When Pearl Jam announced plans to headline the 10th annual Ohana Festival earlier this month, many fans had the same question: “Who will be playing drums?” The band hasn’t played a show since Matt Cameron announced his departure last year, and they’ve yet to indicate who is going to replace him.
But in a new interview on SiriusXM’s Pearl Jam Radio, guitarist Stone Gossard strongly implied they’ve made their pick. At the very least, they’ll make it official once they take the stage at Ohana on Sept. 27. “There’s not enough mystery in the world,” Gossard said. “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.”
In a February interview with Rolling Stone, Eddie Vedder evaded directly answering the question. “If I were to say anything,” he 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.”
His answer, however, suggested they’d already settled on a drummer, but weren’t yet ready to reveal it. But in April, Pearl Jam guitarist Mike McCready flatly said that wasn’t the case. “I think I’m kind of done with the break,” he 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.”
Fans have spent the past few months feverishly speculating about who the band will hire. Some nostalgic fans pinned their hopes on original drummer Dave Krusen, who they brought back into the fold for one show in 2022 when Cameron came down with Covid. But in an Instagram comment that he’s now deleted, Krusen shot down the idea. “No,” he wrote, “they have a new drummer already.”
At this point, we simply have no idea if they’re going to unwrap this “mystery wrapped in an enigma” prior to the moment they walk onstage at Ohana on Sept. 27.
