Pearl Jam Announce May U.S. Tour Capped By Two MSG Gigs

Missed Pearl Jam live during the band's run of Backspacer tour dates last year? Eddie Vedder and company are giving you another chance to see their legendary live show in action with a month-long slate of U.S. shows that kick off in May. The trek launches at New Orleans' Jazz Festival on May 1st and moves its way northeast, culminating with two shows at New York's Madison Square Garden on May 20th and 21st.

Pearl Jam in posters: an illustrated guide to the band's tour art.

Band of Horses have been enlisted to serve as Pearl Jam's opening act on the trek, with the Black Keys subbing in for the May 20th MSG show. Tickets go on sale to Pearl Jam's Ten Club members on March 15th, with a public on-sale to follow on March 19th. As evidenced by last year's tour and the group's legendary Halloween night show in Philadelphia, Pearl Jam mix up their set lists every night and the 2009 jaunt yielded live performances of nearly every song in the PJ catalog, so don't miss them this time around. For more info, check out Pearl Jam's official site.

And if you're bummed out that Pearl Jam isn't visiting your half of the U.S., at least you can watch them perform on Saturday Night Live this weekend.

Pearl Jam
May 1 – New Orleans, LA @ New Orleans Jazz Festival
May 3 - Kansas City, MO @ Sprint Center
May 4 - St. Louis, MO @ Scottrade Center
May 6 - Columbus, OH @ Nationwide Arena
May 7 - Noblesville, IN @ Verizon Wireless Music Center
May 9 - Cleveland, OH @ Quicken Loans Arena
May 10 - Buffalo, NY @ HSBC Arena
May 13 - Bristow, VA @ Jiffy Lube Live
May 15 - Hartford, CT @ XL Center
May 17 - Boston, MA @ TD Garden
May 18 - TBD @ TBD
May 20 - New York, NY @ Madison Square Garden
May 21 - New York, NY @ Madison Square Garden

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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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