The University of Montana’s three-concert series at Washington-Grizzly Stadium began on Thursday night, appropriately enough, with a band that's played there twice before. If you needed a reminder of which years, Pearl Jam had a special maroon letterman-style jacket made that lists the veteran rock group’s shows at this venue: 1998, 2018, and now 2024. There were jersey-style maroon tour shirts for sale, too.
The merchandise line at one point reached two blocks — the same length as the line to get into the stadium. Pearl Jam frontman Eddie Vedder performs at Washington-Grizzly Stadium in Missoula on Thursday, Aug. 22, 2024.
Such is the novelty of having one of the most famous rock bands in the world curate a show specifically for the audience in a rural state. In about a week, Eddie Vedder will perform two nights in a row at Wrigley Field, capacity 41,000. Yet here he was in Missoula, giving shout-outs to a list of small towns to see how they were represented in the audience of 24,000: Havre, Billings, Butte, Belfry, Bigfork, Ekalaka, Rudyard.
“Lame Deer? How about Eureka?” he asked. “This one goes out Big Sandy, because that’s the one that produced my friend, Jeff,” he said, before launching into one of their acoustic classics, “Elderly Woman Behind the Counter in a Small Town.” Jeff, of course, is Jeff Ament, bassist and cofounder of the group.
He’s ensured the band has stopped here over the years, particularly when fellow Big Sandy product Jon Tester,.