Pearl Jam’s Mike McCready keeps rocking for kids

It’s a busy time for Pearl Jam guitarist Mike McCready, from prepping for a European tour to scoring a new film. But the Seattle native’s biggest focus right now is raising as much money as he can to help send sick kids to summer camp.

McCready has devoted himself to helping people suffering from Crohn’s and colitis, debilitating gastrointestinal disorders that are especially hard on kids. The guitarist has been stricken with the disease himself, often forced from the stage in a middle of a concert because of a gastric outbreak.

Wednesday night at Seattle’s Showbox at the Market, McCready returns with his UFO all-star tribute band Flight To Mars. It’s part of a month long tour aimed at raising money for Camp Oasis , a place where kids can be themselves while still getting the medical and emotional support they need to deal with their disease.

I talked with him this week via phone as the tour wound through California on its way up the West Coast, and he told me the biggest challenge continues to be raising awareness.

“A lot of people don’t realize it, but they know people that have Crohn’s or colitis. And the more we talk about it, the more we put light on it, the less kind of an issue it becomes and there’s more solution in that,” McCready said.

His ongoing efforts are paying off. “It started out with 10 or 12 kids about 6-8 years ago, then it bumped up to 25 about 5 years then it bumped up to 40 then it bumped up to 90 then they couldn’t take the Northwest Chapter anymore because we had so many kids, so we started our own right outside Gig Harbor,” McCready said.

After the Flight to Mars tour wraps up, McCready and the rest of Pearl Jam are prepping for a European tour. And work is underway on the band’s next album, which he’s really excited about.

“I feel good about it you know it’s still in its infancy, infant stages right now. But we have about 7 or 8 demos ready to go that we’ve worked on with our producer Brendan O’Brien. There’s some stuff that’s experimental, there’s some ballads there’s some killer rock songs, but they’re not ready yet. They’re not realized. We’re taking our time and making them as best as possible because we can do that now. We don’t want to just rush something out.”

A lot of local Pearl Jam fans were disappointed the band didn’t play Seattle as part of 2011’s year long celebration of the band’s 20th year, highlighted by a 2- day all-star festival in Wisconsin. But McCready told me it was because all the outdoor venues in the area were already booked when they went to put it together for Labor Day weekend.

“We had to go where the place was available. Certainly we wanted to play in Seattle since that’s our home. And we’re talking about wanting to do a free concert there again some day. But we have to figure the logistics out about that as we did back in 1992 when we did it before in “Drop in the Park” (a free concert the band staged at Seattle’s Magnuson Park) and 34 thousand people showed up. So you have to be very careful on how you do that we’ll be back we love our town so we’re very supportive of it and we support all the institutions that are there and we’re sons of it and we’ll be back.”

And if that’s not enough, McCready also did the musical score for the new film “Fat Kid Rules The World,” screening several times during the Seattle International Film Festival now underway in town.

“I liked the script a lot it was a cool story and it took awhile because we had a lot of back and forth,” McCready told me about working with director Mathew Lillard.

“I would do a set of ideas for him and he would go ‘well I like this but I don’t like this can you make it sound more this way?’ He’s not a musician so you have to kind of interpret it in a weird way, he’s like ‘make it more orange,” Mcready laughed.

But in the end, the film and its music are both getting rave reviews. “I think he’s proud of it and I’m very very proud of it,” McCready said.

But he remains most proud of his work raising awareness and money to combat Crohn’s and colitis.

Mike McCready and Flight To Mars perform Wednesday May 23rd at Seattle’s Showbox at the Market. Tickets are still available and all proceeds benefit the Crohn’s and Colitis Foundation of America.

Josh Kerns/co-host Seattle Sounds