Josh Klinghoffer ‘Dreams’ Big On New Pluralone LP

Pearl Jam touring member and former Red Hot Chili Peppers guitarist Josh Klinghoffer hasn’t released an album with his Pluralone solo project since 2022, but he’s hoping to make up for lost time with two separate new releases this year. The first, the acoustic guitar-driven A Drop in the Ocean, will arrive June 12 on Org Music and is previewed by lead single “Peer Into Your Dreams.”

The set was crafted with longtime friend Eric Palmquist, who served for the first time as a producer on a Klinghoffer project. Writer/musician Chelsea Hodson, to whom Klinghoffer was introduced by writer Lili Anolik, also lends her voice to three tracks. Late last month, Klinghoffer released album cut “I Hope You Knew” in tribute to late Foo Fighters drummer Taylor Hawkins on the fourth anniversary of his death.

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For the uninitiated, the 46-year-old Klinghoffer grew up in Los Angeles as a music obsessive and was playing with former Thelonious Monster leader Bob Forest’s Bicycle Thief project by the time he was 17. He eventually befriended then-Red Hot Chili Peppers guitarist John Frusciante and made music with him for a number of years, a turn of events that in 2007 led to him joining the Chili Peppers as an auxiliary musician. Two years later, he replaced Frusciante as the band’s lead guitarist, a role he held until late 2019. Shortly thereafter, he joined Pearl Jam as a touring jack of all trades, and has since toured and recorded extensively with the Seattle Rock and Roll Hall of Famers and their frontman, Eddie Vedder.

Klinghoffer told SPIN about the music that would ultimately appear on A Drop in the Ocean nearly four years ago, but owing to his touring schedule in the time since with Pearl Jam and session work such as the Grammy-nominated, Andrew Watt-produced Elton John and Brandi Carlile effort Who Believes in Angels?, he didn’t complete the album until late 2025. The multi-instrumentalist checked in with SPIN on Zoom from his home studio, where the walls are lined with Mudhoney, Tom Waits, David Bowie and Van Morrison posters and an acoustic guitar lurks just out of frame.

Way back in 2022, you told me that you were working on “what seems like an acoustic-based album” and that the recordings would be “simple.”

That’s this!

Tell me how you got it over the line, and why it’s largely acoustic? It’s not necessarily what people night expect from your solo work.

The impetus was the death of [Fela Kuti drummer] Tony Allen at the very beginning of COVID. Flea texted me about it and I thought it was a big loss. I grabbed my acoustic guitar and phone and recorded a cover of the song ‘Poison’ by Rocket Juice & the Moon, which was a band with Flea, Tony and Damon Albarn. I was obsessed with these recordings. I posted it, and someone in the comments wrote, you should do a whole album like this. I thought, that’s a good idea. I’m always trying to be more direct and rely less on obscuring myself more and more with each layer, instrument or doubled vocal. That was the basis for sticking with a bunch of acoustic-y songs.

That was almost four years ago. How much work had to be done from that point to finish it?

I was doing vocals all along, but they weren’t totally done and they weren’t totally relaxed. I tried again with some of the songs in 2023. I usually know I have a limited amount of time for solo work between Pearl Jam or other commitments, so I try to get something down during those windows. I kept feeling with these songs that I hadn’t really cracked the code on the vocals. It wasn’t until last year when I could really focus and get them right.

Have you ever released a song with guitar playing like on ‘Too Much Time Gone By?’

No, I’ve never really done a lot of fingerpicking, because I’ve always opted for bigger, more produced-sounding stuff. But I like playing that way. I don’t get to do it live much. I kind of just hack away at it. I’m a big Elliot Smith fan and I’ve gone through periods where I try not to use a pick at all. Daniel Lanois plays that way and he’s so expressive and dynamic with his right hand. I love watching him. I also saw Graham Coxon from Blur play a solo show from very close up and he’d been working on his fingerpicking for a bit. I was really impressed. 

A lot of these songs, like ‘Peer Into Your Dreams,’ ‘Too Much Time Gone By’ and ‘Simple Action,’ were written in 2021 towards the end of the COVID period, when I was at home a lot and playing a lot of guitar. The bridge in ‘Peer Into Your Dreams’ is kind of Who-y. It almost sounds like the acoustic song from [Pearl Jam’s] Gigaton that we haven’t played live yet [‘Comes Then Goes’]. There was a point where I would have loved to shown the song to Ed [Vedder] when he was working on [his solo album] Earthling, but now it’s going to be on this album.

There are also songs on here like ‘Give’ that are quite a bit older.

I have a memory of coming up with that around the turn of the century. I’ve recorded multiple versions of it and they’ve gradually gotten shorter and shorter, because the arrangement never felt right. The winning combo is what’s on the album, where the guitar is in what’s called a Nashville tuning. Every album, I sneak on one song from ancient history.

Am I hearing some Jeff Buckley and Prince vibes on ‘I Don’t Want To Let You Go?’

That’s a high compliment. I remember working on that song at my grandma’s house. Often with songs that take a while to finish writing, I’m trying to smash three different meanings into the same title. So here, it was not wanting to let my grandmother go mixed with not wanting to let go of humanity when we screw up and nuclear holocaust takes us all out. It’s nostalgic — I don’t want to let go of the world I grew up in.

You address this in another very personal way on ‘I Hope You Knew,’ which is about Taylor Hawkins.

Every record I do, I feel like I’m turning the focus knob on my vocals a little bit more, and making them a little bit more understandable. I used to love everything about the way that Jeremy Enigk from Sunny Day Real Estate sang, because I could never understand it. I sang like that for so long in an attempt to twist and garble the words as much as possible. It has taken many years for me to really get what people connect with in a song. I still listen for the sound, and the way the emotions seep through the sonic presentation, but as I’ve gotten older, the most important thing to me now is to communicate in a song verbally in the best way I can.

I wasn’t as close with Taylor as Andrew, [Red Hot Chili Peppers drummer] Chad [Smith] and [former Jane’s Addiction bassist] Chris Chaney. He died within days of us finishing that first [Eddie Vedder and] Earthlings tour, and after the last show in San Diego, he was on the phone talking to us all. After he died, there were a lot of rumors floating around, and my prevalent thought was that I fucking hoped he knew how much people really loved him. 

How did you meet Eric Palmquist, who produced this album?

Eric was the house engineer at the studio that was the closest to my old house where [former band] Dot Hacker would meet and rehearse. We were always like, let’s just go to Infrasonic Sound, since it’s right down the street. We called and I told him my name is Josh and I play in the Chili Peppers. I could hear him typing my name into the internet while we talked (laughs). We did a first session with him and it was a lot of fun. This was probably back in 2014? He bought the studio shortly afterwards and has pretty much been booked solid ever since.

Basically, the reason I built my own studio is because we always had to work around Eric’s availability. So, I build my own thing and I have gear, but I don’t know how to work ProTools. This album was us working on vocals at his place and then him coming down to mine to finish the music. He’s one of the most wholesome and generous people that I know, and we’ve worked together now for 12 years or so. I just trust him. It’s taken a long time for him to be called the ‘producer,’ which is a word I’ve never really gotten along with. My experiences with producers in the Chili Peppers were not great. I certainly didn’t enjoy Rick [Rubin] at all. What’s the Goldilocks version of a producer? In this case, it felt like the same relationship we’ve always had, but it’s funny that it had never occurred to me before to ask him, hey, will you be the producer?

I think a producer should care as much as the band and know the songs backwards and forwards. That’s what I tried to do when I worked with Redd Kross a couple years ago, which was the first full-length album I’d ever produced. Their drummer, Dale Crover, was recovering from back surgery, so I wound up playing drums on it. Because of that, I really had a deep understanding of the songs, and it was a great experience to produce a band in that way.

Have you played on other projects lately while you’ve been working on your own things?

The other day with Andrew, I played piano and synth on a song by Sam Fender that will be for the HBO show Rooster. I spent a bulk of last year working on A Drop in the Ocean. I’m actually going to start with Eric on the next group of songs a week from tomorrow and hopefully release it on Oct. 7. In order to hit that release date, I have to get it turned in and mastered the first week of June, which is basically when this one comes out. So, I’m giving myself a short leash.

All things being equal, I’d imagine you’d love to be playing shows with Pearl Jam this year?

Oh, yeah. We did tours for Gigaton and Dark Matter pretty much back-to-back, which is rare these days. There wasn’t any time to think about much else until the last run ended in May 2025. When I got home, I was like, my god! I haven’t had this open of a schedule in 15 years or more — definitely since joining the Chili Peppers. I’ll be there whenever the Pearl Jam guys are ready to go. I like having this unstructured time, and I’m obviously still new with them, but I miss those guys. I hope one of the things I bring to the table is to remind them how great it is to be a member of Pearl Jam.

If in some universe they asked you to play drums, would you do it?

In a heartbeat. It would be the fulfillment of my dreams. The sad fact is that I don’t play enough drums these days to at least appear like I’ve got it under control. I did one full show and a smattering of other ones. For the record, I’d do it before you could even finish the question.

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