Opening up Spotify today I came across the new R.E.M. song. We all go back to where we belong.

The lyrics seem elegiac, sad, and yet uplifting in the way a jazz funeral morphs when you “cut the body loose.” The sound: willfully lush to an AM radio degree. At the end Stipe finds himself back to where he belongs, reaching that iconic howl, recalling South Central rain… but, one week before my 49th birthday R.E.M. had the audacity to disband. Not really break up, fall apart, quit or storm off. They did it like the champions of some undefined indie rock aesthetic we all aspire to; more like a retirement, a signing off, like getting to the end of your favorite book. Like everything they did it was hard to imagine a better way to end, but a month later I’m still feeling the loss.

Five Eight on stage with R.E.M. during the Around the Sun Tour (Albuquerque, 2004)

They were the reason I came to Athens in 1987 (actually, my writing partner and best friend Farns packed up our band's gear, stuffed it in a U-Haul, and drove it straight down here, without telling anybody… for three days I thought we were going to move to Brooklyn, but I digress.)

They were the reason I became a carpenter. I worked at DOC on one of Michael Stipe’s incredible remodeling projects. First as a laborer then moved up to a metal worker’s assistant and finally I got to carve a toilet paper roll holder. It was an awesome job to land after many years as a repo man for a certain rent to own company. Figuring in a few unpublished poems, they were the reason early Five Eight sounded so much like R.E.M. and finally the reason why we didn't. Seven years after the band asked us to open for them on the Around The Sun tour, they are gone. After listening to R.E.M.'s new song, I couldn't help but feel hopeful. I am glad that they never morphed into some classic rock parody of themselves even though I was waiting for Rick Rubin to make that stripped down record where they try to recapture the magic.

But if R.E.M. can walk away, I had to ask myself—what does that say about the impossibility of continuing to play in Five Eight? Am I still chasing down that dream? Should I let the dream die? At 49 it is somewhat laughable that I love playing Five Eight as much as I do. I am proud that this year we put out our first record together since Gasolina (1997) and proud that we can celebrate the 20th anniversary of our last cassette-only release, Inflatable Sense of Self. Back when it took so many helping hands to get things recorded in the studio, before the internet, cell phones, blogs, MP3s, Facebook and Reddit.

Having just been laid off from my "career" job at Hogan Builders Inc., I suddenly have some time to reflect and write about things, and reflect I will because after one month I suspect we don't even know what we don't know about how amazing a band R.E.M. was. I myself will never stop recounting the magic that band has brought into my life as people, as thinkers, as artists, as businessmen, as activists and supporters of the Athens community and local music scene. I am humbled by them.

Like their new song suggests, I too find myself returning to where I belong: back in Five Eight with the original lineup, awaiting the return of fourth member and best friend Sean Dunn to Athens after 14 years; back behind this keyboard writing songs, poems and this little piece for the band that I wish could continue to affect me as they once did. They will.

Stipe had a way of singing that made you feel like he was singing right to you. He had a way of taping into a naiveté, his trance-like singing of fall on me at the mental health benefit still stands as one of the greatest live performances I’ve ever witnessed… eye’s rolling in the back of his head, lids fluttering otherworldly.

The band had a way of playing their instruments that made them iconic, instantly recognizable. When I hear "Electrolyte" and "Nightswimming" it is as if Stipe is some long-lost best friend and we share our epiphanies together. When I stood front and center at the second show in Seattle after opening for them and heard Michael thank Five Eight, things came around full circle. Launching into “Life and How to Live it," I was star struck and for good reason.

So, let me say thanks, guys, because there is no Five Eight without R.E.M.!

WHO: Five Eight, Dangfly Ruby Kendrick

WHERE: The Melting Point

WHEN: Friday, Oct. 28, 8:30 p.m.

HOW MUCH: $5 (adv.), $8 (door)