Indie guitar veteran Jason Narducy (Bob Mould, Eddie Vedder, Superchunk, Pretenders and more) and Oscar-nominated actor and singer Michael Shannon (Revolutionary Road, Nocturnal Animals) have been performing one-off gigs together for more than a decade, honouring songs by Lou Reed, Neil Young, Bob Dylan and more.
Their latest (and most substantial) venture is the music of R.E.M., which began in 2023 with Murmur. After a run of successful US dates, their six-piece band bring 1985’s Fables Of The Reconstruction to the UK this summer.
How has the Fables tour been so far?
Michael Shannon: The shows were pretty thrilling. I was kind of sad when it was over. But I’m looking forward to playing the UK, because I’ve never performed music in public there. It’s crossing another threshold for me.
Jason Narducy: I recently did six weeks with Bob Mould, who I’ve been playing with for twenty-odd years, and it’s eighty-minute shows of pummelling punk rock. So this R.E.M. project is very different from everything else I do, because we’re playing someone else’s music. I was pleasantly surprised when we played shows to sold-out venues.
How did you get under the skin of these songs?
Shannon: I just listened to Fables over and over and over, including every night before a show. It’s the same way if I’m acting in something: I study the script and become kind of obsessed with it. It’s really just an act of devotion. And the songs mean a lot to me personally, because I started listening to R.E.M. as a kid.
Narducy: For me and probably for [fellow guitarist] Dag Juhlin, there’s this technical hump where you’ve just got to learn the songs and burn them into your cranium. And not just Fables, there’s this huge, forty-song list that we kept adding to. But once I get past that challenge, then it becomes emotional and I can lose myself in the music.
Shannon: One of the things that I’ve discovered is that R.E.M. were at a crossroads during Fables. There was a possibility, actually, that they may have stopped right there. They were maxed out. They’d released two masterpieces [Murmur and Reckoning] and had been touring non-stop, but they weren’t making any money. And they were going a little bonkers. And I sense that in the album in a way that I never did before. I feel like it’s imbued with a certain desperation.
You managed to reunite R.E.M. for the first time in seventeen years this February, when they joined you on stage at their old stomping ground, the 40 Watt Club in Athens, Georgia. Did it give this project a certain validation?
Shannon: It would be disingenuous to say that it was something that we orchestrated in any way, shape or form. It just sort of happened. They had a curiosity about what we were doing, because they’re still such a part of that community. So it made sense for them to say: “What are these upstarts doing?” And Mike [Mills] had already joined us on stage in Chicago [in July 2023].
Narducy: I’ve known Mike Mills for a while, so I think part of it is that there was already some trust there, because we all had a connection to one or two of R.E.M. That probably made them feel comfortable enough to check us out. And they seemed to enjoy it enough to jump on stage.
I believe you’re going to tour Life’s Rich Pageant for its fortieth anniversary next year. Any plans beyond that?
Narducy: Everybody in the band has the stuff that they spend most of the year doing, and then this is fun. And I like keeping it that way, so committing to five or six years down the line just feels like, okay, let’s not think about this as some kind of routine.
Shannon: But I can tell you that the theme park is opening in 2027 [much laughter]. I’ll be there three or four days a week in my outfit.
Narducy: The twist is that we’ll only play Third Eye Blind songs.
The Fables Of The Reconstruction UK tour runs from August 19 to 26. Tickets are on sale now.
