Matt is back after missing night 1 due to COVID. On the Long Road outro, Ed says “…I can’t hear you…” and the crowd responds louder. His voice is in great shape early, showing no signs of the flu that…
Main Set: Long Road, Low Light, Pendulum, Just Breathe, Hard To Imagine, Breakerfall, Why Go, Dance Of The Clairvoyants, Brain Of J., Red Mosquito, Garden, Undone, Even Flow, Seven O'Clock, (Brain Damage)/Inside Job, Severed Hand, Better Man/(Save It For Later)
encore 1: I Won't Back Down, (Spin The Black Circle), Jeremy, Unthought Known, Alive, Rockin' In The Free World, Yellow Ledbetter
Matt is back after missing night 1 due to COVID. On the Long Road outro, Ed says “…I can’t hear you…” and the crowd responds louder. His voice is in great shape early, showing no signs of the flu that he’s recovering from. He holds the last note in Low Light until after the band finishes. Speaking of night 1, he says “…it was a team effort, we’re still a little banged up,” and welcomes Matt back, calling him a “warrior.” Pendulum is sparse and open. The band leaves the stage and Ed talks again afterwards, saying that Pendulum “is probably how Matt was feeling…it’s a bit like COVID, that song,” adding that he’s had “more tea in the last 5 days than all of India.” He points out that they have a lot of dedications tonight and he goes through them all, including for a family with a son, Jake, to which Ed jokes “Jake was created while….sorry Jake, it was Lukin, our shortest song,” and finishes the dedications talking about Jeff and Stone and their 40-year musical relationship, and they come up and hug. Just Breathe is Ed solo, and he dedicates it “for my bandmates.” The whole band is standing for Hard To Imagine except Ed. Breakerfall returns for the first time since 2018. Ed does the 1992 lean back on Why Go and gets the crowd going. After Dance, Ed says the next one “has a connection to Dallas” and Stone starts Brain of J., with a killer solo at the end. Ed says “it’s absolutely beautiful” after Red Mosquito. After Garden, Ed sees the fan in front who made the request for Undone earlier in the tour and talks about how he kept telling him to come back the next night, but in the end, they do play Undone for the first time since Boston 2010, it’s fast and with a little extended vocal part in the middle. Ed talks about how good Mike was the other night, and asks if he’s up to it again tonight, joking “Mike McCready challenges you, Mike McCready,” and they rip into Even Flow. Ed plays a little of Pink Floyd’s “Brain Damage” solo before Inside Job. Ed calls out Matt, saying it’s impressive that “3 days ago you couldn’t move.” He holds up the severed hand that was thrown on stage the other night and they play it, Ed holding on to the hand for the first part. The band jams huddled together on Better Man.
After the break, Ed talks about how he doesn’t really hate the Astros, but the Rangers are his local team, and a jersey is brought on stage. He says his sister’s here again and thanks the crew and nurses that helped them recover. The crowd sings along to I Won’t Back Down. Behind the stage, some crowd members strung up letters that hung down spelling out “Spin The Black Circle” and Ed calls it “the most creative request we’ve had so far,” then notices that the “S” is missing so it’s really “Pin The Black Circle.” They start STBC, but only play a little of it, with Ed singing “…pin, pin, pin the black circle…” After the “…what you giving?” line in Unthought Known, he adds “you’ve given us a lot.” Following, he mentions Dr. Amber Straughn again, adding:
“…tonight we’re equally honored, I’ve yet to meet him but I’ve read his work, he’s the current Dallas poet laureate, and he’s here tonight…Joaquín Zihuatanejo. This next one, we’re gonna dedicate to him, but I just want to read something that he wrote…”
Ed continues, reading from the passage:
“‘My mom was 17 when she had me. But she was younger, and more rebellious, and more beautiful than most 17-year-olds can be at that age. So she was busy being young, and rebellious, and beautiful, on the streets of our city, Dallas, when I was a child, a young person. For this reason, she was in and out of my life. I don’t fault her for that, I love my mother very much, and I get it. I was once young and beautiful too. My father left the year I was born, and he never came back. It was because of all this that I was raised by my abuelo, grandfather, he was my mother, my father, my abuelo, my teacher, my everything. When I was 14, he died in a car accident…I became homeless, but more importantly, it was the first time in my life, my young life, that I felt fatherless. I spent most nights bouncing around from place to place, many nights sleeping under the concrete pavilions in Tietze Park [Ed has trouble with the pronunciation, joking “I’ve never been there)] in old East Dallas. But I was never alone because the sound of the voice and the music of Pearl Jam was with me, in my headphones, reminding me that the pain I was feeling wasn’t rage at the universe for taking my grandfather from me, but a hurting from the fact that I had all the love in the world inside of me and nowhere to put it. Pearl Jam’s music made me strong, made me whole, made me realize that music and art and poetry, these are things we live and breathe and die for. Your music reminded me that I was alive, so thank you for creating that art and music and poetry that saved me in every way a person can be saved…I will be forever grateful to you.”
Ed stops and says “we are the ones who are grateful to you, for giving our music more meaning that we could have ever dreamt, thank you Joaquin,” and Stone starts Alive. Rockin’ in the Free World makes its tour debut and openers Deep Sea Diver join on stage, along with Joaquin. Ed collapses dramatically on stage as he finishes Ledbetter, and Mike brings it home sitting on the edge of the stage.