Doug Emhoff Talks Hanging With Michael Stipe in Pearl Jam Interview

Second Gentleman Doug Emhoff has been busy campaigning around the country on behalf of wife Kamala Harris in the most dude’s rock way possible: Digging through the crates at record stores and hanging out with Michael Stipe. 

Emhoff spoke about how he’s incorporated record stores into the campaign trail during a new interview with Pearl Jam’s Eddie Vedder and Jeff Ament on SiriusXM’s Pearl Jam Radio. It’s a clever move designed to, as Emhoff put it, “highlight small businesses and talk about all the great things that Kamala Harris is gonna do for the country and merge it with my love of music.”

For instance, this month, Emhoff did a couple of events with Stipe, including one in the musician’s hometown in Athens, Georgia. While there, they visited the record store where R.E.M. was formed, and after that, Emhoff got to visit Stipe’s home.

“He took me back there for a personal tour,” Emhoff continued, “and he’s like, ‘Oh yeah, right here is where I wrote Fables [of the Reconstruction], like the whole album in three weeks, just walking around in a circle.’ I’m like, ‘What?’ And ‘Right here is where Peter and I, you know, talked about this.’”

To cap it all off, Stipe let Emhoff record an interview with Joe Scarborough at his guest house, and then got a special private performance: “He played ‘Driver 8’ and ‘Wendell Gee,’ which is the first time he played it in 30 something years to me and Joe. And then he played it in front of a crowd of hundreds of people in Athens. So this is so surreal, man, to be able to experience this.”

Emhoff celebrated how many musicians have rallied around the Harris campaign, mentioning the support of Jon Bon Jovi, Jason Isbell, Bruce Springsteen, Taylor Swift, and of course Pearl Jam.

“The music industry has come out in a way that you guys have always done this,” Emhoff said. “It’s what you did from day one, using your voice, not only to make this music we all love, but to talk about the truth and being engaged. And so to see that coming back, and get to talk to some of the people I’ve listened to my whole life… [and] to do that in a record store with Michael Stipe in Athens and pick out some records was pretty, pretty damn cool, man.”