Dish, Walla

PD: Are you sad for your last night on the Vote for Change tour?
CW: It is sad. This has been great. We're still on the Pearl Jam dime, so we're at the Ritz-Carlton ... which is kind of creepy. We're flying on a private jet, which is lunacy ... but it's so weird. Last night, I rented a car and went to Daytona Beach and stayed at a really bad hotel. It was wonderful.

So what's there to do on a Thursday night in Daytona Beach?
There's absolutely nothing to do in Daytona Beach on a Thursday night when you're this close after the hurricanes hit. It was a complete mess. I had no idea.

Well, the Pacific Northwest isn't exactly known for its hurricanes.
True ... But we have sinkholes, which are fantastic. And maybe [Mt. St. Helens] erupting next week. Although I think the volcano is waiting to see how the election turns out before it decides whether to erupt.

Is the Vote for Change tour preaching to the choir?
I don't think so. The crowd is probably a little left-leaning, but the numbers have been good in terms of people registering to vote. The reception has been wonderful. All the work, the press machine, the idea behind the tour, were done before the tour. Making sure people followed through was the tough part. But when you have people like Eddie Vedder signed on, that isn't really a problem.

Is Eddie really that intense, or is he a teddy bear?
He's absolutely a teddy bear. He is intense, but he's also very sweet and unassuming.

Having grown up in Seattle, is touring with Pearl Jam kind of like touring with Jesus?
[Laughs] Actually I was not a big fan until about the third album. When 10 came out, I was busy listening to the Posies and Big Star. It wasn't until Vitalogythat I started to get into them.

Are you glad to be touring with them instead of, say, John Fogerty?
We were just happy to be involved. Sometimes it seems like the one-man, one-vote thing isn't enough. You want to do more.

If you had two minutes to address the president, what would you say?
Huh, what would I say?

How about two words?
Um ... I really don't know ...

I'm totally setting you up.
[Laughs] I know, I know. But I can't do it. I'm a golden-rule kind of boy.