Pearl Jam new drummer Abe Laboriel Jr made his first live appearance with the band on September 25 at Ohana Festival in Dana Point, California. The surprise set landed two days before Pearl Jam’s scheduled Sunday headline slot, turning an already booked weekend into an early lineup reveal.
September 25 at Ohana Festival
The set began with Elderly Woman Behind the Counter in a Small Town, then Jeff Ament joined Eddie Vedder for an acoustic Bee Girl before the full band came in on Corduroy. Pearl Jam then played a further dozen tracks and closed with a five-song encore, leaving Jeremy and Alive out of the night’s sequence.
That matters because the performance was billed as Eddie Vedder and Friends, yet the stage time was clearly Pearl Jam’s. The band had last played live in May 2025, and Matt Cameron’s final appearance with the group also came that month after a 27-year stint behind the kit.
Abe Laboriel Jr and Paul McCartney
Laboriel arrived with a long résumé of his own. He spent 25 years working as the touring and session drummer for Paul McCartney, and he settled into Pearl Jam’s songs without making the night feel like a tryout.
For Pearl Jam, the practical read is simple: the band used an already scheduled festival window to test a new live configuration in public, rather than waiting for Sunday’s headline slot to introduce it. Fontaines DC, Pixies and Rilo Kiley had already played earlier in the day before the group’s Sunday set, and Pearl Jam is still scheduled to close the tenth anniversary of Ohana Festival on Sunday.
That leaves one question worth watching after the early return: whether Laboriel is the drummer for a single festival run or the start of a longer live arrangement. The performance on September 25 answered the immediate lineup question and gave the Sunday billing a different weight, because Pearl Jam has already shown the new setup can work onstage.
