ANAHEIM, Calif. — Most concerts have an opening act or two before the headliner takes the stage, but the Sessanta tour is an anomaly.

Primus, Puscifer and A Perfect Circle will join forces to continue iconic Tool frontman Maynard James Keenan’s Sessanta celebration. All three acts perform on the same stage simultaneously, with each group performing its distinctive sets, while the musicians continually rotate throughout the night.

The Sessanta tour continues Keenan’s 60th birthday celebration, where he and fellow musician buddies, including long-time friend Billy Howerdel (with whom he’s performed in A Perfect Circle for over two decades), take the collaborative process on the road. The Sessanta 2.0 tour will pick back up at the Acrisure Arena in Palm Desert on Thursday, April 24.

“I thought it was a great idea,” Howerdel said during a recent phone call. “I also thought it was going to be a little challenging to take three bands and have it be like a seamless set because I’ve never seen it. It takes a lot of work for the sound and production crew to make all of this seamless. We’re jumping back and forth, but there are no pauses in between. The fact that we have a chemistry and a history together as bands percolates and comes to life on stage for people to see something that hasn’t been done like this.”

Howerdel said the light bulb moment came after Keenan’s 50th birthday, when they played a similar show with Failure and other special guests. He later decided to take the idea and turn it into a tour with Puscifer, A Perfect Circle and Primus.

Before the groups kick off Sessanta for another round of tours, Howerdel spoke with Southern California News Group about A Perfect Circle’s recent 25th anniversary, his love of film scores, and more. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Q. Perfect Circle recently hit its 25th anniversary as a group. How are you feeling coming off the heels of that milestone?

A. It feels interesting to go back and look at some old pictures and videos from that time. It was a little harder to document things then, so the archive is a little sparse. We did it very quickly. The stars aligned just right for A Perfect Circle to take off at the beginning of 2000, and just being on the right door with Nine Inch Nails, having David Finch direct our first video, and having Virgin Records be very much in line with what we were trying to do. They were such a great partner, a lot of people don’t have the same experience with record companies, but we had as good an experience as you can get.

Q. Over 20 years ago, A Perfect Circle put out a mix of anti-war songs for the 2004 election. Looking back now, how do you feel about the anti-war sentiment in this country at the present moment?

A. Just stepping outside the band, it’s surprising. If you asked me 10 years ago, I’d be shocked at where we are globally now. Things are not moving in the right direction. Put it this way: we as artists have a lot to write about. Even if it’s not in words, conveying emotion is our job, along with sorting it out and putting it through our own filter of whatever our life experiences are. We want that to come out the other side as the art.

Q. A Perfect Circle’s music is featured in several horror movies. What do you think about how the two art forms intersect?

A. It’s probably more in the undercurrent than something that comes out all the time. When I first picked up a guitar, I loved it, but I really love a movie score. Soundtracks, too, but just the score itself was a big part of me wanting to keep playing. That’s juxtaposed with the more aggressive, standard format songs I was listening to. So it was the mixture of the two. My earliest favorite score was the ‘Pink Panther’ soundtrack. I remember seeing that movie when I was really young, and the feeling of that score. I don’t know what you call French café kind of music, but it had a lot of heart. That’s what makes it compelling. ‘Bram Stoker’s Dracula’ is still a listenable album. Some of this music is the driving force, even if it doesn’t sound like that. It’s the essence of that, the quality, and how the chord structures work that translate in there. That’s what we produce when we write music. We’re just this melting pot of influences, and hopefully, you get enough of them where it becomes this indistinguishable soup that isn’t pinned to one thing or the other. Soundtracks and scores are an important part of the recipe for me.

Q. You’re going to participate in the Above Ground benefit show later this fall, which supports musicians who are searching for mental health resources. What about that initiative attracted you to participate?

A. People in my circles try to talk about the destigmatization of mental health issues. If you asked 10 years ago, there was a real necessity for taking the shame out of it, so that enough people could ask for help when they needed it. That’s the biggest problem. Today, it could be over-identified, and you may find that people who are trying to find what fits that emptiness are in search of a label. You have to be careful on both sides of that. The biggest part is that if someone needs help, they know where they can go for a resource. Above Ground is a great help in addressing those struggles and those gaps within our health care system. I’m happy to be a part of it, and it’s within our community. The first one I performed at was another two classic album format with covers of the Velvet Underground and Adam Ant. Adam Ant’s “King of the Wild Frontiers” is one of my favorite albums, so I was honored to be part of that.

Q. This upcoming show in October will feature performances of the self-titled debut albums of both the New York Dolls and the Cars. What did you think when you heard about that?

A. That first Cars album was the very first piece of music I bought with my own money. I’ll never forget. I went to my local music store with my $10 to buy their first album on vinyl. It was a big moment for me. I had older sisters who had their albums, but to have your own music was very cool. The second Cars album is one of my favorite albums ever. Those first two albums are great, and just the way they recorded the songs is amazing. As for The New York Dolls, it seemed like their group, along with the Ramones, was at ground zero of the punk scene. I don’t even know if that was the intention, but the irreverence and the humor-like feel of never breaking character with the power and uniqueness of that sound was great.

Q. What’s next for you in your musical endeavors?

A. I’m writing new A Perfect Circle stuff, so that’s coming. After my solo album ‘What Normal Was’ came out, I sat down and said, ‘Okay, I’m going to write some new music.’ I probably wrote 11 concepts out, but those aren’t full songs that I think were as strong a foundation for what will be the next album. So, after this A Perfect Circle run, I want to put out a song or two that will be on another solo album and start doing some touring because I didn’t do that much touring for that album. Enough time has passed where it’s time to get back out there for that.

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