Pearl Jam Bassist Jeff Ament Talks New LP, Tour With RNDM
A little under a year ago, the three members of RNDM – Pearl Jam bassist Jeff Ament, singer/songwriter Joseph Arthur and drummer Richard Stuverud – got together to begin sketching out ideas for their new LP, Ghost Riding (out March 4th), a follow-up to their 2012 debut Acts. “We said to each other, ‘What is the spirit album for this record?'” says Ament. “We started throwing out experimental albums back and forth that we love, like Laughing Stock by Talk Talk, David Sylvian’s Brilliant Trees and Gone to Earth, some of the most experimental Bowie albums, Bauhaus and the first couple of Peter Gabriel records.”
None of these records sounded much like anything RNDM had done before, which was precisely the point. “Before we even played a note, we decided to really distance ourselves from the way that the first record went down,” says Ament. “We were up for the challenge of leaving our comfort zones.” For Ament, that meant learning to utilize drum machines and keyboards after working primarily with guitars, bass and live drums over his long career. “That’s pretty exciting for a musician 30 years down the line,” says Ament, “to be in a place where everything feels fresh and new.”
Recording began last April at Ament’s Montana studio. “On the very first day, Richard hadn’t woken up yet and I was having some coffee and toast with Joe,” says Ament. “I said, ‘Do you have a drum beat?’ He went, ‘Oh yeah, I have this cool drum machine on my iPad.’ He plugged it right into the amp and I sat down on the Mellotron and we sort of came up with three parts. Then Richard came over and we all plugged into our normal instruments and it was a rock trio. We played over the template of the drum machine, keyboard arrangement that we just laid down. That became the template for the whole record.”
Acts was recorded in about a week, but this new way of working required a much greater time commitment. After three weeks in Montana, they moved shop to Stone Gossard’s Seattle studio for another few weeks. Mixing took three months. “I don’t think I’ve ever spent that much time on a record in my entire career,” says Ament. “I think it was because we didn’t know what it was. We kept throwing paint on the canvas and paint on the canvas and at some point, we had to start actually taking some paint off the canvas or just start over.”
Twenty tracks were recorded, but they settled on 11 for the album, including the somber “Stronger Man,” the soaring “Stray” and “NYC Freaks,” the latter detailing a lonely night in New York amidst crazy club-goers. Arthur wrote all the lyrics. “He has such a vivid imagination that he can go back into his mind and create almost a movie,” says Ament. “A lot of it is memoir and lot is based on things he witnessed or experienced.”