In 2024, when Michael Shannon and Jason Narducy’s tour celebrating R.E.M.’s Murmur hit Athens, Georgia, the home of R.E.M., the members of R.E.M. joined them onstage. Well, their latest tour, celebrating the 40th anniversary of R.E.M.’s Fables of the Reconstruction, came to Athens on Thursday night and it happened again.

The duo brought the tour to Athens’ 40 Watt Club, and video posted online shows R.E.M.’s Michael Stipe, Mike Mills, Peter Buck and Bill Berry hopping onstage to perform the Reckoning track “Pretty Persuasion.”

This was a step up from the 2024 show, where Stipe joined them all onstage but didn’t perform. In fact, this is only the second time all four members of R.E.M. have performed together since their 2011 breakup. The previous time was at the Songwriters Hall of Fame induction in 2024, where they performed “Losing My Religion.”

And while “Pretty Persuasion” was the only song Stipe took part in, according to setlist.fm the other members of the band joined in for various R.E.M. tracks, including the Fables tune “Wendell Gee,” Document’s “Strange,” Reckoning’s “Letter Never Sent,” “Second Guessing,” “(Don’t Go Back to) Rockville” and “Little America” and Murmur’s “Sitting Still.”

Shannon and Narducy also performed two songs by The Velvet Underground, “Femme Fatale,” for which they were joined by Buck, Mills and Patti Smith Group guitarist Lenny Kaye, and “There She Goes Again,” with Buck and Kaye.

Shannon and Narducy bring their Fables of the Reconstruction tour back to Athens’ 40 Watt Club for a second show on Friday. As for whether R.E.M. will return, a post on their Instagram noted, “Who knows what night two, tonight, will have in store.”

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