Pearl Jam have confirmed they won’t be revealing the identity of their new drummer until they take the stage at Ohana Festival in the US this September.
Speaking on SiriusXM’s Pearl Jam Radio, guitarist Stone Gossard addressed the speculation about who will replace Matt Cameron, who departed the iconic group last July, and made clear the band has no intention of breaking the silence early.
“There’s not enough mystery in the world,” Gossard said, via Rolling Stone. “I think the band is very excited that we’re actually getting to play. It’s been a while and the fact that we get to do it at Ohana makes it even doubly exciting. And the fact that nobody knows who’s going to play drums with us even makes it triply exciting. So, it’s our mystery wrapped in an enigma and we’re relishing in it right now.”
Fans will have to wait until 27 September, when Pearl Jam headline the 10th annual Ohana Festival in Dana Point, California, to finally get their answer.
Cameron departed the band last year after a 27-year run. In the months since, the band’s messaging has been… contradictory, to put it politely. Eddie Vedder opened up about Pearl Jam’s future in February, appearing to hint that a replacement had already been locked in.
“If I were to say anything,” Vedder said, “I think we’d wanna have a band discussion about what we’d wanna say or who would be the messenger or whatever… We’re in the lab, we’re woodshedding, excited. It’s cool to think of change. As much as we’d like to have done it the way we did it forever — and we’ll still be able to do that thing — I think we’re all just excited for the future.”
But just two months later, guitarist Mike McCready appeared to completely contradict him. “I think I’m kind of done with the break,” McCready told American Songwriter. “I’m ready to go out again whenever, you know, or start working on another record. We’ve just got to find a new drummer, you know? We don’t have one.”
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Meanwhile, fans who had been hoping original drummer Dave Krusen might return — he briefly stepped in during 2022 when Cameron contracted Covid — were firmly shut down. In a since-deleted Instagram comment, Krusen was blunt: “No, they have a new drummer already.”
