#jason narducy

[batteredshoes]

All the people gather, fly to carry each his burden We are young despite the years We are concern, we are hope despite the times All of a sudden, these days Happy throngs, take this joy wherever, wherever

[musicmags]

Mojo Magazine | September 2026

[jorahssquire]

Michael Shannon & Jason Narducy and Friends Great American Music Hall, San Francisco February 1st & 2nd, 2024

[thesearenotphotographs]

Michael Shannon & Jason Narducy and Friends, Eugene Mirman, and Bobcat Goldthwait at Brooklyn Steel

Michael Shannon and Jason Narducy and Friends (Dag Julin, John Stirrat, Vijay Tellis-Nayak, and Jon Wurster) continued their tour of performing R.E.M.’s album from 1986, Life’s Rich Pageant with a sold out show at Brooklyn Steel in Brooklyn, NY. There were opening comedy sets by Bobcat Goldthwait, who had Jason Narducy accompany him to perform a cover, and Eugene Mirman. R.E.M.’s Michael Stipe made a guest appearance and sang two songs with the band to help close their main set.

I covered the fun night for BrooklynVegan and the full gallery is now available on their website.

[thekylemeredith]

#MichaelShannon has played mobsters, outlaws, and Zod — but lately he’s been tackling something really intimidating: #MichaelStipe. The Oscar-nominated actor has been touring with Jason Narducy performing #REM albums in full.

“It was kind of like saying, ‘Hey, why don’t we paint the Mona Lisa?’” Shannon laughs. “I was pretty terrified.”

Hear him on finding R.E.M. as a kid in Kentucky, deciphering Stipe’s famously mumbled lyrics, and why this music still feels like the perfect soundtrack for the middle of nowhere.

[thebowerypresents]

Michael Shannon & Jason Narducy and Friends (Including Michael Stipe) Celebrate R.E.M. on Saturday Night at Brooklyn Steel

Michael Shannon & Jason Narducy and Friends – Brooklyn Steel – March 8, 2025

Job No. 1 of celebrity-fronts-curious-rock-legend-tribute shows is earnestness: If you’re coming at me with, yeah, a reconstruction of a respectably nonobvious choice like R.E.M.’s Fables of the Reconstruction, I need to know if you’re all in. Job No. 2 is commitment: Are you going to just deliver what was promised or are you going to go for it? If it’s Michael Shannon and Jason Narducy’s traveling R.E.M. show — now in its second touring iteration — it’s commitment and then some, baby. The vibe isn’t dilettante, it’s connoisseur: We’re going on an R.E.M. geek ride through Fables and beyond, and we’re going to really get deep. Sign me up.

The Brooklyn Steel stop on this latest Shannon/Narducy swing made for a thrilling Saturday night, and that was before Michael Stipe showed up. All-in it was a two-set, two-and-a-half-hour, jangle-jangle-jangle capture of Fables and loads more from the R.E.M. grab bag, faithful readings and judicious interpretations alike. 

“Maps and Legends” and “Driver 8” set the tone early and the rest unspooled in a haze of guitar spritz and rhythm roil. “Life and How to Live It,” “Can’t Get There from Here,” “Auctioneer,” the odds and ends “Wendell Gee” … the Fables material crackled, rolling out one after the other in album-side-order. Shannon was the music's faithful vessel, bounding all about the stage and exulting in the fun of it. Narducy was the group’s spiritual core — as Shannon noted as part of effusive praise, Narducy was the reason it was all happening — and led a crack band that fully inhabited the material without overcrowding it. 

That was the key: This was a show for the R.E.M. nerds by the REM nerds, pulling what in the more traditional sense of a tribute show would feel like random pinballing around the catalog — they didn’t play any of the quote-unquote most famous R.E.M. songs — but for the so-inclined made all kinds of sense. Plenty of Murmur material returned (“World Leader Pretend,” “Sitting Still” and, for the first time this tour, “Talk About the Passion”).

The oddity “New Test Leper” turned up from New Adventures in Hi-Fi. A gorgeous “Find the River” nodded in from Automatic for the People, and a choogling “Cuyahoga” from Life’s Rich Pageant. They mixed in chestnuts from the Velvet Underground (“Femme Fatale”), Wire (“Strange”) and Aerosmith (“Toys in the Attic,” with opener Dave Hill sitting in for a guitar battle) that on paper would appear random but the R.E.M. faithful would easily pick out as covers the band had previously recorded.

One of the night’s most tender moments found just Shannon and Narducy in a spare duo, delivering “So. Central Rain” in a slowed-down arrangement. And then, of course, came the thunderclap that sent the place bonkers … no less than Michael Stipe himself joining Shannon on vocals for “Pretty Persuasion,” the last song of the night. It, too, fit — the original members of R.E.M. haven’t been shy about their praise of the band, and have sat in throughout the tour, one time all together — and was a terrific capper to this passion project. —Chad Berndtson | @cberndtson

Photos courtesy of Katie Dadarria | www.instagram.com/dadarria

[taylorrpark]

sunny day real estate by mer wilcox

[sinceileftyoublog]

Courtney Barnett, Bob Mould, & Squirrel Flower Live Review: 7/26, Illinois Science & Technology Park Field, Skokie

Courtney Barnett

BY JORDAN MAINZER

The three artists who played the inaugural night of Out of Space Skokie at its temporary new location took advantage of the open space's clear sound and turned up the fuzz.

Headliner Courtney Barnett, three years removed from her third studio album Things Take Time, Take Time (Mom+Pop), made even that album's understated songs come alive, live. Backed by bassist Thomy Sloane and drummer Stella Mozgawa (of Warpaint, and co-producer of Things Take Time), Barnett elevated sad sack jam "Rae Street", the motorik "Turning Green", the wiry "Before You Gotta Go", and jangly single "Write a List of Things to Look Forward To", emphasizing sounds and lyrics performed and delivered much more subtly on record. "Time is money, and money is no man's friend," she sang on set opener "Rae Street", as if to contextualize the drawn-out nature of some of her back catalog highlights: the wandering "Avant Gardener", bluesy dirge "Small Poppies", and driving bass-led "City Looks Pretty". Vocally, Barnett's screamed rasp was as gravel-throated as ever, a perfect contrast to her droll sprechgesang, confirming the status of "Pedestrian at Best" as a justified shout-along.

Barnett

Stella Mozgawa

Barnett

Thomy Sloane

Yet, true to Barnett's penchant for storytelling, the anthem of the night was also the slowest song, perhaps her best: the prescient "Depreston". At once a treatise on gentrification, mortality, and time itself, it's the type of song that stops you in your tracks when you realize you're singing back at Barnett, "If you've got a spare half a million / You could knock it down and start rebuildin'," occupying the persona of the grimy real estate agent viewing what was someone's home as a pure capital good. I suppose, after all, the ease at which we sing the song is a tribute to Barnett's empathy, evidence that those of us who participate in the same society with the same set of restrictive rules, have the potential for good and evil. Or maybe it's just a catchy melody.

Barnett

Barnett & Mozgawa

Bob Mould

Bob Mould, meanwhile, performed solo, but electric, and the set was basically the answer to the question, "What would it sound like if you took away bassist Jason Narducy and drummer Jon Wurster from a normal Bob Mould band set?" Indeed, Mould played at the same breakneck pace as always, running around the stage during solos as if he was hyping up his invisible band. The warmth of his vocals was discernible even beside his distorted guitar tones, whether burning through a Hüsker Dü song or solo material (my one gripe from the setlist: only one Sugar song, the chintzy classic "Hoover Dam"). "Out of Space...out of breath!" Mould proclaimed in triumph after finishing "Siberian Butterfly", nonetheless a reminder to himself to keep on going even when you're the one doing all the work.

Mould

Mould

Squirrel Flower

Local artist Squirrel Flower, the project of singer-songwriter Ella O'Connor Williams, opened up the night, playing what she said may be her last show in Chicago for a while. For one, drummer Jacob Getzoff is going to nursing school, an announcement that garnered rapturous applause from the crowd. Moreover, ever prolific, Williams shared she hopes to take a break from playing live and write and record, despite having released her most recent and best album Tomorrow's Fire (Polyvinyl) less than a year ago. I'm glad I got to catch Squirrel Flower now, then, each song from Tomorrow's Fire leveled up, the slowcore "Almost Pulled Away" becoming full-on shoegaze, the crunchy "Intheskatepark" featuring drums that could have been audible even at the expansive Canal Shores. If you really want to get a sense for what Squirrel Flower sounds like live, though, simply take a look at the project's discography from start to finish. In other words, the same artist who self-released the stark early winter songs from middle america in 2015 is now faithfully covering "Cortez the Killer". To clarify, Squirrel Flower played only original material for Williams' first ever show in Skokie. "I've only been up here to get bagels," Williams said. No word on whether she's a New York Bagel & Bialy or Kaufman's person.

Squirrel Flower

Squirrel Flower