Drummer Matt Cameron Offers Latest On Upcoming Soundgarden And Pearl Jam Albums
Matt Cameron mans the drum kit for both Soundgarden and Pearl Jam — two of the biggest bands in rock today. In a new interview with the busy stickman, he reveals why the Soundgarden album was pushed back, when the new Pearl Jam album will be done and how he keeps it all together.
It’s not everyday that you get to be a part of two of the most in demand acts in music, unless your name is Matt Cameron. In the mid-80′s Matt joined a little-known Seattle act who called themselves Soundgarden. Their unique sound and Chris Cornell‘s incomparable voice propelled them to the upper echelon of rock in the early 90′s. When the demands of the music industry caused the band to implode in 1997, Matt took his drum sticks across the street to his friends in Pearl Jam, for whom he still plays today.
After more than a decade in the can with PJ and a couple years down with the reunited Soundgarden — Cameron is busier than ever. “It’s more difficult to sit down and think about it, actually,” Cameron tells Rockol.com of his demanding schedule. “As a musician it’s not hard for me to do it. But the scheduling can be sometime tough. Both bands will be pretty active in the next couple of years. Sometime my family gets a little upset that I’m gone so much, and I certainly don’t want to be gone that much. But the opportunities are really fantastic right now…I’m enjoying it.”
Both Soundgarden and Pearl Jam have new albums in the works, the former has been delayed multiple times but is now complete and will be out in the fall. “It just took a little time to get it going, because of scheduling,” Cameron explains of Soundgarden’s new disc. “Chris [Cornell] and I have pretty busy schedules, tours outside of Soundgarden. So it has just taken a long time to get everyone on the same page and make sure we’re not double-booking ourselves.”
“We might try one or two off of the new record,” Cameron says of Soundgarden’s upcoming tour. Nearly all of Cameron’s summer will be spent splitting time between both bands’ tours, after which it’s back to work on PJ’s new album. “We’re going to finish recording this fall,” reveals Cameron. “We had half of it done, and then we decided to go back and do some more writing. We’re going to do publish it at some point in 2013, but I can’t look that far into the future.”