Lukas Nelson & Eddie Vedder Team Up For Beautiful Acoustic Performance Of “Just Breathe”

I needed this.

Yesterday at Ohana Festival in Doheny State Beach in California, Pearl Jam headlined the festival and brought out a very special guest in Lukas Nelson, who of course sat down for a beautiful acoustic performance of “Just Breathe.”

Lukas and his legendary father Willie Nelson previously recorded a beautiful duet of “Just Breathe” in 2012 for Willie’s Heroes album. Lukas recently discussed on comedian Bert Kreischer’s Bertcast podcast how much that recorded means to him, and how special it is for him when they get to sing onstage together as his father impressively continues to tour into his 90’s:

“Man, the best thing in life is being with him onstage playing. We play a lot together. We did, I’m so glad we did this, we did a Pearl Jam song together called ‘Just Breathe,’ and did a video for it back years ago.

And I love that we’ll have that for the rest of our lives together. I’ll always have that with him. I love that I’ll have him, and his voice, with me forever.”

“Just Breathe” was originally released in 2009 as the second single from Pearl Jam’s ninth studio album, Backspacer. A solo write by frontman Eddie Vedder, it peaked at #6 on the U.S. Billboard Alternative chart, which makes it the band’s highest-charting follow-up single since “Wishlist” in 1998.

I’ve always loved this song so much, and Lukas has a beautiful rendition with his father Willie Nelson, but hearing him sing it with the original songwriter in Eddie Vedder is beyond cool… plus, the fact that is was a simply acoustic performance just does it fro me and I can’t get enough.

And actually, on an old episode of Willie’s Roadhouse, Vedder likened their rendition to:

“Smoking a great joint without all the coughing or the smoke.”

A great comparison when it comes to Nelson covers, indeed… Eddie also told Willie what an unbelievable honor it was to have him sing that song, even going so far is to call it his own:

“Best contribution to music so far.”

If Vedder and Nelson are ever on the lineup for the same festival, you can pretty much bet they’re going to team up for “Just Breathe” at some point, and

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Willie and Lukas also recently performed together at Farm Aid:

If you’ve never seen the original music video, it’s just precious:

The post Lukas Nelson & Eddie Vedder Team Up For Beautiful Acoustic Performance Of “Just Breathe” first appeared on Whiskey Riff.