Pearl Jam drummer Matt Cameron missed his first show with the band in 24 years on Thursday night (May 12th) after testing positive for Covid. For the band’s Northern California appearance at the Oakland Arena, touring member Josh Klinghoffer and longtime Jeff Ament collaborator Richard Stuverud both handled drum duties during the show. The band allowed a fan, named Josh Arroyo, to drum on the show’s final tune — “Yellow Ledbetter.”
Blabbermouth reported, “Klinghoffer was behind the kit for set opener, a cover of Neil Young‘s ‘Rockin’ In The Free World,’ as well as ‘Elderly Woman Behind The Counter In A Small Town,’ ‘Why Go,’ and ‘Corduroy,’ before Stuverud stepped in for the tracks ‘Quick Escape’ and ‘Superblood Wolfmoon.’”
Prior to performing “Why Go,” Eddie Vedder told the crowd: “Matt Cameron is a true artist and he’s a force of nature. However, even his superhero status could not prevent him from testing positive. This damn Covid thing yesterday. We’ve been scrambling for 24 hours because after 25 months of. . . We were supposed to be here 25 months ago. We’ve been waiting and we’ve been waiting. Postponing wasn’t an option and for us neither was canceling. We didn’t want to pull the plug and we couldn’t pull the plug. We’ve got our group here, we’ve got our equipment here and, most importantly, you’re here. So, lucky for us, we have some friends, and one of our friends has already been on our team this tour — the multi-talented, multi-faceted, multi-instrumentalist playing behind the drum kit right now, Mr. Josh Klinghoffer. Like the Shohei Ohtani of rock n’ roll. Let’s let the s*** hit the fan and hopefully it’s good s***.”
Bassist Jeff Ament has collaborated with Richard Stuverud on several projects over the years and not too long ago shed light on their strong musical chemistry: “I’ve been playing kind of off and on with Richard Stuverud for like 22 years, or something like that. So, y’know, when I first built my studio in Montana, he was the first guy that came out and made music with me, and he’s just always been like one of those guys creatively that we push each other in really cool ways and we just always come up with really, like, satisfying music, y’know?”