Michael Stipe Joins R.E.M. Tribute Pals In New York

For the second year in a row, R.E.M. frontman Michael Stipe made a surprise appearance with Michael Shannon and Jason Narducy’s R.E.M. tribute project at New York’s Brooklyn Steel, singing “These Days” from the group’s fourth LP Lifes Rich Pageant and “The Great Beyond” from the 1999 soundtrack to the Jim Carrey-starring Andy Kaufman biopic Man on the Moon.

Late last month, R.E.M.’s Peter Buck and Bill Berry guested throughout a two-night run at the 40 Watt Club in the band’s hometown of Athens, Ga., following historic Feb. 27-28, 2025, shows at the same venue when Stipe, Buck, Berry and bassist Mike Mills all took the stage at various points for just the second time since 2007.

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Despite nursing a bad cold, Narducy hopped on the phone with SPIN to discuss Stipe’s appearance, his ongoing insights into performing the R.E.M. catalog and what the future holds for the project, which also features the talents of Mountain Goats/Bob Mould drummer Jon Wurster, Wilco bassist John Stirratt, guitarist Dag Juhlin and keyboardist Vijay Tellis-Nayak. The tour wraps March 16 in Bloomington, In., but will resume for dates in the U.K., Ireland and the midwest in September.

It seems like it’s a new tradition for Michael Stipe to appear when you guys play in New York.

This is different than last year in Athens because all four of them were in the house. We haven’t seen Mills yet. We hope we do, but we don’t know. When we found out that two of them wouldn’t be in Athens, I said to Michael Shannon, well, doesn’t that make last year even more special? I’m not disappointed at all. And by the way, to spend a second with Bill Berry or Peter Buck is glorious. All of this is surreal and fun for us.

Tell me about last night’s show.

I love that room. When you walk in, it’s like a concrete box, but there’s something about it that’s actually very musical. The stage feels great, and we were flattered that it was our first sold-out Brooklyn Steel. We were already excited. Michael said he was gonna come, and for a while he was like, I’m just gonna come to watch. The day before, he said, I really want to do ‘These Days.’ That’s the second song on the record — it would be wild to bring him out that early and then he’s gone for the next two hours. So Michael Shannon had the idea, why don’t we just do it twice? He came to soundcheck, which is different than last year too. We ran through the song and it felt great. He walked over to me and kind of pointed at the set list and said, are you doing ‘The Great Beyond’ right after ‘These Days?’ Maybe I’ll sing on that too. I just said, well, we would love that (laughs). And then he waved Michael Shannon over, we had a powwow and then it happened. Pretty fun (laughs).

And this is right after spending two days in Athens with Peter and Bill.

It ended up being three because Peter reached out to me a couple of weeks before that run and asked if I would either join him and Kevin Kinney at a show the night before we were playing. He asked me to either join them and or open the show. I said, I’ll be there. I would love to see you guys. There was no contact from Peter after that, and a week later the venue announced that I’m opening the show (laughs). It was great — a sold-out, fun crowd. I do my set and walk off into this little storage room behind the stage. I’m putting my guitar away and Peter comes in holding this plastic trophy. He says, you win an award. I took it and I said, thank you so much. Where did you get this? The venue was in a hotel, by the way. He goes, oh, I stole it from a shelf in the hotel (laughs). That was very Peter Buck-ian.

Bill Berry came to that too, which was really surprising. He’s introverted, but he came to support me and Peter and we talked a bunch. Bill wrote ‘Underneath the Bunker.’ He asked if he could play drums on it and he sounded amazing. The crowd just roared when he came out because he did this walk where it seemed like he didn’t know where he was. Peter only played on a couple songs the first night but he did four or five on night two. Scott McCaughey joined us as well and he was in so in his element. He played the two Monster songs because that’s the tour when he joined the band, and he knew those songs backwards. He even caught on when he realized I was having trouble keeping the tremolo guitar tone in rhythm during this section of ‘Crush With Eyeliner,’ like, oh, I remember how much trouble we had with that 30 years ago. 

What felt really special to me is that we kind of handed the show over to the ladies. We had Linda Hopper from Magnapop do ‘Me in Honey’ and Vanessa from Pylon sang three songs, including ‘Crazy’ by herself with the band. Michael’s sister played viola on ‘Nightswimming.’ There was a real strong female energy that I loved that felt completely different. The set list is also completely different from last year, so it says a lot about R.E.M.’s catalog when you can do that, people love it and it has nothing to do with the previous year.

What kind of feedback are you getting about reproducing the Pageant arrangements so faithfully onstage?

The songs that Michael picked for the second set this year are expansive and linear and longer. They take a little bit more patience — ‘How the West Was Won,’ ‘Lotus,’ ‘The Lifting,’ ‘E-bow the Letter’ and ‘Fretless.’ These are all five-minute songs that  are pretty chill (laughs). What we’re hearing the most is that people are appreciative that not only are we playing these deep cuts, but it really highlights the band R.E.M. itself. Even if the band was together, they wouldn’t be playing these songs. It’s so cool to shine a light on songs that people don’t usually pick for their R.E.M. playlists. I picked ‘Me in Honey,’ ‘The Lifting’ and ‘The Great Beyond.’ Those first two are really emotional for me, and ‘Great Beyond’ moves us close to playing an actual R.E.M. hit, but it’s not like ‘Losing My Religion’ or ‘Everybody Hurts,’ which we will never play.

Document is the next album in sequence. Will you keep going?

Every night, Michael takes a poll amongst the band and it has been been a pretty positive reaction. We’ve been playing ‘Fireplace’ as kind of like, if we do, here’s a little glimpse. In North Carolina, Matt Douglas from Mountain Goats played sax on that with us and in Boston, Dana Colley from Morphine did as well. So, we would love to do it. We’ll see. We’re just trying to get through this tour and then we’ll revisit everything.

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