Why Jason Narducy and Michael Shannon Are Touring the Band’s Iconic Albums

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!”

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.”

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.’”

Jason Narducy’s Gear

Guitars

Two Fender American Ultra Telecasters

Amps

Fender Hot Rod III Deluxe

Effects

Keeley Compressor Pro

MXR Modified OD

Daredevil LED Clipper

Boss TU-3 Tuner

Strymon Mobius

Strymon TimeLine

Boss RV-3 Reverb

Touring pedalboard built by Johnny Wator, owner/operator of Daredevil Pedals

Picks

Tortex orange .60 mm picks