Pearl Jam's Jeff Ament on living, playing music in Montana (2024)

Jeff Ament lives in his home state of Montana for many of the same reasons anyone does.

“There’s a normalcy here that I feel comfortable with. I love the terrain in western Montana. I love the mountains and the rivers and the lakes. And I have lots of friends here. Since building all these skateparks, I have friends kind of all over the state.”

On Thursday, the bass player will be on stage with his band Pearl Jam, which he co-founded in 1990, for a sold-out crowd of 24,000.

A few weeks before, he was over in his hometown of Big Sandy for an annual skate jam put on by Montana Pool Service, a nonprofit he co-founded that has installed professionally designed skateparks in towns and on reservations in the Treasure State and South Dakota. Skateboarders, both locals and out-of-state legends, dropped in. He did a set with his hardcore band, P.E.S.T., with friends from among old-school Missoula musicians who write tongue in cheek, Montana-themed songs.

Staying in state, to him, helps "to be true to who I am, and I think Missoula in particular helps me be that person,” he said.

Thursday will mark Pearl Jam’s third concert at UM’s stadium, part of a U.S. tour leg that includes sold-out two-night stands at Wrigley Field (41,600 capacity) in Chicago and Madison Square Garden (20,000 capacity) in New York City. Missoula once again landed on the itinerary because it’s a reelection year for Jon Tester, Montana’s senior U.S. senator who hails from the same small community on the Hi-Line.

‘Dark Matter’

This spring, the band released its 12th studio album, “Dark Matter,” a follow-up to “Gigaton,” which reached audiences in March 2020 just before the pandemic fully took hold.

“The tone of the record is pretty heavy, but there's a pretty joyful, positive feeling around the music,” he said.

They collaborated with a new producer, Andrew Watt, a 30-something who’s roughly the same age as the band. He’s helmed records by Ozzy Osbourne, Iggy Pop, the well-received new album by the Rolling Stones, plus a 2022 solo release, “Earthling,” by the band’s vocalist, Eddie Vedder.

Ament said Watt is “all energy,” which fed into the performances they cut in two stints: one at Watt’s L.A. home studio and one in Shangri-La, a famed Malibu spot now owned by Rick Rubin.

They set out with spontaneity in mind with a minimum of technological assistance.

“‘Let’s capture how the band plays in a room,’” he said. “We didn’t play to the grid. There was no click track. It was us playing in a room, and we have great musicians in the band, why not? I think that’s a way you can stick out in this day and age.”

With that tight of a time frame, they'd sometimes finish the bulk of a song in three or four hours. Vedder wrote lyrics as they went, responding to what he was hearing — a preference the band shares for pulling something out of the ether.

“Half the record happened that way,” Ament said.

Everyone contributes ideas. Ament himself has written the music for some of their biggest songs, such as “Jeremy,” with its signature intro on 12-string bass, as well as “Nothingman,” one of their most famous ballads.

One of his new songs, “Won’t Tell,” went through an unusual writing process that was new to all of them. Ament brought in music and lyrics, based on a dream he’d had. Then Vedder rewrote the lyrics and the melodies.

“He's a poet that likes the puzzle, and so the more of a puzzle it is, the more excited he gets about it,” he said.

The soaring 1980s feel wasn’t in his demo, either, but came after working it out with the band.

A few of the album’s heavier tracks, “Respond, React” and “Running,” originated with him, too. They bear his hardcore roots. “Running” was originally called “Big Sandy Punk.”

He didn’t bring in full demos, but only played them parts and they interpreted them as a group.

“I'm essentially just playing them the form of the song on the bass, and all those songs sort of took on a little bit more of a post-punk vibe that wasn’t really a part of my demo.”

For the setlist in Missoula, he’s pushing for songs that might have a Montana tie, ones that seem appropriate for an election year, and tracks from the new album. They’ve been playing them on tour sometimes seven or eight a night, where they start to naturally evolve.

“The energy from the room feeds the songs in a way … that energy doesn’t exist in the studio,” he said.

Transitions and outros might change. He could play less or more depending on the venue.

“That’s my favorite part of playing live is those first 10, 15 shows where the song really starts to develop their true identity,” he said.

His Missoula hardcore group, P.E.S.T., just released their third EP on Drag Bunt Records, a label started up by Ear Candy Music’s John Fleming. It features veteran Missoula musicians like guitarist Charlie Beaton of VTO and vocalist Dave Parsons of Humpy and Sasshole. (Drummer Mat Bainton just left, with John Wicks taking his place.)

Playing gigs like the Big Sandy one is yet another benefit of living in Montana.

“That’s the best. That’s where I came from … I started playing music here. The tone of P.E.S.T. is exactly the tone we were going for in 1981, 1982,” he said.

Back in Big Sandy, his father, George Ament, ran a barber shop, drove a school bus and served as mayor.

Ament had gotten into music as a kid and he found his way through music as one did in the analog era. When he was a bit older, his uncle threw him suggestions of music on the fringe, and he picked up tips from a cousin who was into garage rock. He subscribed to magazines like Creem, Skateboarder and Circus. He’d buy records in Havre at a shop called Ricky’s or the Woolworth’s.

“It was all just like being familiar through the magazines and then just finding stuff in the wild,” he said.

Special-ordering something you’d read about in a newsletter or the back of a magazine had an aura of anticipation that “made me love it even more, because you’re waiting and not really sure what it’s going to sound like, you only saw a picture of what it was, there’s no video,” he said.

After graduating high school in 1981, he enrolled at the University of Montana with an interest in art, studying with celebrated printmaker James Todd and playing basketball.

He was active in music, too, through a punk band called Deranged Diction. Missoula had noticeably more punks than Big Sandy, although he pegged the number in the low double digits.

Outside of Montana, punk had been around for years, but the footprint in a rural state in the pre-internet era was small. Deranged Diction was probably only the second band of its kind in the city, after a group called Who Killed Society? led by an enterprising fan named Randy Pepprock. (They cut an EP with a fledgling musician named Steve Albini, who went on to record Nirvana, the Pixies and more before his death earlier this year at age 61.)

In 1983, Ament moved to Seattle, where he played in a succession of influential bands: Green River, Mother Love Bone and Temple of the Dog, and finally, Pearl Jam.

Even after the band got big, visual art remained a passion. For the cover of their second album, “Vs.,” the band used a photograph he shot of a goat poking its snout, teeth bared, through a wire fence at Lifeline Farm in Victor. He snapped the highway vista on the cover of “Yield” on Highway 200 between Great Falls and Lincoln.

Asked to list some all-time favorite Montana artists, he rattled off a list: Chris La Tray, Pete Fromm, Jim Harrison, Richard Ford, Debra Magpie Earling; musicians like Albini and Pepprock; comedians Reggie Watts and Chris Fairbanks.

P.E.S.T. isn’t his only local side project. During the pandemic, he teamed up with John Wicks, the (now former) drummer from Fitz and the Tantrums, for a project called Deaf Charlie after a member of Butch Cassidy’s gang. Their 2023 record, “Catastrophic Metamorphic,” paired Ament’s songs and vocals with drums and production from Wicks. The two also worked together on a soundtrack for the Hulu series "Under the Banner of Heaven."

Home-state shows

Pearl Jam has stopped in Missoula six times in its 34-year span, four of which lined up with Tester’s runs for U.S. Senate.

It’s hard to imagine now, but back in 1993, they played the Dennison Theatre. Five years later, in 1998, they had their first Washington-Grizzly performance. In August 2005, as Tester was in the midst of his first Senate campaign, they played a concert at the Adams Center that raised $85,000 after expenses. They returned to the Adams Center in 2012, and to Washington-Grizzly in 2018 and now 2024.

Ament knows Tester from Big Sandy days, where the future senator was seven years ahead of him in school. Ament worked on a farm that was adjacent to the Testers’ property and remembers them waving at each other from tractors. They became close after the first campaign for a D.C. seat.

“I know exactly where he’s from. I know exactly what kind of human being he is and how much he cares about rural Montana. If we have a connection, it’s sort of looking back at how we grew up and how the good elements of where we grew up formed who we are,” he said.

He recalled how if there was a family in need — regardless of who they were or what they believed — the community would help them out in a crisis.

The band has famously gotten involved in politics and causes, such as its yearslong fight with Ticketmaster over additional fees. But they’ve taken a different tack in recent years.

“We're still really interested in having a conversation and having a conversation with people that have different beliefs … and wanting to have those conversations with people that are open to changing each other's minds,” he said.

Free festival

Before the Pearl Jam concert starts, there’s a free festival with local live music, nonprofits, games, art and more in the Riverbowl area near Washington-Grizzly Stadium.

It runs 2-5 p.m. Thursday, Aug. 22, and is open to the public.

They invited 30 local nonprofits that are offering face painting, art projects, lawn games, instrument building, bicycle repair demos, photo booths and more.

Four progressive nonprofits will be on hand to help people register to vote: Forward Montana, Western Native Voice, Montana Conservation Voters and Planned Parenthood Advocates of MT.

The Zootown Arts Community Center curated a live stage hosted by Chris La Tray, the state poet laureate. You can hear his band, American Falcon, along with (latent), Calamity Cowboy and But I’m a Cheerleader.

“It’s the peer group, really, of why I want to be in Missoula,” said Ament. “It’s the thing that makes me hopeful no matter what mis-representation that we’re getting from our governor.

“If there’s a theme, it’s people that care so much about where we live that they’re trying to help everybody and trying to be inclusive,” he said.

Parking

Parking passes for the show are required to be purchased in advance. For information about prices, lots and alternative transportation, go tobit.ly/UM-concert-parking