Talk About The Passion: Michael Shannon and Jason Narducy on Bringing Their R.E.M.-Approved Cover Band to Town

By Christopher Heine

Last Friday, Michael Shannon was in Athens, Georgia, the hometown of R.E.M., the band he was about to pay tribute to at the college town’s legendary 40 Watt Club. Ten shows into a 22-gig, coast-to-coast run dubbed “Michael Shannon & Jason Narducy and Friends play R.E.M.’s Lifes Rich Pageant,” the actor-cum-frontman reflected on the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame quartet’s four-decade-old album in his signature raspy rumble. 

“It feels very timely,” says Shannon, a 51-year-old, twice-Oscar-nominated actor, speaking with Brooklyn Magazine by phone. “None of R.E.M.’s [early] records really feel 40 years old, you know? They seem like they came out yesterday.”

Packed houses in the Northwest, Southwest, and Southeast in 2026 would agree. Next up is the Northeast, and the tribute band will be at the 1,800-capacity Brooklyn Steel on Saturday to play a sold-out show. Thinking back on the tour so far, Shannon amusingly described the lovefest between the ever-growing, sing-along-minded crowds he’s encountered and the songs his band’s been playing “Sometimes it almost feels like I don’t even need to be up there—I could just keep my mouth shut,” he quips. “You’d probably hear all the lyrics anyway, because they’re all out there singing.”

Shannon—known for films like Revolutionary Road, TV shows such as Death by Lightning, and theatrical stage work on both sides of the Atlantic—kept up the bit: “I’m there. I’m filling in for, you know… I’m, like, an understudy.”

Photo by Christy Bush

Talk about the passion, indeed.

This is Shannon and guitarist Narducy’s third consecutive year taking an R.E.M. album on the road to mark a 40th anniversary—Murmur in 2024, Fables of the Reconstruction in 2025, and now the band’s 1986 12-song record, which was a bridge in elevating Michael Stipe, Peter Buck, Mike Mills, and Bill Berry from playing small clubs or theaters to larger venues.

The tribute band may be an unlikely vehicle, but it’s picking up speed. “A few nights ago, we played in Austin, Texas, for the first time, and 1,450 people paid to see it,” Narducy says. “And that’s just remarkable to me.” Showgoers’ reviews on Ticketmaster.com have been overwhelmingly positive so far. “Page,” who caught the tour’s Seattle stop on February 13, wrote: “The musicianship and fandom made for a dreamy experience.” A “Suwilly” wrote after the February 17 show in San Francisco that “Michael Shannon’s high energy performance took me straight back to all the R.E.M. shows I saw in ‘83-‘86—a joyfully transportive night!”

Photo by Christy Bush

While Shannon provides theatrical gravity, the project’s sonic DNA belongs to Narducy. The 55-year-old Chicago native is a lifer in the indie rock trenches—and no stranger to band names with umlauts—who started his first punk group, Verböten, at 11. He’s gone on to play guitar for legendary Hüsker Dü frontman Bob Mould in The Bob Mould Band, indie rock heroes Superchunk, emo stalwarts Sunny Day Real Estate, and other notable groups.

“I went to college in Baltimore, where the bars were long and skinny—no room for a drum set,” he says. “So we had two acoustic guitars and a bass, and we played what was on college radio.”

They played original tunes, but R.E.M covers helped anchor their sets. While everyone else was doing classic rock covers, Narducy explains, they were doing “Pilgrimage” from Murmur and “Camera” from R.E.M.’s second record, Reckoning.

“I’ve gotten better at playing their songs since those days,” Narducy says. “And occasionally I have access to the people who wrote those songs.”

R.E.M. guitarist Buck played “Driver 8” from Fables with the group at their first Athens show, Narducy recalls. After soundcheck, Buck sat with Narducy in the green room, talked about family and friends for about 10 minutes, then offered a gentle note. “You’re not playing the same voicings that I do,” Narducy recalls Buck saying, “but it sounds good.” It was quiet for about 10 seconds, then Buck took his classic Rickenbacker and played him his version. “It was a nice little guitar lesson,” Narducy says.

The Shannon-Narducy project started as a one-off in a July 2023 show at Chicago’s Metro honoring Murmur’s 40th anniversary, built on a decade-long tradition of the two middle-aged men learning and performing a complete album—Bob Dylan, The Smiths, Modern Lovers—as a single event, never repeated. The Metro show sold 925 tickets on 30 days’ notice, in summer, when every street festival in Chicago is competing for attention.

“None of this [touring] was planned in any way, shape, or form,” Narducy says. “I can tell you that.” But promoters around the country started emailing. The first tour was nine shows. Narducy financed it on two credit cards. “My credit score dropped 250 points,” he says, chuckling. By the Fables tour, which also included two nights at the 40 Watt club, no one was rolling financial dice anymore. The second evening last year in Athens ended with the original members of R.E.M.—Stipe, Buck, Mills, and Berry—getting on stage together for the first time since they broke up in 2011. Nobody planned it.

“I know a lot of musicians,” Narducy says, recalling the on-stage experience. “But at the same time, I was like, Holy shit…there’s the [guys] I listened to for all those years and looked up to.” That kind of moment raises the stakes, and Shannon has responded accordingly. He worked with the same vocal coach for this tour as he did when playing George Jones in the 2022 Showtime miniseries, George & Tammy

Photo by Christy Bush

“He’s the hardest-working guy in the band,” Narducy says. “He knows the music better than anybody else in the band. And he has no demands or anything. He’s just a sweet collaborator.”

Shannon draws a clear line between his two crafts, but acknowledges a common denominator. “Just because you paint doesn’t mean you know how to sculpt,” he says. “You can’t just goof off. I always take a pretty significant amount of time to get ready. I don’t just roll off the street and walk on stage.”

Eugene Mirman, a Brooklyn comedy institution, will open the show on Saturday, but whether any of the four R.E.M. members will appear is the question that will hang over the evening until it no longer does. “They tend to just kind of pop up,” says Narducy. “I like that.”

Shannon says the fervor has been there from the start—gray-haired Boomers, a big Gen X contingent, young fans who learned the songs from their parents, all of them singing every word back at him without being asked. The Lifes Rich Pageant setlist naturally includes the 1986 college radio hit “Superman,” a song that carries a meta-wink for Shannon, who famously played the Man of Steel’s nemesis, General Zod, in Warner Bros.’ 2013 DC Comics summer blockbuster, Man of Steel.

It’s a full-circle moment for a guy who has spent his career mastering the art of the intense, solitary performance, only to find vocal joy in a room full of strangers doing their best to, unintentionally, drown him out.

“I love singing all of them,” Shannon says, his rumble softening. “I love every song on that record. And I already knew that, but… I love all of it.”