Eddie Vedder to Release New Solo Album and Concert DVD

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Eddie Vedder's second solo album Ukulele Songs and a live concert film titled Water on the Road will both be released on May 31st, Vedder announced today. As the title suggests, Ukulele Songs will feature Vedder performing original songs and covers on his ukulele. Cat Power's Chan Marshall and Glen Hansard of the Frames and the Swell Season will guest on one track each, and the set will include a new recording of the Pearl Jam tune "Can't Keep." The album's first single "Longing to Belong" will be available in digital stores tomorrow.

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Water on the Road, Vedder's first solo concert film, was directed by Brendan Canty of Fugazi and Christoph Green at a pair of shows in Washington, D.C. in August of 2008. That set will include several songs from Vedder's soundtrack for the film Into the Wild along with early versions of Ukulele Songs tracks, covers and relatively obscure Pearl Jam numbers such as "Sometimes," "Driftin'" and "Around the Bend."

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Song Stories

“Piano Man”

Billy Joel | 1973

Billy Joel’s first hit, “Piano Man,” was – ironically – an autobiographical lament about how his first album wasn’t a hit. When Cold Spring Harbor didn’t take off, Joel briefly became a lounge pianist in Los Angeles, and this song, about that experience, expressed his frustrations and fears at the time: “And they sit at the bar and put bread in my jar/And say, ‘Man, what are you doing here?’” “It was all right,” Joel said later, about the gig. “I got free drinks and union scale, which was the first steady money I’d made in a long time.”

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