R.E.M.‘s four original members took the stage once again last night (Feb. 27) at the 40 Watt Club in their former Athens, Ga., stomping grounds, joining actor-singer Michael Shannon and guitarist Jason Narducy as part of their current tour performing R.E.M.’s 1985 album Fables of the Reconstruction in its entirety.
Michael Stipe, Peter Buck, Mike Mills and Bill Berry all performed at various points in the evening, reprising an appearance with Shannon and Narducy at the same club almost exactly a year ago while the band was celebrating Murmur. That night, Stipe thanked the audience from the stage but did not sing live; last night, he was fully at the mic for a run through “Pretty Persuasion” (see fan-shot footage below). As he’s done at prior tour stops in Seattle and Portland, Or., Buck played guitar on six songs, while Mills joined for seven and Berry manned the drum kit for “Wendell Gee.” Patti Smith Group guitarist Lenny Kaye was also on hand for two Velvet Underground covers (see the full setlist here).
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Asked if he, Shannon, Wilco bassist John Stirratt, Mountain Goats/Bob Mould drummer Jon Wurster, guitarist Dag Juhlin and keyboardist Vijay Tellis-Nayak had any advance warning that R.E.M. would be in the house, Narducy tells SPIN, “oh, absolutely none. I don’t think they knew. After ‘Pretty Persuasion,’ Peter leaned over to me and said, I did not think Michael would do that. So, they clearly had not discussed it. Michael’s not been doing R.E.M. songs except for when he was campaigning for Kamala Harris. so that was a big surprise.”
The reunion follows Stipe, Berry, Mills and Buck’s first full-band performance since 2007 last summer at the Songwriters Hall of Fame Awards. “The fact that it was not planned at all makes it even more special for me,” Narducy says of last night’s happenings. “Michael came backstage after the show, and I said, you guys keep what the fuck-ing us (laughs). Because every time we do something, they surprise us, and this is obviously the biggest moment of all of that. Peter did say something funny about how many millions of dollars they get offered to do this, and instead they just get up there and do it for free with us.”
For a lifelong R.E.M. fan such as Narducy, playing these songs with the musicians who created them has been otherworldly. “Peter does not play these songs anymore, but even last year when we did this, we’d throw songs out at him like, do you know ‘Letter Never Sent?,’ and he’d play it right away,” he says. “We added ‘Cuyahoga’ at the last minute for this tour, but Peter didn’t remember it. It was a tremendous thrill for me to stand there at soundcheck and re-teach him his song. I will never forget that. There’s no film of that. There’s no photos. It will be forever etched in my brain.”
Shannon, Narducy and friends will play again at the 40 Watt tonight, and Narducy still has no idea what to expect. “Michael Shannon and I have already been coming up with stuff this morning just in case,” he says. “It’s important to us to make these shows special, especially for the Athens community, because these shows sold out first before anything else. People are flying in from all around. It feels like we need to make these as special as we can. Last night we played a song for the very first time on the tour (‘Disturbance at the Heron House’) and we’ll do that again tonight.”
Asked why he thinks R.E.M. has been so up for participating in these shows, Narducy offers, “they’re all happy and living well and also comfortable with their legacy and their history. Somehow, they’re okay with us doing this. There was no strategy for us with these shows. It was just Michael Shannon and I doing this thing every 10 years where we play albums that we love, and this particular one just took off. I love how organically it happened. Who could have foreseen that the band and their manager would be so supportive and so kind to us? It’s really lovely.”
The tour runs through March 15 in Evanston, Il., and will visit the U.K. for a short run in late August.
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