Though he had played a full-band concert in Nashville just a month ago, Kris Allen returned to The Cannery Friday night for a flood-relief concert sponsored by new Top 40 station i106.

“It’s always really nice to do something that helps out a really good cause,” Kris said before the show, which featured him and Cale Mills on acoustic guitars. Kris worked in the benefit between shows in Los Angeles on Friday and San Diego on Saturday.

“I remember seeing pictures of tall building with the first story completely underwater,” Kris says about his impressions of the flood that covered much of Nashville on the first weekend in May. “Being a musician, I remember hearing a lot about people’s musical gear. You hear a lot about Keith Urban’s stuff — a lot of his guitars were just gone. I know it was really, devastating, hearing from a lot of people who were here.”

Kris has long made charitable efforts part of his schedule. He went to Haiti after the earthquake, on behalf of Idol Gives Back. He put in an appearance at a VH1 Save the Music concert in Indianapolis, Ind., in May. Those are just a couple of examples.

And Kris’ good work goes back farther than that, to his days before American Idol. He started going on international mission trips as a freshman in college, when he traveled to Spain and Morocco on behalf of a ministry from his church.

That first trip didn’t go so well, though.

“We were in Morocco, in the middle of nowhere, and I ended up getting really, really sick for, like, a week and a half,” he says. “I ended up losing 25 pounds in one week — couldn’t eat, had a hard time keeping anything down. There were no hospitals or anything around, so I was just by myself, doing nothing, in the 120-degree heat.”

A trip to Thailand shortly after the 2004 tsunami there proved much more productive.

“I had a guitar, my first acoustic guitar, and I just felt like I was supposed to give it away to this group that needed something,” he says. “So I did. And they really, really appreciated it. They had never had a guitar before, but somehow, some of them knew how to play it. So I just felt I needed to give it away. That was a cool thing.”

Kris’ generosity of spirit is one of the things his fans admire about it, and it has rubbed off. For his birthday recently, a group of them banded together and raised enough money for Heifer International to buy 50 cows in Kris’ name.

“That was probably the coolest birthday present I have ever gotten,” he says. “The funny thing was, last Christmas my mother got me a sheep [for Heifer International]. And then I get 50 cows to give to someone else.

“It’s really, really cool that the fans came together and raised as much money as they did in such a short time. I was blown away. Those people that put that together deserve a lot, and I know Heifer appreciated it.”

Also appearing on Friday’s night’s flood-relief bill: family teen trio Burnham, slated to open dates on the Justin Bieber tour, and iCarly star Miranda Cosgrove, in what was billed as her first public concert.

Here’s Kris’ set list:

• Heartless/Gangster’s Paradise
• Before We Come Undone
• Alright With Me
• Happy Birthday (to a girl named Lilly, who’ll turn 10 on Sunday)
• The Truth
• Man in the Mirror
• Falling Slowly/With or Without You
• Everybody Wants to Rule the World
• Live Like We’re Dying