{"id":48014,"date":"2025-08-06T13:49:11","date_gmt":"2025-08-06T13:49:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/48014\/"},"modified":"2025-08-06T13:49:11","modified_gmt":"2025-08-06T13:49:11","slug":"meet-the-men-who-prompted-r-e-m-to-reunite","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/48014\/","title":{"rendered":"Meet the men who prompted R.E.M. to reunite"},"content":{"rendered":"

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<\/a>, Neil Young<\/a>, Bob Dylan<\/a> and more.<\/p>\n

Their latest (and most substantial) venture is the music of R.E.M.<\/a>, which began in 2023 with Murmur. After a run of successful US dates, their six-piece band bring 1985\u2019s Fables Of The Reconstruction to the UK this summer.<\/p>\n

\"Lightning<\/p>\n

How has the Fables tour been so far?<\/p>\n

You may like<\/p>\n

Michael Shannon: The shows were pretty thrilling. I was kind of sad when it was over. But I\u2019m looking forward to playing the UK, because I\u2019ve never performed music in public there. It\u2019s crossing another threshold for me.<\/p>\n

Jason Narducy: I recently did six weeks with Bob Mould<\/a>, who I\u2019ve been playing with for twenty-odd years, and it\u2019s eighty-minute shows of pummelling punk rock<\/a>. So this R.E.M. project is very different from everything else I do, because we\u2019re playing someone else\u2019s music. I was pleasantly surprised when we played shows to sold-out venues.<\/p>\n

How did you get under the skin of these songs?<\/p>\n

Shannon: I just listened to Fables over and over and over, including every night before a show. It\u2019s the same way if I\u2019m acting in something: I study the script and become kind of obsessed with it. It\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n

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Narducy: For me and probably for [fellow guitarist] Dag Juhlin, there\u2019s this technical hump where you\u2019ve just got to learn the songs and burn them into your cranium. And not just Fables, there\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n

Shannon: One of the things that I\u2019ve 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\u2019d released two masterpieces [Murmur and Reckoning] and had been touring non-stop, but they weren\u2019t 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\u2019s imbued with a certain desperation.<\/p>\n

Pretty Persuasion – R.E.M., Michael Shannon & Jason Narducy and friends. February 27, 2025 – YouTube
\n\"Pretty<\/p>\n

Watch On <\/a><\/p>\n

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?<\/p>\n

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\u2019re still such a part of that community. So it made sense for them to say: \u201cWhat are these upstarts doing?\u201d And Mike [Mills] had already joined us on stage in Chicago [in July 2023].<\/p>\n

Narducy: I\u2019ve 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.<\/p>\n

I believe you\u2019re going to tour Life\u2019s Rich Pageant for its fortieth anniversary next year. Any plans beyond that?<\/p>\n

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\u2019s not think about this as some kind of routine.<\/p>\n

Shannon: But I can tell you that the theme park is opening in 2027 [much laughter]. I\u2019ll be there three or four days a week in my outfit.<\/p>\n

Narducy: The twist is that we\u2019ll only play Third Eye Blind songs.<\/p>\n

The Fables Of The Reconstruction UK tour runs from August 19 to 26. Tickets are on sale now<\/a>. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Indie guitar veteran Jason Narducy (Bob Mould, Eddie Vedder, Superchunk, Pretenders and more) and Oscar-nominated actor and singer…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":48015,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[6491,96,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-48014","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-celebrities","tag-celebrities","tag-entertainment","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48014","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=48014"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48014\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/48015"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=48014"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=48014"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=48014"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}