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Listen to the December 2018 PG Spotify Playlist
We’ve got tracks by heavyweights like former Rage Against the Machine and Audioslave guitarist Tom Morello, garage-rock icons Mark Arm and Steve Turner from Mudhoney, and Sleep and High on Fire frontman Matt Pike.
When Jason Narducy met Michael Shannon in 2014, it was to celebrate the Lou Reed record The Blue Mask for a one-off performance in Chicago. Narducy, who plays guitar and bass with Superchunk, Bob Mould, and Sunny Day Real Estate among others, was familiar with Shannon’s work in films like Take Shelter and The Iceman—2014 was right around when Shannon became a bona fide Hollywood star. But he didn’t know that Shannon was also a lifelong musician. He sang in choirs and played in orchestras in school, and his indie-rock band, Corporal, put out their debut record in 2010, with Shannon as lead vocalist and guitarist. He portrayed George Jones in the 2022 miniseries George and Tammy, and handled all the musical performances himself.
When Narducy and Shannon realized they loved many of the same artists, they decided to produce more one-time-only shows honoring them: They played Neil Young’s Zuma, Bob Dylan’s Highway 61 Revisited, and joined tributes to T. Rex and the Cars. In 2023, they turned to R.E.M.’s debut Murmur, which was marking its 40th anniversary that year.
Narducy had worked with R.E.M. bassist Mike Mills before, so he invited him to the show at Chicago’s Metro, but it was anyone’s guess if he’d show. Backstage in the green room before the gig, the band was running through tunes with Scott Lucas of Chicago band Local H (named after two R.E.M. songs, “Oddfellows Local 151” and “Swan Swan H”) when someone knocked on the door. It was Mills, who introduced himself to every band member and shook their hands. Of course, Narducy suggested he join them onstage, but Mills politely demurred, insisting he didn’t want to steal the show.
Narducy remembers feeling confused when the crowd exploded during a random moment during the set. Neither he nor Shannon noticed, but Mills had crept onstage to sing backing vocals. He continued to make cameos throughout the set. At one point, he leaned in to then-bassist Nick Macri and yelled, “You’re fucking killing it!”
Michael Shannon (l) and Jason Narducy lead the band through their first R.E.M. gig back in 2023, playing Murmur front to back.
Photo by Cameron Flaisch
Since that show, Shannon and Narducy have undertaken R.E.M.’s Reckoning and Fables of the Reconstruction. When they began collaborating, the pair initially had a “strict code of ethos,” says Shannon. “We would pick a record, play it once, and that was it,” he explains. “Then people said, ‘You can’t just do that once. Do it again. You have to do it where we live.’” Narducy, a seasoned veteran of the road, wondered if Shannon would want to tour. Shannon remembers, “I said, ‘Well, I guess I’ve never been on a rock ’n’ roll tour before. I’ve heard so much about it. Let’s give it a shot.’”
They took Fables of the Reconstruction around the U.S. with a band assembled by Narducy: bassist John Stirratt, guitarist Dag Juhlin, drummer Jon Wurster, and keyboardist Vijay Tellis-Nayak. Narducy met with Julin before the tour to divvy up guitar parts, but otherwise, the band practiced just once together before hitting the road. “We do a lot of research on our own,” explains Narducy. “It does take a lot of homework to learn these songs.”
In February and March 2026, Michael Shannon & Jason Narducy And Friends—the outfit’s official name—are taking R.E.M.’s Lifes Rich Pageant on the road, celebrating the record’s 40th anniversary with 22 shows across the U.S. The run includes back-to-back shows in R.E.M.’s hometown of Athens, Georgia, where Mills, vocalist Michael Stipe, guitarist Peter Buck, and drummer Bill Berry reunited to perform “Pretty Persuasion” in February 2025 with Shannon & Narducy And Friends.
Plenty of artists of a certain caliber are precious about performing in cover projects, but neither Shannon nor Narducy feel an ounce of conflict about it. “A lot of these songs are canonical as far as I’m concerned,” says Shannon. “It’s not like you wouldn’t play Mozart because you didn’t write it.”
“Brilliant songs need to be played,” Narducy adds. “I hope that the audiences sense that we are celebrating just as much as they are. I think we consider ourselves a conduit of reinterpreting these songs. And when I say reinterpreting, not like a vast rearrangement. No one can play like those guys did. Plenty have tried.”
During a show at the 40 Watt Club in Athens, Georgia, Michael Shannon & Jason Narducy And Friends are joined by some familiar faces: R.E.M. bassist Mike Mills (l) and Peter Buck (third from right).
Photo by Mike White
Narducy discovered R.E.M. in high school; decades later, as a professional musician, relearning the band’s catalog has felt like “taking a college course, one that I really enjoy and hopefully makes me a better musician and storyteller.” Narducy sneezes: “Sorry, talking about college makes me sneeze. It’s very rewarding, is what I mean to say.”
As it turns out, Peter Buck’s jangly, genre-defining playing left an unseen mark on Narducy’s own guitar work. “I’m realizing that Peter had a bigger influence on me than I even realized,” says Narducy. He often writes with chords like F# major with the B and E strings open—a “Peter Buck go-to chord.” Ditto A9, which appears in many early R.E.M. tunes. Buck, explains Narducy, would deconstruct Mike Mills’ cowboy-chord skeletons for songs, paring them back to “more of an arpeggiated, single-note approach. That’s obviously one of his signature sounds, and kind of created that jangle-rock thing.”
“Mills’ bass parts are so inventive,” Narducy adds. “You listen to a song like ‘Driver 8,’ that’s not the obvious bassline, especially if you just hear it isolated. It almost sounds like a different song, but married with Peter’s guitar part, it’s just magical, uplifting.”
To tackle Buck’s guitar parts, Narducy uses a Fender American Ultra Telecaster into a Fender Hot Rod III Deluxe—Juhlin plays a Rickenbacker like Buck did, and Narducy worried that two of them onstage wouldn’t jibe as well. A Strymon Mobius injects chorus when needed.
“A lot of these songs are canonical as far as I’m concerned. It’s not like you wouldn’t play Mozart because you didn’t write it.” —Michael Shannon
Stipe’s lyricism, too, is a point of creative fascination for both Shannon and Narducy. “Well, it’s certainly not head-on, you know?” says Shannon. “If he writes a song about love, he’s not writing a chorus like, ‘Baby, let me love you.’ It’s a lot more rooted in mystery. A lot of rock ’n’ roll seems to exist in order to give you an escape from real life and make you feel like you’re in some alternate universe where everything’s super exciting, but he’s like, ‘No, we don’t have to run away from real life when we’re singing our songs. Real life is pretty interesting if you look at it closely.’”
Shannon refers to “Kohoutek,” a track off of R.E.M.’s third record, Fables of the Reconstruction. (In early 2025, Narducy, Shannon, and the band performed that album’s “Driver 8” on Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon.) Shannon explains it as a song about love between young people. “It doesn’t have the typical verbiage that you would associate with a love song,” he says. “It’s talking about sitting in the garden, standing on the porch, building a bridge. And yet, to me, it’s much more eloquent and moving, even though the language outside of the song is less ornamental, more matter-of-fact.
“No one can play like those guys did. Plenty have tried.” —Jason Narducy
“Michael Stipe is unique as a frontman because a lot of times, frontmen present themselves as on top of things, or like, ‘I’m a sexy alpha badass,’ and Michael Stipe is like, ‘Jesus Christ, life is overwhelming and confusing.’ He’s incredibly sexy and a badass and all those things, but he’s so vulnerable and ready to admit that he’s struggling just as much as anybody else. There’s a lineage of front people that have taken that and ran with it, but I think he was one of the first to introduce that point of view as a frontperson in a band.”
Even though Shannon and Narducy initially swore to only do one performance per album, the magic of these R.E.M. gigs hasn’t worn off as they’ve grown into a new tradition. “Even on the very last show of the last tour, there were moments throughout the show where I’m uncontrollably smiling at each member at some point throughout the show,” says Narducy. “It’s just like, ‘Here we are.’”
John Scofield is an absolute titan of jazz guitar. He’s had an illustrious solo career spanning over four decades and he’s shared the stage with the most important musicians of our time. In this lesson we’ll look at his brilliant single-line approach that endears him to jazz audiences around the globe.
Ex. 1 is about as Scofield as we can get without consulting a patent lawyer, though a good case could be made that he took this idea from pianist Thelonious Monk. You can hear this descending whole-tone-based lick in many of Sco’s solos. The notes impart a strong Bb7#11 sound and the final note is pushed off the fingerboard and returned in a vibrato-like motion. That’s another great Scofield-ism that just can’t be ignored.
Ex. 1
Turn up that chorus pedal and hone your string-skipping chops with Ex. 2, a 1980s-style 16th-note funk lick. The basic sound is G7, but with a host of alterations. The G half/whole diminished scale (G–Ab–Bb–B–C#–D–E–F) is clearly important, but it doesn’t explain everything Scofield plays. As Scofield has mentioned regarding playing over vamps like this one, “I’m not really sure what I’m doing. It’s just an in-and-out bop style.” Feel free to include chromatic approaches and blues licks as done here as well.
Ex. 2
The IIm–V–I lick in Ex. 3 shows how Scofield could extend basic bebop mannerisms into something distinctly original. It’s clear that the thinking is F Lydian dominant (F–G–A–B–C–D–Eb) over both the Cm7 and the F7 chords. Scofield would occasionally “summarize” both chords as simply F7.
Ex. 3
Scofield’s now-classic albums with Medeski, Martin, and Wood have garnered mass appeal among funk and jam band enthusiasts over recent decades. Most of his playing on these records is roots-based and you’ll hear plenty of straightforward, blues-inspired licks like this one (Ex. 4) in B minor.
Ex. 4
The B Dorian (B–C#–D–E–F#–G#–A) lick in Ex. 5 is a good example of how Scofield develops a simple motive and answers it with contrasting material. Pinch harmonics can always be used in Scofield’s style. Don’t be concerned with these harmonics generating a specific pitch or even getting them to sound perfect—the randomness is all part of the charm.
Ex. 5
Superimposing ideas in novel ways is important to Sco’s approach and a great way to generate interest over static harmonies. Ex. 6 begins with a simple root/fifth figure in Bb that’s shifted up a half-step to B, and finally resolving back to Bb at the end. It’s an effective way to establish tension and release in a line.
Ex. 6
In recent years, Scofield has embraced a cleaner tone on some of his straight-ahead recordings. Think Vox amp and no RAT. Ex. 7 is an ever-flowing line that he might play over the first phrase of an F blues. Notice how the pickup bar is a G7 idea over the C7 and the first part of measure 1 is actually a C7 line over the F7. This kind of “misalignment” is something that intermediate players often miss, trying to faithfully match the chords all the time. Before long, the music is back on track and matching the chords in a more predictable manner, at least until the eclectic use of an A major line leading into the Bb7. Finish everything up with a Sco trademark major seventh double-stop.
Ex. 7
Ex. 8 is a particularly guitaristic way to play over the second phrase of an F blues. Even though the line is fingered in the 6th position, why not use an open string? The open high E (a #11) gives us the opportunity to get a cool angular sound to the Bb7 line that would otherwise be impossible.
Ex. 8
This phrase (Ex. 9), which begins in the 8th measure of the blues, shows Scofield’s mastery of bebop language. The D7b9 lick pushes into Gm7, which begins the final phrase of the 12-bar form. The IIm–V is clearly a simple sequence from C Lydian dominant (C–D–E–F#–G–A–Bb). The big lesson here is the importance of knowing your bebop fundamentals.
Ex. 9
Now that we’ve broken out the nuts and bolts of this lesson, let’s listen to few essential Scofield tracks to get our ears right. Even jazzers were making music videos in the 1980s.
John Scofield Protocol
“Protocol” from Still Warm, has a classic fusion groove thanks to drummer Omar Hakim and bassist Darryl Jones (both of whom played with Scofield in Miles Davis’ group). Sco’s tone is wide thanks to his signature chorus sound, an often-imitated element of his style.
Wee
When Enroute landed in 2004 it instantly became a classic guitar trio album. Recorded live at the Blue Note, it featured Sco’s longtime trio of drummer Bill Stewart and mentor/electric bassist Steve Swallow. “Wee” is a “rhythm changes” tune, which isn’t that groundbreaking, but the playing takes Denzil Best’s most well-known composition to another planet.
Chicken Dog
In 1998, Scofield teamed up with funk-jazz stalwarts Medeski, Martin, and Wood for A-Go-Go, which is a standout in Sco’s discography. This was the album that introduced him to the jam band scene and informed many of his more recent albums.
After a devastating theft in 2021, the metal band’s guitarist rebuilt his tone empire around some life-changing loans.
Chicago post-metal band Russian Circles had to battle their way back to gear heaven. In 2021, the bulk of the band’s gear was stolen while on tour, leading to a years-long rebuild. As a result, many of the items you might’ve seen in guitarist Mike Sullivan’s Rig Rundown back in 2017 are long gone.
PG’s Chris Kies recently met up with Sullivan at the band’s Chicago practice space, where they’ve resided for nearly 20 years. Check out some highlights from Sullivan’s new, resurrected rig below.
Sullivan has been favoring Dunable guitars of late, borrowing one from tourmate Chelsea Wolfe after his other guitar was nabbed. The green one is based on the Dunable Narwhal, with a more Gibson-like scale—comparable to Sullivan’s old Les Paul. This Narwhal has a mahogany body and neck, maple top, and a coil-tap function for the two humbuckers: a DiMarzio PAF 26th Anniversary and a DiMarzio Joe Duplantier Fortitude signature. Vibrating atop those pickups are D’Addario strings—a set of .011–.056, with the low E swapped for a .058. Sullivan uses a number of different down tunings, all with D-A-D-G-A-D as a starting point.
The white Dunable has a maple neck, a 25.5” scale, and is tuned lower, with a .062 for the low E string. It’s used for drop-A tunings, and has the same DiMarzio pickups.
Gettin’ Hi
Sullivan was turned onto Hiwatts after acquiring some on loan in the wake of the gear theft, and he hasn’t turned back since. The cabinets are loaded with Hiwatt Octapulse speakers.
Mike Sullivan’s Pedalboard
Sullivan runs two pedalboards. The first includes a Peterson tuner, Shure P9HW, Dunlop CBM95 Cry Baby Mini, DigiTech Drop and Whammy Ricochet, and MXR Phase 95.
The motherboard carries a Dunlop DVP3 volume pedal, a Friedman BE-OD Deluxe, Strymon Dig, TimeLine, and Flint, a T-Rex Image Looper, DigiTech JamMan Stereo, MXR CAE Boost/Line Driver, Foxrox Octron3, Electric Eye Cannibal Unicorn, Maxon Apex808, Fortin-Modded Ibanez Tube Screamer, and a Radial Shotgun Guitar Splitter and Buffer.
Bill Murray might be most famous for his acting in classics like Caddyshack, Ghostbusters, and Groundhog Day, but he’s also a bona fide belter and has performed as a singer on stages big and small over the years. A while back, he linked up with guitarists Mike Zito, Albert Castiglia, and Jimmy Vivino to form Bill Murray & His Blood Brothers, a blues-rock outfit.
Ahead of their performance at Nashville’s Ryman Auditorium, Zito, Castiglia, and Vivino gave PG’s John Bohlinger a look at the Deluxe-led rigs they use with Murray.
This PRS John Mayer Silver Sky was sent to Zito by Rich Hannon at Paul Reed Smith. No mods—it’s the same as when it came out of the box. “It’s perfect,” says Zito.
Start Your Engines
Zito’s fiancée bought this from the Gibson Garage the day of this Rundown. It’s a Murphy Lab Les Paul in British racing green, with custom unpotted humbuckers.
Mike Zito’s Pedalboard
Zito has a Boss TU-3, Brown Amplification SSHAC and Protein, and Custom Tones Ethos Clean Fusion Deluxe, which runs direct to front-of-house. There are also two utility boxes: a Walrus Canvas and JHS Buffered Splitter.
Bloody Good Gibson
Gibson sent over this Les Paul Standard in “Blood Brother red,” quips Castiglia. He uses bass picks, which he purchases from Pick World in New Castle, Delaware, and plays Ernie Ball Hybrid Slinky strings.
Albert Castiglia’s Pedalboard
Castiglia’s simple pedalboard carries a G-Lab MIDI Wowee Wah MWW-1, JHS AT+, and a Catalinbread Topanga, plus a Walrus Canvas and Radial JDI Passive DI Box. A UAFX Lion runs right to front-of-house.
It’s a Wonderful Day for Pie
Vivino calls this Gibson Standard Les Paul “Cherry Pie.” It’s loaded with Seymour Duncan Custom Shop Queen Buckers. He’s not a pedal player—he rides his volume and tone controls to get what he needs.
Jimmy Vivino’s Amp and Pedalboard
Vivino brings just one pedal: a Way Huge Deep State, built for him by Jeorge Tripps. It runs into a Fender Deluxe Reverb. “Any Deluxe will do,” he says.
The long-running punk quartet pick prototypes, P basses, and Pauls for their latest live shows.
On tour supporting their 12th full-length record, Silver Bleeds the Black Sun…, California rockers AFI rolled through Nashville’s Marathon Music Works in October. After first running down their rigs in 2017, PG’s Chris Kies linked up again with guitarist Jade Puget and bassist Hunter Burgan to see how their gear has evolved in the past eight years.
Puget found this Les Paul Standard hanging at Guitar Center 15 years ago, and it’s still his go-to live guitar. A surprisingly light specimen, it’s had a Seymour Duncan pickup swapped in, and it’s strung with Ernie Balls—usually .010s.
Throughout AFI’s set, Puget switches between tunings: D sharp, drop C sharp, D standard, and E standard.
Silver Surfer
This new Schecter, a prototype made for Puget, is his first ever silverburst, which saw service in the music video for “Holy Visions.” It’s loaded with a Sustainiac system in the neck position.
Willing and Ableton
Puget has experimented a lot to get his rig to this point. His signal runs through a pair of rack-mounted Line 6 Helix units in a stereo configuration, and also through a computer running Ableton that triggers the exact sound designs he created while recording. The RJM Mastermind and Effect Gizmo are programmed to control all pedals, the Helix, and Ableton.
Jade Puget’s Pedalboard
Most of Puget’s effects come from the Helix, but he also runs a few pedals in his rack, including an MXR EVH 5150 Overdrive and Carbon Copy, Boss DC-2W, RV-2, and BF-2, and a Keeley Compressor.
Another board carries a Boss TU-3, TC Electronic Mimiq, EHX The Clone Theory, TC Electronic Arena, MXR Echoplex, and L.R. Baggs Venue DI.
Blackout
In live contexts, Burgan uses Fender P basses exclusively. This is his No. 1, which he’s had since 2012.
Pinky
This dazzling Fender P was made custom for Burgan before this tour.
Triples is Best
Burgan runs this trio of Ampeg SVT Classics.
Hunter Burgan’s Rack Setup
Burgan uses a RJM Mastermind GT to control his in-show switching. In his backstage rack, there’s an EHX Bass Big Muff, Micro Synth, Satisfaction, Nano POG, Bass Clone, and Graphic Fuzz, and on a second shelf, there’s the rest of the collection: a Bass Soul Food, Battalion, Lizard King, Neo Mistress, and Memory Toy.
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