Since his major label debut, the groundbreaking Salesmen and Racists, Ike Reilly has been making punk/folk/blues influenced rock ’n’ roll records that lean heavily on stories of outsiders with keen details and broad strokes that insinuate a crack in the American dream. Reilly’s band, The Assassination, has been called one of the best live bands in America, and the body of recorded work they’ve turned out has been poetic, rebellious, wholly original, and critically acclaimed.
Still, Reilly and co-producer Phil Karnats (Secret Machines, Tripping Daisy, Polyphonic Spree) felt that Reilly’s best takes had never been recorded. The lucidity and rhythm of Reilly’s performances that Karnats had witnessed in hotel rooms, backstage, and on tour buses had never been captured. “I wanted to create a setting where lil’ Ike could sing and play guitar at the same time, with the band in the same room… no headphones and minimal isolation,” says Karnats. “There’s always been a freshness to playing the songs together that’s hard to harness when recording in the more common, modern, sense where you do rhythm tracks first, then overdubs and vocals last. This time, Ike did his thing and we developed the arrangements based on his vocal approach, cadence, phrasing, intensity and all that. I think, in the end, we ended up with some killer songs that have a strangely unique, slightly off-center, vibe.” The resulting album, Crooked Love, is Reilly’s seventh studio album and comes out May 18, 2018 on Rock Ridge Music.
Today Glide is excited to offer up an exclusive premiere of Crooked Love. The album stands as a testament to our troubled times, with Reilly’s gritty, straightforward approach to rock and roll and songwriting coming across like a voice of reason. Musically, Reilly and his band aren’t afraid to take chances as they go outside of their comfort zone to whip up a groove sound that draws from blues, garage rock, and Southern boogie. At times he channels the likes of the Black Keys, while other moments it’s Bob Dylan and more of a 60s-tinged psych rock sound. There’s an honesty and a bluntness to many songs on the album, and you get the sense that the songwriter is singing from the heart as shares everything from the deeply personal to the deeply political. Reilly himself does a pretty solid job of summing up the album when he calls it simply, “fucking authentic.” Indeed, this collection of succinct, tight-but-loose songs reflects the continuing evolution of Reilly’s ever-visceral wordsmithing, as married with a Murderer’s Row of backing tracks forged out of the intuitive interplay of his longstanding Assassination bandmates — guitarist Karnats, bassist Peter Cimbalo, drummer David Cottini, and guitarist/ keyboardist Adam Krier. Not to mention the input of a few special guests, too, including guitarist Tommy O’Donnell, pianist Ed Tinley, and saxophonists Mars Williams and Bill Overton, as well as family legacies Mickey Reilly on vocals and Peter John Cimbalo on drums.
Listen to the album and read Reilly’s own story about how Crooked Love came together…
Ike Reilly: There is so much music out there. So much fucking clutter. Anybody can make a record. The democratization of music, ya know…any barrier that once kept people from recording has been toppled. I guess that’s good. But sometimes it makes me wonder if all those hated A & R folks (talent scouts and searchers of songs) trying to issue contracts to potentially successful recording artists didn’t serve a needed role as gatekeepers? Ya know, to keep the shit out? But of course, they let the shit in, too. Fuck, I got signed once. Anyway, we make records. We’ve made records for big labels, small labels, no labels, but we’ve always tried to make recordings that sounded unique to us. All these things that are written or said about a song or the writing of a song doesn’t really mean anything if the recording doesn’t create an identity, if it doesn’t sound authentic. Does it sound original? Unforced? Does it sound like nobody else’s experience could have created the song? No combination of players could have made that noise? I’ve got a band that knows what to fucking play, knows how to play to best hold the stories and melodies that make it up. They know what to play, and they know what and when not to play. When you get there you are a player. Not a “playa.” That’s different.
Anyway, Crooked Love doesn’t sound much like any of our other records, and it doesn’t sound much like anybody that’s making records today. My bandmate, Phil Karnats, who helped me produce and record Crooked Love, felt that the best takes I’d done had never been recorded. Like the shit he’d heard in hotel rooms, backstage, and on tour buses had never been captured. He wanted to create a setting where I could sing and play guitar at the same time, with the band in the same room… no headphones and no isolation. We did that, and we got some takes and some sounds that are really fucking unique. Familiar to a listener of American music but slightly off-kilter.
The first song we recorded was “Bolt Cutter Again.” It was inspired by DACA, the Dreamers, and Trump’s idiotic travel ban. And the last song we recorded was “Took It Lying Down.” Also inspired by Trump. An encounter I had with that cock years ago. I needed another song for the record. I had a lot of songs that were recorded that will come out on the next record that didn’t exactly fit. So I thought back to my hotel doorman days. I was a doorman for years at The Park Hyatt in Chicago. Whenever I’m in need of a song, I think back to my doorman days. Donald Trump stiffed me once when I checked him in. So I began the song with that memory. I started the song with, “It’s been so long since I been stiffed hauling bags to the penthouse with Ivana.” Then it’s about how I would come home from work after I would have these manufactured or fabricated conversations with guests, and would tell my wife all the witty and angry and rebellious things I said to people that I never really ever said. The catalyst for the song is Donald Trump stiffing me, but like the song says, I took it lying down.
The songs in between are laced with that discontent and disbelief, but I think they also have a celebration of love, sex, and hope, all mixed up with futility and captured by ribbon mics and tape machines. You put this record on and it sounds like a fucking album. It sounds like US, and if you like the way human beings sound making music I suggest you gather up your crew… your lover, your mother, your ex-lover, your neighbors, co-workers, sisters, brothers. Gather them up on a Friday night… smoke a little dope, share a little drink, and crank this shit up. I’m not ashamed of this record.
Photo credit: Luis A. Lopez
