Brandi Carlile, being a Washington State native, has a history of honoring Seattle’s music history. Back in August, Carlile brought up the surviving members of Soundgarden — Kim Thayil, Ben Shepherd, and Matt Cameron — to perform with her at the Gorge Amphitheatre, where they played “Black Hole Sun” and “Searching With My Good Eye Closed.” Now, over the weekend, Carlile, who is releasing the new album In These Silent Days on October 1, joined another grunge pioneer, Pearl Jam, onstage at Ohana Fest in in Dana Point, California. As Pearl Jam closed out the three-day fest, Carlile, who’d played earlier in the evening, joined Eddie Vedder & Co. onstage to perform “Better Man.” Carlile also performed her rendition of the aforementioned Soundgarden track “Searching With My Good Eye Closed.”
As he introduced Carlile to the stage, Vedder joked about how he’d been granted permission to refer to a group of female performers as “power bitches” on the next stage over. “We had some great people on these two stages, and some of them were gentlemen…,” Vedder said. “But there was a [husband and wife] group called Shovels & Rope… We had Jade Bird and the incredible Sharon Van Etten, and we had Mon Laferte… Another woman who blew my mind was Yola.”
He continued, “So what my friend Brandi Carlile said was, she said, ‘Man, there are a lot of power bitches on this stage.’ I couldn’t agree more. Don’t cancel me for saying ‘bitches’ in the nicest way possible. And Brandi would know about power bitches because it takes one to know one!”
Watch Carlile and Vedder perform “Better Man” above.