gets from her fans; for example, the album art features an image of an orchid painted by one such fan.

“It’s an oil painting done by a man named David Geiger, who actually bred it and then named the orchid after me. I found out about it a year and a half ago. I absolutely love it; it’s so female, and it reinvents itself all the time,” Ms. Simon said.

Mr. Geiger said he was honored to have his artwork chosen for the album. “For years, before I ever moved to the Island or met her, I’d listened to her music. For me, it’s like listening to an old friend tell stories; that warmth, the mood of coming to the Vineyard, the friendly, family feel of it all,” he said.