Grunge rockers Pearl Jam are currently on tour on the West Coast making up dates they had scheduled for 2020. Those dates, of course, were shut down along with the rest of the world thanks to the pandemic.

Then, Pearl Jam drummer, Matt Cameron, came down with his own bout of Covid jeopardizing a show in Oakland, CA last Friday night. Well, Kai Neukermans couldn’t have the show being cancelled, so he stepped up to do something about it.

Kai is an 18-year-old high school student who’s in a band with his younger brother called The Alive. Kai and his brother had just seen Pearl Jam in Los Angeles the week before and riding the high, Kai reached out to Olivia Vedder (Eddie’s daughter) whom he met in 2018 at a festival, asking her to pass along his interest in filling in for the ill Cameron.

The very next day while sitting in class, Kai gets a message back asking to send video of himself drumming and within an hour of sending that footage off, he’s getting a call from Pearl Jam’s management. Kai skipped out on the last two periods of the day to join the band for a quick rehearsal.

Kai only joined the band for one song (below) as another Oakland musician sat in for Cameron the rest of the show, but what a night and memory made for this young man. Vedder brought him to the stage in front of 20 thousand people by saying

“Everybody this is Kai; Kai this is everybody!”