Pearl Jam Podcast Episodes

It’s the final week of tour preparation as Pearl Jam finishes up the last of the Canadian dates, and I guess because the 2022 Hamilton show took place a day before this was released, it’s not quite a part of the preparation? But as you’ll hear many times in this spectacular Hamilton show from 2005, there is a lot to celebrate with this one.

We couldn’t do another Canadian show and not talk about 2005. This was the first time that the band got to experience Canada from end to end, hitting up all of the big towns like Toronto and Montreal, but also making pit stops in places like Thunder Bay, Kitchener and Halifax. The band expresses their admiration for the country, and they do it by raising a toast nearly every time that Ed speaks. It’ll be a running theme that all culminates in Go sounding like he did one too many.

This setlist on paper is mind blowing, and on stage it absolutely meets that expectation. We get the very rare appearance of Porch as the opening song in the set that kicks off some of the craziness, then an injection of Lost Dogs such as Sad and U. But there are so many show stealers in this that it’s hard to pick just one from Present Tense, Untitled/MFC, Harvest Moon and a hybrid of the normal and alternative takes from In My Tree.

Ahh, we’re finally at tour week! Quebec City is going to kick off the September run, and that’s exactly what we’ve decided to cover this week – the show from the last time that they were there in 2016. In preparation of the Toronto Binaural album show, they ended up playing four songs off of that record, and a nice array of rarities alongside them as well. The Binaural representation featured Of The Girl, God’s Dice, Light Years and Nothing As It Seems, while the other rare stuff spliced in included Pilate, I’m Open, Thumbing My Way and Wash.

But this show has a pretty unforgettable moment that exceeds everything above. Ed invites a ten-year old kid named Noah onto the stage to play Sad after seeing a video of him and his father playing it. It’s one of those once in a lifetime moments, something that every kid dreams of, but is nearly an impossibility to actually happen. Pearl Jam made it possible, and we’ll talk all about it in this episode!

The final show of the 2022 (unless additional shows are added later) will emanate from Denver, CO, the same place where they closed out a tour the last time they were there in 2014. This episode will focus on being in Denver at the beginning of a tour, and that happened by in 1994. The third show of a three night stint in 1993 playing CU Boulder was canceled due to security issues. So vowing to never play the university again and wanting to make it up to those kids who missed out, the band played two shows in Denver to kick off the 1994 run.

Both nights were filled with surprises, mostly involving never before heard Vitalogy songs. As night one featured the Spin The Black Circle live debut, we’re going to talk about the debut of Not For You that took place on night 2. This was the beginning of a relationship with the song that would define a lot of what they were going through in 1994 and 1995. We’ll discuss it’s origin and inspiration for writing it. We’ll also cover the live debut of Street Fighting Man, a W.M.A. tag off of Porch, a Rats tag off of Daughter, and not one, but TWO band members losing their pants!

Let’s focus on more September show locations for this episode! In this one, we’re gonna discuss a St. Louis show that happened on the 2014 US tour leg thanks to a Patreon requested episode from David Ruthman. This show’s story centers around a few themes. This night happened to be the same night that the playoffs started for the Cardinals that year, so we receive many scoreboard updates and references. We also get to see a lot of dedications and mentions of fans who made it out to see them, some against all odds. That will bring us into a good conversation about how the band’s propensity to acknowledge fans who are going through a rough patch draws this community closer together.

It being a Lightning Bolt tour show, we’ll get a few songs from the record, some heavily played and others rarely. It’s mostly a greatest hits set with a few nice surprises including the live debut of Imagine, great versions of Not For You, Footsteps, Given To Fly, Better Man and a chilling version of Daughter performed in the wake of Michael Brown’s death in Ferguson, MO.

With September right around the corner, we’re back to covering cities that Pearl Jam will be visiting on tour this year! First stop is Camden, a city that the band had never planned to be in back in 2020, but it just so happens to be on of the most frequent venues that Pearl Jam has ever played. This show we’re covering is the second night of the two show run in 2006.

Lots of good performances to discuss here, from the brand new at the time Avocado tracks, Gone and Severed Hand are two that stand out from this one. Most of this set features songs with blazing speed such as Save You, Grievance and Whipping, but on the flip side the first encore was a complete change of pace bringing in the more emotional tracks such as Man Of The Hour, Black and the second all-time performance of Parachutes. But this show we’ll also have a big finish on encore 2 as well!

Tune in to check out the set, some discussion on Ed singing with The Strokes and a New Jersey tailgate fit for kings!

Moosejaw, Broadview, Moosamin too! We’re running back to Saskatoon! After covering the 2005 show in Saskatchewan over a year and a half ago, just like The Guess Who, we’re running back. This time thanks to a request from long time Patron, Danielle Tatlow, who lives up near those parts in a town of 350. We’ll tell her story on this episode to prep you for the last show they’ve played up in these parts up north. While this song has a great mix of album representation and rare songs such as God’s Dice, In My Tree, Untitled/MFC, In The Moonlight and more, it’s primarily remembered for one big moment. In 2005, the band did a rough take on Running Back To Saskatoon by The Guess Who, and while the results pleased the locals, it did not go over smoothly. Take two, and yet again the rendition is filled with flubs and forgotten lyrics. Ed doesn’t like how the performance went, so he invites a fan on stage to help them sing it and finally, the song gets played properly.

We’ll also talk about the 2011 tour and how it sometimes gets lost in the mix within the other tour years, especially 2005 which is a very similar, albeit longer Canadian leg.

Red Rocks, Mansfield, Santa Barbara, The Gorge, Telluride… and now Amsterdam. These six shows have something special in common that no other Pearl Jam show can claim. The band walks out and takes a seat to start the show, warming up with a collection of slower tracks and easing into a set more than the typical night. In the beautiful, mountainous evening sky up in a ski resort town in Colorado, the band took their seats in a fantastic mood thanks to these surroundings and started the night with 10 tracks played acoustically.

All of the shows mentioned above have a few things in common. They’ve been to go to spot for the band to break out debuts, rarities or songs that went completely into hiding. Take Angel for example. A Dave Abbruzzese song that was released as an A-side on the 1994 fan club Xmas Singles that had only been played four prior times in their history. Not once since 1994. It took them a record setting 699 times in between shows before they’d play it again at this show! Also, for all of the Into The Wild fans, Society was debuted directly after Angel and it was one of two performances of it in their history. Later in the show, we’d receive another Xmas Single rarity from 2008, Santa Cruz, which lyrics were changed to fit their current location.

A great show with lots of memorable speeches from Ed, and a cameo from a young woman standing stage side who wanted her 15 second of fame. Joining us to tell her stories is Horizon Leg Patron Jenni Gee!

After a memorable show in Krakow on the 2022 European tour, we’re set to go back to Poland to cover the Heineken Open’er Festival show from 2010. The show was a day after the Berlin show from that year, which had a touching tribute to the Roskilde victims being the 10th anniversary of the tragedy. That theme was on their minds at this show as Ed has to deal with some early crowd rambunctiousness that he had nearly no patience for.

This was in the middle of touring for Backspacer, so we’ll be able to catch up on songs from that album for the first time in about 6 months. This is including The Fixer, where we try to make sense of the recent infatuation that blew us away after it was crossed off a setlist earlier in this tour. Great versions of Hail, Hail, Even Flow, Amongst The Waves and Rearviewmirror are all discussed, but perhaps most importantly, we get a version of Just Breathe with bass!

Joining us to tell her story is our Patron Anita Stelmasiuk who had a long journey before making it to her first show. Get to hear her stories about joining the Ten Club at an early age, the challenges she faced in order to get to this show and some of the moments that impacted her that night.