Pearl Jam to Take Denver Band on Tour in April

Denver band Dead Pioneers has had a humongous year. The group, fronted by Indigenous artist and activist Gregg Deal, released the incendiary song and video "Bad Indian" early in 2024, and we named it Best Punk Music Video in our annual Best of Denver issue. Then the song was voted one of NPR's best by an unsigned band. Then, well, Dead Pioneers did get signed — to Hassle Records out of the UK, which worked with Alternative Tentacles, the legendary punk label owned by Jello Biafra, to release the 7” that AT was keen to put out on its own label but in partnership with Hassle. (Biafra, frontman of San Francisco trailblazing punk group Dead Kennedys, was a 1976 graduate of Boulder High School who remains involved in the Colorado music scene.)

But that was all just prelude. In September, Pearl Jam bassist Jeff Ament invited Dead Pioneers to play his Big Sandy Pig Roast music festival in his native Montana. Ament must have enjoyed the band's notoriously intense set, because next year Pearl Jam is taking Dead Pioneers on the road.



Dead Pioneers will be the direct opening act for Pearl Jam on four dates of the iconic grunge band's Dark Matter tour: April 24 and 26 in Hollywood, Florida, at Hard Rock Live, and April 29 and May 1 in Atlanta, Georgia, at State Farm Arena.

After that, time to come home and rest? Not even. A couple weeks after the Pearl Jam jaunt is over, Dead Pioneers will head to Europe for a six-show headlining tour in May. Because really, who needs to sleep?

This clusterfuck of awesomeness comes on the heels of the news that Dead Pioneers guitarist Abe Brennan was chosen as the new lead singer for the reunited Rich Kids on LSD, one of the most influential American punk bands of the ’80s.

Brennan, 55, is still reeling from all the announcements. "So after decades of experimentation," he says, "I seem to have finally cracked the code to music success. Here's what you do. Start when you're fifteen, slog in relative obscurity for forty years, then some stuff starts to work out.

"In all seriousness," Brennan adds, "I don’t quite understand this late-life, renaissance-of-a-music-career resuscitation I’m having. But I’m just going to roll with it."

Dead Pioneers' next release, a seven-inch vinyl single for "Bad Indian," will be released by Alternative Tentacles on January 24 (though pre-orders made directly through the label's website will ship on December 13). A full-length, recorded at the Blasting Room in Fort Collins, is due later in 2025.

Dead Pioneers can be found at deadpioneersband.com.