SEATTLE — As one of the first big bands to suspend its tour plans, Pearl Jam's packed schedule abruptly cleared when the pandemic hit in 2020. Come May, the Seattle juggernauts will finally set off on a run of makeup shows after fans have been waiting two years to hear some of the daring new(er) tunes off "Gigaton," the band's 11th album, born just as the world was shutting down.
But on the plus side, the unexpected down time produced a rush of new side projects and archive-mining releases for fans to nibble until the next stadium singalong. Among them, Pearl Jam guitar slayer Mike McCready's old side band, The Rockfords, dusted off the WAV files last month to release its lone studio album in digital formats for the first time.
Hatched in the late '90s, the Seattle supergroup consisted of McCready and his childhood friends Danny Newcomb (lead guitar), and brothers Chris and Rick Friel (drums and bass), with singer Carrie Akre of Goodness and Hammerbox. Although The Rockfords only had a few years together, releasing their self-titled album with Epic Records, the tight-knit members had plenty of history together: McCready, Newcomb and the Friels played together in McCready's first band Shadow, while Newcomb and Chris Friel joined Akre in Goodness.
We recently caught up with McCready to discuss his resurrected Rockfords project and the latest happenings in the PJ universe. The conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
Q: How did The Rockfords rerelease get in motion?
A: Danny Newcomb, who's the other guitar player and principal songwriter, one of my oldest — if not my oldest friend, I've known him since we were 5 years old — it was his idea. We're proud of the record. We have a lot of history behind all of that.
Q: You obviously have a ton of history playing with Danny, Rick and Chris. Then Danny and Chris playing with Carrie in Goodness. But how did you all decide to form The Rockfords?
A: I'm really close with Rick and Chris and Danny over all these years. So we were just talking about let's put something together, let's do something. At that time, either Goodness had just broken up or they were still going on, and I loved Carrie's voice. Her personality was great and she was funny. She had a helluva range and a cool emotional quality to her singing, all the way back to Hammerbox. And I loved her energy. I really wanted to play with her as a singer.
Q: Those first times everybody got together, what was the chemistry like among you given all the overlapping history?
A: There's these silly old jokes that we all do over and over and over again. Rick and Chris and Danny and I will talk about KISS or we'll always talk about the same kinda silly things, and I'm sure we were boring Carrie to death with our old rock stories. But we kind of get back into that mode again of being teenagers and the excitement of playing music together and the energy we had back then in Shadow.
I also get an influence from Danny when I play with him. I watch him play leads, I always have. He was the lead guitar player in Shadow and I was the rhythm guitar player at that time. So, I've always watched him to see what he does. He pushes me to be a better guitar player. It's similar to when I play with Stone [Gossard in Pearl Jam]. I play off of what he's doing. I don't try to repeat what he's doing, I try to play around it.
Then Rick and Chris have their brothers' chemistry in terms of the bass and drums, and I'm used to all that. I've played with those guys for thousands of hours. I love that. There's a connection that happens, there's a goofiness. We're kinda like silly kids, me especially.
Q: On a personal level, what was it like to step away from the whole Pearl Jam frenzy and do this project with a bunch of longtime friends?
A: To step away from the craziness of Pearl Jam has always been a nice exit so that I can get back into it, get back into the frenzy. Especially around that time. It was a good relief. There was less pressure. We were doing it for the fun of it and we were doing it to write songs together. We played some shows around Seattle, but there wasn't a giant pressure to do the Rockfords record. It was more organic and fun and celebratory at times. The song "Silver Lining," which Danny wrote, that's probably my favorite song on there. Getting to hear Carrie sing those cool lyrics and they're kinda sad and poignant. Getting to work with a really great singer has always been for me a total treat. It's like the icing on the cake, because you get to have that right in your ear while you're playing and it's beautiful to hear how Carrie sings and her emotional quality.
Q: You mentioned doing a few shows around Seattle. Were there any in particular that stood out?
A: I remember we played one at Bumbershoot that was really, really fun. It was a bigger crowd and I think we rose to that. We had a Tractor [Tavern] show that was pretty great and then the old Crocodile was probably one of the better ones. We were doing covers like — what's that Blondie song: [sings] "Met you in the restaurant" — "Dreaming." We were doing "Dreaming" and it was fun to play with Carrie because she can really bring that Blondie vibe to that song. We also got to write a song called "Riverwide" with Nancy Wilson. That was a cool experience. Just rad to have your heroes jam with you.
Q: How did she get involved on the song and what did she bring to it?
A: I reached out to her and just asked her. She's a friend of mine now and I wanted her to play on it or write some lyrics or do anything. She happened to be in town and we recorded it. She's [so] underrated, Nancy, in terms of rhythm guitar players. She's a ridiculous rhythm guitar player. Everybody knows that, but I don't know if it's talked about enough.
Q: Have you talked about doing any local shows with The Rockfords?
A: We talked about maybe doing something at Easy Street or a show around that, but something to do with our old friend Matt Vaughan because we love Easy Street. We've all known him for many, many, many years, since the early '80s. Pearl Jam's going to start touring pretty soon, I think, so that's gonna start sucking up all my time.
Q: When the pandemic hit, Pearl Jam's tour plans after "Gigaton" got put on hold. What has this period been like for you, creatively, having this unplanned pause to touring?
A: For me personally, it's been really a great experience. It's not that I don't want to tour or anything like that. But I taught myself to do GarageBand and I've been taking singing lessons, and I'm working on a solo thing right now. I'm working on a song I wrote about Chris Cornell. I made that song finally dealing with his passing and I'm working on a little project that I'm going to do in Seattle some day. It's going to have my story and the people that I knew who came up through the '90s. I'm not sure what it is yet, but the first thing I'm going to do is this song that I wrote about Chris. So, I've been working on a lot of solo stuff and also working with this director named Thom Zimny on a Beach Boys documentary.
Q: During Eddie Vedder's shows at Benaroya, he alluded to Pearl Jam working with Andrew Watt, who produced his album. I'm curious what those sessions have been like.
A: We have talked to him and got together a couple of times doing some demos, and it was pretty fun. Just a different kind of vibe. He's got a great energy. He's way into getting good sounds. We also have Josh Evans, who worked on our last "Gigaton" record, we have a whole other section of songs from that era, too, that I think we still need to look at. So there's a lot of stuff on the back burners right now.
Q: Thinking about Andrew [again], one thing that struck me at the [Eddie Vedder and the Earthlings] shows a couple weeks ago is what a killer guitar player he is. Were you able to nerd out together?
A: He's a really good guitar player. It's funny, I met him when he was just a kid, he and his dad. He might have been 13 or 14 — and I met those guys after a show. This might have been 2000 or something. His dad and Andrew were waiting outside a smaller gig we played in New York. His dad was like, "Hey, my son Andrew wants to get in the music business, what do you think about that?" I immediately turned into my dad and I went, "Well, I think you should probably stay in school because it's a hard business out there, whatever." I totally hoped I wasn't crushing his dreams, but I wanted to be honest and say this is a super hard business and I got really lucky, blah blah blah. Cut to last year, I called up Andrew's dad and said "Hey look, I was wrong about that advice. He should definitely go [into music]." Maybe that's why it worked out, I don't know. Maybe he was like "[expletive] that Mike McCready guy."
