Michael Stipe with Michael Shannon and Jason Narducy, image via YouTube

On Saturday night, Michael Shannon and Jason Narducy took the stage at Brooklyn, N.Y.’s Brooklyn Steel for the latest stop on their third-annual R.E.M. tribute tour. Just under a month into the revered actor and indie veteran’s run celebrating the 40th anniversary of Lifes Rich Pageant, the New York show was met with high expectations, given the unlikely duo’s record with courting guest spots from members of the honored alt-rock forerunners. Sure enough, Michael Stipe emerged at the end of the night to lead treatments of two tracks he hadn’t performed in 18 years.

Shannon and Narducy, backed by drummer Jon Wurster, bassist John Stirratt, guitarist Dag Juhlin and keyboardist Vijay Tellis-Nayak, set off their performance by playing through Lifes Rich Pageant from front to back (with one omission). After rounding out their fourth studio album, the band took a beat before tearing into a second set of 13 eclectic cuts from R.E.M.’s broader catalog, beginning with “Lotus” and proceeding through “Gardening at Night,” a staple since their first tribute tour, and rarer gems including “How the West Was Won and Where It Got Us,” “Fireplace,” “Crush With Eyeliner” and “You Are the Everything.” To cap off the set, Stipe cooly sauntered to center stage, embraced Shannon, and said, “I never thought that I would hear a Shakespearean recitation of ‘E-Bow the Letter’”:

“You can’t imagine how insane it is for me to hear these songs performed by people so talented,” Stipe said. “I’ve always been right in the middle of the songs, so to hear them is really fucking surreal.”

Given his choice of what songs he might want to complement, Stipe first selected “These Days” for the chorus that’s “really approriate to the times that we are moving through: ‘We are young despite the years/ We are concern, we are hope despite the times.’” Stipe followed up his rendition of the Lifes Rich Pageant cut with “The Great Beyond,” drawn from the Man on the Moon soundtrack and also delivered for the first time since 2008. After clearing the stage for a roar of applause, Shannon, Narducy and the band returned for a six-track encore culminating in “Star 69.”

Last year, Shannon and Narducy’s Fables of the Reconstruction tour elicited several unexpected sit-ins from R.E.M. members, but none topped their stand at the 40 Watt Club, where Stipe, Mike Mills, Buck and Bill Berry joined in for an uncoordinated, impromptu reunion. The full ensemble’s treatment of “Pretty Persuasion” was their first really public performance since 2007, though they joined forces at the Songwriters Hall of Fame Induction Ceremony in June 2024. At the track’s end, the famously smoldering Shannon fawned with gratitude: “Oh my god, oh my god. Oh-my-god-oh-my-god. Oh my god! Oh my fucking god, that’s just… Guys, this is a special place where dreams come true.”

Shannon and Narducy’s Lifes Rich Pageant tour will continue tonight in Millvale, Pa. Find tickets and more information at concertedefforts.com, and watch Saturday’s Stipe sit-in below.

Today, Stipe released his first new song in three years, collaborating with Andrew Watt, Travis Barker and Josh Klinghoffer for “I Play the Fool,” an opening theme for the new HBO series Rooster. “I’m thrilled to lend my voice to Rooster – as a giant fan of everyone involved, it’s a real honor to be included with ‘I Played The Fool’,” Stipe said. Find the track on all streaming platforms here.