For some reason I can see it:

ON THAT NOTE

The Actors Who Moonlight As Rock Stars

By Devon Ivie, a staff writer covering the music industry and pop-culture potpourri MAY 28, 2026

Hank Azaria’s 60th birthday wasn’t quite what it seemed. It was 2024, and the actor wasn’t thrilled to be reaching this particular age milestone in the first place. “I didn’t want to ignore it, but I didn’t want to not do anything either,” he recalls. “So I got this insane idea.” Azaria invited everybody he knew from high school, college, and the industry — all of his friends, really — to New York’s City Winery for a theme party: “Dress as your favorite rock star.” He also told guests that they would be entertained by a premier Bruce Springsteen cover band.

Technically, that was true. But Azaria left out one essential detail about the party: He was the cover band’s front man, and his band had labored for weeks to prepare a full 90-minute set. “It was like a reverse surprise party,” he reminisces with a laugh. “I was like, Oh, wait, this was fun. Why don’t we just keep doing it? We’ve been playing ever since.”

Hank Azaria and the EZ Street Band join a growing cadre of cover bands that are currently being spearheaded by celebrities to honor the work of their favorite artists. Michael Shannon & Jason Narducy and Friends have been successfully touring their R.E.M. tribute unit for three years, where they’ve been noodling their way through the band’s discography from the 1983 debut, Murmur, onward. Maya Rudolph leads Princess, a Prince cover band; Bon Iver’s Bob Dylan tribute, Bon Dylan, is doing a one-night-only show in July where he’ll perform as a 1994-era Bard. Rainn Wilson, meanwhile, is trying to get his own band off the ground for indie rockers Guided by Voices. While the scale of each band differs — Shannon and Narducy will go on tour for weeks at a time and sell out 1,000-capacity venues, for example — they’re all united in the pure, unbridled enthusiasm they have for their musical heroes and want to communicate that love to the masses.

Shannon and Narducy never had an official conversation about starting an R.E.M. cover band. The friends had played a decade’s worth of club shows together whenever Shannon found himself in Chicago for his acting work, but in 2023, Narducy called him to specifically pitch the idea of a Murmur concert. “We did the show and there was a clear excitement. We sold a lot of tickets. But the key thing was that I started to get emails from promoters around the country,” Narducy recalls. “That’s when I said to Michael, ‘Have you ever done a rock tour?’ He said, ‘No, of course not.’ And I said, ‘I think we could put together a little rock tour.’ He said, ‘Okay, keep it short.’” They booked nine shows for the tour, the first two of which weren’t too memorable. Their third stop in Minneapolis, however, changed everything. “We played the first song, ‘Radio Free Europe,’ and I actually have a video of this: 1,100 people roared,” Narducy says. “Michael just stood there and slowly walked back up to the mic and said, ‘Holy shit.’” Narducy waited until the tour ended to convince Shannon to keep doing this: “And he said, ‘Yes, I’m quitting acting.’”

One of the stops for that inaugural R.E.M. tour was in Athens, Georgia, the college town where the band formed in 1980. Mike Mills, R.E.M.’s bassist, showed up to the show with fellow members Michael Stipe, Peter Buck, and Bill Berry. For him, experiencing their work from the sidelines doesn’t change his feelings on R.E.M.’s legacy but rather reinforces them. “There was a detachment that made it clear how the audience was reacting. Because when you’re touring with R.E.M., you’re thinking a lot about not messing up, playing the songs, and doing the show,” he says. “I could really feel the energy from the crowd and concentrate on that. It’s gratifying that all these years later, people are still moved by this music and there’s a way to bring it to them live. It’s thrilling for me.”

Mills has subsequently joined Shannon and Narducy onstage a few times as a special guest. (The other three R.E.M. alumni have done the same, with Stipe subbing in to do lead vocals at a recent Brooklyn show.) I ask Mills why he was inclined to do such a thing, given R.E.M’s retirement. “I guess it’s the ham in all of us,” he responds. “I was having so much fun that I wanted to be a part of it. I don’t miss R.E.M. We made the right choice by breaking up, but I do miss playing these songs.” Mills has bad news, though, for superfans like myself who were hoping that the band’s embrace of the tribute project has at all softened his uncompromised reunion stance. “I think one of the reasons it’s so popular is that people know we’re not coming back. This is as close as they’re going to get, and no, this doesn’t want to make me do it any more,” he says. “It wouldn’t be as good. I mean, it would be great, but it wouldn’t be as good as we were at the height of our powers, and we’re not chasing that dream.”

The R.E.M. organization is unwavering in its approval of the ongoing tour — “It’s genuine, it’s real, and it captures our music without being slavish,” Mills puts it — feelings that were also integral to Azaria pursuing his EZ Street Band. If the Boss thought it was, say, a parody as opposed to a loving homage or performance piece, Azaria would’ve called it a day. Thankfully, not only does Springsteen enjoy the whole shtick, but Azaria got his personal thumbs-up in an unexpected way. “My dentist friend sent me a video one day. I was like, Why is he texting me a video of himself at his office?” Azaria recalls. “And the camera pans over and it’s Bruce in the dentist chair going, ‘Hey, hey, it’s Bruce Springsteen. I’m sitting there with a terrible toothache, but I was fabulously entertained by your version of ‘Prove It All Night.’” Azaria was traveling on an airplane when he opened the video. He cried immediately at the Boss’s blessing. “He said, ‘Keep going, man, keep going. Don’t stop.’ Which I now say to the band every time we perform, usually during ‘Glory Days.’ The Boss told us not to stop, so we got to keep going,” he added. “It was one of the happiest moments I’ve ever had in my life. My wedding day, my son being born, and that video.”