04 Jul Pearl Jam Headlines The Ride
The Telluride Ride Festival weekend kicks off Friday, July 8, 5 – 8 p.m. with a FREE concert featuring Joint Point and The Sheepdogs, on Sunset Plaza in Mountain Village. During The Ride Festival, gondola operating hours are from 7 a.m. – 2 a.m. Friday through Sunday. Expect long lines at peak times. Dial-A-Ride and the Meadows bus will operate until 2 a.m. Friday through Sunday, too, and the Common Consumption Area will be in effect for the Friday concert. Full Ride schedule here. Tickets here.
What’s in a name?
Online sources offer several origin myths for “Pearl Jam.” One theory holds that the name refers to a famous peyote jam made by Eddie Vedder’s half-Native great-grandma Pearl. Or it is derived from the nickname of NBA star Mookie Blaylock. Or some combo of the two.
What’s in a name?
“Pearl Jam” rhymes with “star power.”
The Seattle super nova rockers are the Saturday night headliner for the upcoming Telluride Ride Festival, July 9 – 10, which also features Cage The Elephant, The Band of Heathens, Little Hurricane, The Dirty Knobs, Highly Suspect, Mike Farris & The Roseland Rhythm Revue, Honeyhoney, The Sheepdogs, Big Something, Jerry Joseph & The Jackmormoms, and The Temperance Movement.
Images, courtesy Rolling Stone.
Since 1990, with 10 studio albums, 100s of unique live performances, and 100s of official live concert bootleg releases later, Pearl Jam continues to be critically acclaimed and commercially successful, with over 60 million albums sold worldwide.
Having toured (and wowed) the world, this is Pearl Jam’s first (and highly anticipated) appearance on the Main Stage in Telluride’s scenic Town Park.
Detailing Pearl Jam’s history, Rolling Stone wrote:
Along with Nirvana, Pearl Jam were initially known for popularizing grunge, the Seattle sound that exploded nationwide in the early Nineties. But the band became an American rock institution by broadening their heavy, Led Zeppelin-influenced sound while maintaining the emotional depth that made their songs so resonant in the first place. Leaping from obscurity to superstardom, the band sold more than 15 million copies of its first two albums, and after a couple of years during which they got mired in high-profile controversies, Pearl Jam recovered and were still filling arenas at the close of the 2000s.
Pearl Jam’s roots in the Seattle scene go deep: In the mid-Eighties, Jeff Ament and Stone Gossard were members of the seminal Seattle band Green River, which split in 1987. Half the band formed Mudhoney, while Gossard and Ament joined singer Andrew Wood in Mother Love Bone. One of the earliest Seattle bands to sign with a major label, Mother Love Bone seemed on the verge of breaking big when Wood died of a heroin overdose in 1990. Mercury Records wanted Gossard and Ament (with Bruce Fairweather on guitar and drummer Greg Gilmore) to record with a new singer, but the band declined.
Afterward, Gossard and Ament, along with Seattle veteran Mike McCready, started work on a demo tape in late 1990. They asked former Red Hot Chili Peppers drummer Jack Irons to join, giving him a copy of the tape. Irons was involved with his own band, Eleven, but passed the demo on to a singer he knew in San Diego, Eddie Vedder, who immediately wrote lyrics to the songs and mailed back a tape that included his vocals; he was invited up to Seattle and the rest was history.
Concurrently, Gossard, Ament, and McCready, along with Soundgarden’s Chris Cornell and Matt Cameron, recorded Temple of the Dog (Number Five, 1992), a memorial to Wood, in 1990, with Vedder trading verses with Cornell on the rock radio smash “Hunger Strike.”
With the addition of Vedder and drummer Dave Krusen, the new band was complete…
Here’s a sound byte showing Pearl Jam in action:
Cage the Elephant closes out the weekend.
Formed in 2006, Cage the Elephant is an American rock band from Bowling Green, Kentucky, known for energetic live performances and an eclectic sound.
From their latest release, Tell Me I’m Pretty, here’s Cage the Elephant’s “Trouble.”
Of the two opening acts of the weekend, Canadian rock band The Sheepdogs and Joint Point, The Ride has this to say:
While style and fashion are constantly changing in the pop world, The Sheepdogs remain steadfast in their commitment to rock ‘n’ roll excellence. Since their inception, the band has always sought to play the kind of music they themselves love: “Pure, simple, good-time music,” as singer and guitarist Ewan Currie put it.
It’s no surprise then that the bands fifth LP, Future Nostalgia, is firmly rooted in the rock tradition listeners have come to expect from the boys.
“The Sheepdogs have crafted their finest album to date in “Future Nostalgia.” More of a spiritual successor to “Learn & Burn” than the Patrick Carney-produced eponymous album that, while boasting better production, mixing, and mastering than their older albums, lost some of their uniqueness, “Future Nostalgia” is The Sheepdogs as I have always hoped to hear them. The sonic quality is incredible, the lyrics instantly memorable, and the instrumentation is their best ever. It’s basically a blend of the self-titled’s production value and “Learn & Burn’s” more retro-leaning style, and it’s beautiful,” wrote one fan on Amazon, where overall reviews of the group and the album garnered 5 stars.
In 1995, The String Cheese Incident busted out of Telluride and onto the national scene. Just over 20 years later, another band is percolating in the box canyon that feels like it’s about to pop. And this weekend, the rest of the world will get a glimpse of Joint Point… Joint Point counts String Cheese as a major influence, but the band’s sound leans less toward bluegrass and more to rock ‘n’ roll. Think psychedelic jam rock.
Check at Joint Point (filmed on the last day of skiing, 2014):
Enjoy the ride at The Ride, which promises to be wild and woolly.
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