Ike Reilly

Ike Reilly endured somewhat of a journeyman career, flitting from band to band in the 1980s and '90s before emerging as a streetwise rock & roll firebrand in the 2000s. The Chicago singer/songwriter's rugged tales of losers, lovers, and other down-and-outs earned him a dedicated following thanks to albums like 2004's Sparkle in the Finish and 2007's We Belong to the Staggering Evening, both of which he made with his band the Ike Reilly Assassination. Over the coming years, he maintained a high degree of quality in his work, returning with solo highlights like 2005's Born on Fire and 2021's acerbic Because the Angels. Born and raised in the northern Chicago suburb of Libertyville, Illinois, Reilly developed his musical skills early; he learned to sing and play guitar in middle school and had played his first paying gig by the age of 13. After college and a subsequent stint in the Marine Corps officer training school, he played in bands around Chicago including Celtic rockers the Drovers. He also led several of his own bands including the Eisenhowers and Community 9. For a time during the 1990s, Reilly abandoned his music career, before testing the waters again as a production assistant in 1997. By the decade's end, he had begun recording his own material, this time working in more of a solo singer/songwriter vein. The demos he made with engineer Ed Tinley earned him a contract with Universal Republic Music, which released Reilly's debut album, Salesmen and Racists, in 2001. Already in his late thirties at the time, his songs were imbued with a certain amount of hard-earned grit that married wry observations and questionable characters with garage rock swagger and a bit of punk ferocity. The Universal deal lasted for just one album, and by 2004 he'd signed with Nashville indie Rock Ridge and put together a solo band, the Ike Reilly Assassination. Their first album together, Sparkle in the Finish, was a confident and well-written set that seemingly put all the pieces together for its creator. For the remainder of the 2000s, Reilly expanded on this formula, creating music that told compelling stories with wit, charm, and passion. After two more albums with the Ike Reilly Assassination -- 2005's Junkie Faithful and 2007's We Belong to the Staggering Evening -- he went solo again, issuing a 2008 rarities set called Poison the Hit Parade and the 2009 studio album Hard Luck Stories. He also spent some time working on a television pilot for AMC that was ultimately not picked up. Although he continued working with his band, Reilly's subsequent albums were released under his own name. 2015's Born on Fire marked his return to the studio after a six-year gap and earned critical acclaim, with the title track finding a larger audience thanks to its use in a documentary about late comedian Chris Farley. Crooked Love followed in 2018, and in 2021 Reilly issued his eighth album, Because the Angels.
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