July 26, 1981: R.E.M. performed at Cantrell’s, a punk-rock dive located in Nashville that was ground zero for the then-nascent new music scene in Music City. 

My good friend Bill Lloyd — who later co-founded Foster & Lloyd in addition to making numerous great power pop albums — was working at Tune Town, an indie record shop in Bowling Green, Ky. I always stopped in to see what he was listening to, and one day he told me about a new band from Georgia who had just released a single on tiny Hib-Tone Records. Bill cued it up for me and I was immediately mesmerized. He had purchased the only copy the store had in stock so he kindly recorded the two songs, “Radio Free Europe” and “Sitting Still,” on a cassette for me. That weekend, I probably listened to that cassette 150 times. 

Nashville was a frequent stop for R.E.M. in the early days and we finally got a chance to see them live when they hit Cantrell’s. The cover charge was $3 and the band was to play two sets. In the front bar area I chatted with Warner Hodges, who was soon to join another groundbreaking band called Jason and the Nashville Scorchers.

R.E.M. took the stage around 10 pm and once again, I was blown away. Singer Michael Stipe, hair asymmetrically cut to one side and covering his face as he gyrated madly, was a whirling dervish, clutching the mic with both hands as if his life depended on it. Peter Buck, wearing a “Boy Howdy” t-shirt, was in constant motion, windmilling and jumping around like Pete Townshend. I didn’t know a song besides the ones on the single and I couldn’t understand a word Stipe was singing, but it didn’t matter. I had never witnessed anything so musically compelling in my life. 

After the second set, Bill and I approached the band. A sweat-drenched Peter Buck was more than willing to accommodate us, chatting excitedly at a 100 miles a minute about anything and everything. Michael was sitting on the edge of the stage with his hair covering most of his face. I asked if he had a minute and he scooted over and patted the spot on the stage next to him, indicating that I should join him there without saying a word. Mostly we discussed his love for Patti Smith and Television. 

I was hooked. 

A record store employee myself, I was absolutely blown away when the Chronic Town EP was released. R.E.M. continued to play Nashville on a regular basis and I saw them again on a bill at Vanderbilt with Jason and the Nashville Scorchers and headliner Joe “King” Carasco. I attended every Nashville date that the band played, and when I got wind that their first LP was imminent, I could not wait, bugging record distributiors endlessly about when it would actually be released.  Once I had a copy of Murmur in my hands, there was no looking back.  The band went from playing Cantrell’s to Vandy to War Memorial Auditorium and by Fables of the Reconstruction they had graduated to the 4000-capacity Opry House.

The  rest is music history. 

I stayed on for the entire ride and met and chatted with Peter Buck on numerous occasions, most recently at an Arthur Buck show in Nashville in September of 2018. The last times I saw R.E.M. live, the shows were in Austin and Nashville. After their set at the Austin City Limits Festival in 2003 I ran into Peter at the Continental Club and we chatted while we watched legendary guitarist Redd Volkaert before he and Scott McCaughey joined blues singer CeDell Davis onstage as his backing band. Both musicians had appeared on CeDell’s 2002 release When Lightnin’ Struck The Pine.

My final R.E.M. show was, fittingly, back in Nashville at the storied Ryman Auditorium in 2004. They played an amazing set that climaxed with a blazing rendition of “Auctioneer (Another Engine)” from Fables of the Reconstruction. 

It’s impossible for me to quantify both the band’s influence on modern rock music and the impact that R.E.M. had on my adult life. 

JEFFREY SWEENEY is a lifelong music geek, writer, photographer, and retail music professional based in Bowling Green, KY. Jeffrey believes that R.E.M. is second only to Elvis in their contributions to the American rock music scene as we know it (and he feels fine).    

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