Dave Davies

We'll be back after a short break.

This is Fresh Air.

This is Fresh Air, and we're speaking with actor Michael Shannon.

He has a busy acting career, but he's also revived his longstanding interest in music.

For several years, he and musician friend Jason Narducci have assembled a band and toured, performing covers of whole albums by several artists, focusing in particular on R.E.M.

Here's Shannon and Narducci performing the R.E.M.

song Driver 8 on The Tonight Show.

Michael Shannon is the lead singer.

And that is our guest, actor Michael Shannon, singing Driver 8 with a band including Jason Narduzzi.

That band sounds tight, I got to say.

Do you think that music has informed or affected your acting in any way, you know, rhythm, pace?

Yeah, yeah.

REM is aware of your doing this, and I think some of the band members showed up at a performance once and went on stage with you, right?

Right.

Michael Shannon, thank you so much for speaking with us again.

Michael Shannon is a two-time Academy Award nominee.

He stars as President James Garfield in the new Netflix series Death by Lightning, and he plays a prosecutor trying Nazi leaders for war crimes in the new film Nuremberg.

Coming up, David Bianculli reviews a revived and expanded TV documentary series about the Beatles on Disney+.

This is Fresh Air.

In 1995, ABC presented an eight-part documentary series called The Beatles Anthology, telling the history of the band and its music in the first and only fully authorized TV biography.