Image Courtesy of Danny ClinchPearl Jam bass player Jeff Ament says he's not sorry that the band's Lightning Bolt tour, which ended last month, is over.
"I'm at the end of this tour and my knee hurts and my ears are ringing and I miss my wife and I miss my dogs. So right now, I gotta say I can't wait to not be out here for a while," Ament tells Rolling Stone. But he admits, after some time off he'll probably be happy to get back to work with the band.
"The time off is good. I can't think of a time in the last 10 years where I wasn't like [claps hands] 'I can't wait to see the guys' after we've been away from it a couple months," he says.
When that's likely to be is anyone's guess however. Ament admits that the band currently has no plans to record a follow-up to 2013's Lightning Bolt. But, he says, it's not for want of material. "I think everybody's got some stuff stowed away," he says.
However fans should expect most of what Ament has stowed away to wind up on a forthcoming box set from RNMD, Ament's band which features singer/songwriter Joseph Arthur and Fastbacks/Three Fish drummer Richard Stuverud.
Still, Ament notes, he thinks that after almost 25 years Pearl Jam is still able to fire on all cylinders. "I'll be honest, when things blew up around the second or third record, I thought it could implode at any time," he says. "It feels like it's all bonus time at this point, you know? And it makes you want to try harder. I feel like our last couple records are pretty strong, because we worked super hard on them. As long as we're in the room we might as well go super hard. Everybody's writing songs and everyone's super motivated creatively. As long as that's all still there, there's no reason we can't do it for a while."
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