It might be tempting for some to reference Throwing Muses in the past tense.

That’s understandable given all that this pioneering Rhode Island-born act accomplished during its first decade of existence, which — most notably — included helping draw up the blueprint that Pearl Jam, Nirvana and other acts would follow to alt-rock riches in the ‘90s.

Kristin Hersh and company just released one great album after another — starting with the Throwing Muses’ highly acclaimed self-titled debut of 1986 — before eventually parting ways due to music industry-related financial woes in 1997.

Thankfully, that only proved to be a temporary bump in the road and Throwing Muses were back in action a few years later. The band has continued to tour and make records — albeit, not quite as steadily as fans would like — ever since.

And the group certainly seems rejuvenated these days, riding high on the heavy critical acclaim and overall fan interest in “Moonlight Concessions.” It’s the Muses’ 11th full-length release overall, and the troupe’s first outing since 2020’s “Sun Racket,” once again spotlighting the classic mid-‘90s trio lineup of singer-songwriter-guitarist Hersh, drummer David Narcizo and Bernard Georges.

The best news of all? Throwing Muses have been doing plenty of roadwork in support of “Moonlight Concessions” and plan to finally return to play shows in the Bay Area for the first time in more than a dozen years.

The group performs 9 p.m. April 17 and 8 p.m. April 20 at The Chapel in San Francisco. Tickets are $42.06.

Throwing Muses also perform April 18 at Moe’s Alley in Santa Cruz, marking the first time the band has played “Surf City” in more than 30 years. And you can catch the Muses at Harlow’s in Sacramento on April 19 as well. (For tickets and information on all shows, visit kristinhersh.com/tour.)

I’ve had the privilege of interviewing Hersh several times over the decades. And it never ever gets old. Indeed, in my opinion, Hersh — who is also an accomplished solo artist, an acclaimed author and the leader of another rock band called 50 Foot Wave — might just be the most fascinating person in all of music.

So, buckle up, fans, here’s our latest chat.

Q: You used to tell me that you were the “last person” I should ask about what your songs mean. All these years later, do you still feel that way?

A: (Laughs) I guess? Only because each song uses my life pictures as a means to its own end. When I was younger — and a little more possessed — I used to believe that songs were evil spirits pushing my stories around so they could tell those stories.

I no longer believe songs are evil, so I had to come up with a better theory and that turns out to be that inspired work is never of the person, but through them. Empty yourself and music will speak. Which makes me sound super pretentious but that’s probably better than possessed.

My songs are all autobiographical, literally true. But real songs are only about who they are. Like a person walking into a room, they have subtext, psychologies, memories and potential for change. They’re smarter than me, like my kids. And like my kids, I wouldn’t presume to reduce them to anything I knew before I met them.

Q: Do you ever hear interesting stories from fans about what your songs mean? And, if so, can you give me an example?

A: Lenny Kaye (of the Patti Smith Group) once told me that my song “Your Ghost” — which mentions calling an empty, burned-down house — was about his sister, who lost a loved one in a fire and would call the ghost in his empty, gone house just to hear it ring.

I love streaming because it helps people educate themselves to their own musical response, even if they don’t have much money; they curate their input rather than letting promotional money threaten them with fashion FOMO, etc. But I also enjoy the people who hear songs completely out of contexts — like genre and era — because they tell me similar stories from their own lives, saying that the songs were there with them. As if my very personal songs left home and made friends all over the world. It’s a strange and lovely take on social.

Q: Your sense of humor is abundantly evident to anyone who is fortunate enough to spend time with you. Yet, at least traditionally speaking, that’s never really been something that people have noted about your music. Have we just been missing/overlooking it all these years?

A: I don’t imagine that intelligence can be measured by cerebral facility because complexity makes so many mistakes. (Laughs) The ability to see the ludicrous and laugh at vanity seems like, I don’t know, necessary. Certainly smart. I often think: How are y’all not laughing right now?

And honestly, it seems to be a lack of gravity. People take themselves seriously when they don’t take life seriously, when they choose not to see how deep this all goes. Melodrama to keep true drama away, I guess.

My mates and bandmates are all chosen accordingly. Can you make me laugh? Then you’re in.

Q: I do feel like that KH sense of humor does manage to creep into “Moonlight Concessions.” In ways, it feels a little more lighthearted than other works. Does it feel that way to you?

A: It’s more fun maybe, than much of our catalog. I mean, I always thought we were funny, but I admit the humor was subtle. (Laughs)

Q: When I listen to “Moonlight Concessions” it feels more directly connected to your last solo album, “Clear Pond Road,” than it does to, say, the Muses’ “Sun Racket.”

A: I’m not a listener, so it’s hard for me to say what effect these records have. I trust people like you to do this for me.

With my producer hat on, I can say that they are tonally different. The technique that worked best for “Clear Pond Road” — after way too much years of experimentation — was a staccato clarity: an on-top-of-the-beat, bell tone, and multi-layered approach that sounds very lush and clean, but in a bright and echoey space.

“Moonlight Concessions” was named after the concessions stand at Moonlight Beach in Encinitas, where most of the songs were written, and it sounds like that place to me: pared down to an almost hokey, small and dry space; sandy, rough-textured, percussive and spare.

Q: I read somewhere that you said “Moonlight Concessions” is a return to what the band sounded like before the 1986 debut. Hmm. And here I had no idea that the Throwing Muses were cruising around all those little Rhode Island clubs with a cellist in tow. (Laughs) Or am I taking this too literal?

A: We have been playing with cellists for 30-something years, but no one ever really noticed. (Laughs) It’s the songs themselves that remind me of the country-punk songs I wrote when I was about 14. The fun songs our British label didn’t include on our first record because they couldn’t relate to such goofy American-ness.

I got a lot of “art” points for sounding mentally ill and not knowing how to edit. But that record was never released in this country anyway. Most Americans think our first record was “University” because that was our top-selling release.

Q: Are you the same person from project to project? Or do you feel like you’re putting on the “Throwing Muses hat” when it’s time to do a band album as opposed to a solo project?

A: Not “me” per se, but the material asks for different expression. Bernie is the bass player in both my bands, Throwing Muses and 50 Foot Wave, obviously, but he plays very differently project to project.

The wild card, is Rob “Moose” Ahlers, 50 Foot Wave’s drummer, who transforms my sound in that band and on solo tours. He is a musical machine, a savant, a powerhouse. Best drummer I’ve ever even heard. I could live in 50 Foot Wave, but I’d have to learn to breathe under water.

Q: What’s it like going back to work with Bernie and Dave? Talk to me about that emotional/musical bond.

A: I love all my bandmates dearly. It’s such an intense experience living and working with your best friends and favorite musicians. You bring your best self and your best playing to that shared world. And like I said, they can all crack me up.

As Dave says, though: “Throwing Muses isn’t a group of people, it’s a kind of music.” Really, it’s just whoever is around and feels like playing. None of our records have ever made us any money; it’s a labor of love and always has been. I can’t stomach trying to play with people who want to dumb down sound in order to be famous or rich. Music leaves the room when vanity enters. Luckily, the reverse is also true.

Q: I was bummed to hear that Bernie and Dave weren’t part of this particular Throwing Muses touring lineup. But you’re telling me to take heart and that I should be pleased with what I hear from the new lineup.

A: “Touring Muses” is Freddy Abong from the Muses — my partner — and my son Dylan on bass. So a family band, really.

The amazing Cello Pete (Harvey), who played on “Moonlight Concessions,” tours with me solo, so he made it into the family band too. Audiences don’t actually seem to know this isn’t the original lineup. They keep asking Dylan if he was the original bass player and he kind of shakes his head, thinking, “That’d be tough since they started five years before I was born.”

Q: From the setlists that I’m seeing, it looks like you are going big with the newer material — “Moonlight Concessions,” plus “Sun Racket,” “Purgatory/Paradise.” Is that the material that just speaks to you the clearest these days?

A: Musicians — real ones, anyway — live with material, live in material, for years. It’s your weather, your heart, your traumas, your life. So whatever jumps up onto your windshield while you’re driving around after making a record becomes incorporated into the set list of that record cycle because it informs the new stuff, plays well with it.

Doesn’t matter how old it is, it just needs to have traveled and met people and come back with good stories. (Laughs) Then it’s invited to the party.

Q: What is your relationship with the old fan favorites? Stuff like “Bea” or “Bright Yellow Gun.”

A: We’re playing both on this tour, and neither is easy, so the challenge is wild. I mean, I can’t think of a song we play that is easy, but those two have no obvious dynamic template. Tough to know when we should drop or build, speed up, slow down, feature bass melodies or kick patterns or guitar solo vs. wall-of-sound onslaught. You have to listen carefully for what the song wants to do; you know, follow it around.

I’m not sure I would call any song a fan favorite anymore, given that we have so many “Moonlight Concessions” people at these shows. We haven’t had a record actually chart like this in so many years. And we’ve only played one U.S. show so far: NYC. We’ve done a few UK/EU and Australia/New Zealand — maybe each territory has their own favorites? But we can’t tell because we don’t give audiences any time to cheer. We leave about .05 milliseconds between songs, for some reason. (Laughs) It’s an intense set.

Q: What’s left on your music to-do list? Do you have “career goals”? Or is making music kind of its own reward.

A: I’m a very simple human. Dog-like, really. If nobody reminded me to go on the road — so that I can afford to make another record and also not starve — I’d just be bent over my guitar under a tree somewhere. In fact, that’s probably a life goal. Could that count as a career goal, too?

Then yeah, tree. If I can’t be a tree, I wanna live out my days playing under one. I never wanted attention. I don’t like being looked at — I’m a mammal, I find it threatening. Wouldn’t it be lovely if the “music” business allowed for hiding and working with sound instead of doing photo shoots?

Q: Your music has been so important to so many people. By this point in your career, have you gotten used to and grown comfortable with people telling you that you are awesome?

A: (Laughs) “The Queen of Grunge” stopped being a cool thing to be, or call somebody, a long time ago. But seriously? I never wanted to be a pop star. My goal was to make musician a job so that I could do it forever. To make human female not a contradiction in terms, to never play into the suck-to-succeed machine of people playing dress-up and making product instead of music.

There’s no such thing as bad music. If it’s bad? It isn’t music. While I was fighting to escape my Warner Brothers contract, a cool Warners employee told me that the company had no interest in music because people love it and you can’t tell people what to love. They wanted the planned obsolescence of “like” replaced by a new “like” every year. They bought fame, hoping for a return on their investment, with marketing money and fashion: superficial by definition. Why insult the listener?

I survived to see the shattering of the dumbass Goliath who called listeners dumb.

Every time a whole human adopts even a part of my soundtrack and makes it their own? I’m honored. Because that’s not like, it’s love, in both directions. I’d rather sell one record to a person who listens a million times, than a million records to people who listen once.

Q: You are awesome

A: Right back atcha, friend.

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