Waikiki Shell, Honolulu, HI
April 21-22

Photo by : Roxanne Haynes

Who cares when you mess up when you are amongst friends? Miscues and missteps aside, they’ll still love you in the end—and maybe a little more because of it.

Thus was the case with Jack Johnson and Eddie Vedder at Johnson’s environmental-themed Kokua Festival: not a soul cared how many times they messed up their own and each other’s songs, because by the end of the weekend, it all came out as heartfelt and hilarious.

On night two of the clean and green festival, which benefits the Kokua Hawai’i Foundation, Vedder sucked when he should have blown into the microphone on the Pearl Jam song “Driftin.”

“What just happened was the weirdest thing,” Vedder deadpanned. “I sucked into the microphone instead of the harmonica.” Instances like this in situations like this are contagious; Johnson coughed up a confession after screwing up a verse with Vedder on PJ’s “Elderly Woman.”

“I used to sit my room and play Pearl Jam songs, and I’ve waited like 31 years for this moment, so I’m a little nervous,” Johnson admitted, before Vedder asked the crowd where they should pick up the song. Later, they handed out a box of Kurt Vonnegut books to the crowd in memory of Vonnegut’s recent passing (he died April 11, 2007), before Johnson’s rendition of another Pearl Jam tune, “Soon Forget.”

Including two nights of monster performances by homegrown artist Ernie Cruz Jr. and his brilliant assorted band of Aloha All-stars, the 2007 Kokua was “all killah and no fillah,” and during Johnson’s sharing of “Constellations” with Vedder and Kokua emcee Kawika Kahiapo, the connection between man, music and nature—voices in harmony, stars above serving as the trio’s bass and drums—was one of those resoundingly resplendent moments that friends never forget.