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Reilly has story behind his songs
By JOHN BENSON
Veteran indie rocker Ike Reilly is the type of singer-songwriter who paints pictures so vivid you feel as though you’re watching a movie or reading a novel. However, what makes the Chicago-based musician, who brings his Ike Reilly Assassination act to Cleveland for a show Sunday at the Beachland Tavern, so unique and compelling is the fact he’s doing so with a punk background for a timeless feeling that is best summed up by the music that dominates his iPod.
“I’ve been listening to Johnny Cash, Bob Dylan, The Sex Pistols and The Clash,” said Reilly, sounding irritated by his lack of contemporary inspiration. “I can’t listen to anything else anymore. I’m stuck.”
Reilly may be stuck in his listening habits, but his original tunes are anything but dated. Take for instance his latest CD, “Hard Luck Stories,” which was released last year to critical acclaim. As its title promises, the 12-track disc features a slew of tales from the tough economic side of America where people are struggling to survive. That could mean to make ends meet financially or just make it to through the day personally.
There’s the compromising single father who loses custody of his little girl as he goes down for growing marijuana in their home (“The Ballad of Jack and Haley”), the young woman doing the best she can for her war-veteran brother as he inadvertently terrorizes their community (“The Girls in the Back Room”) and the indie rocker trying to sing a song that finally makes a little money (“Lights Out”). So was it a calculated effort to parallel the current state of the economy and the tales found on “Hard Luck Stories?”
“It wasn’t intentional, but I think it’s reflected in there, for sure,” said Reilly, calling from the Windy City. “People are doing things where sometimes you have to compromise yourself, and I guess this economy kind of magnifies it. But it gets a bit more complicated than that. So I think the economy plays a part of it, as well as the couple of wars we’re in.”
He added, “But when we recorded the album, I wasn’t hoping to accomplish anything. I recorded about 25 songs, and after we sifted through them we realized there were a handful of them with beginnings, middles and ends. I had been writing songs that I think were more impressionistic before that, a little bit less linear. So there was a song on there called ‘Hard Luck Story,’ and one of the guys said, ‘You should call that song “Morning Glory” and name the record “Hard Luck Stories.” And I said, ‘Alright, let’s do it.’”
Considering that’s a pretty important decision regarding the album, are you normally so open to suggestions when recording?
“On something as insignificant as naming an album, yeah,” Reilly said, laughing. “Maybe not so much on a choice of liquor. Then I’m not so easy. For me this era is rum. I’ve shifted from clear liquor to dark liquor.”
Finally, are the characters from “Hard Luck Stories” drinking rum as well?
“No, if you listen, they seem to be doing coke and smoking weed,” Reilly said. “Actually, they’ll do anything they can get their hands on.”