Thursday, May 24, 2018 · 8:00 PM CDT
Ike Reilly
May Residency
with special guest Half Gringa (solo)
4545 N Lincoln Ave · The Myron R. Szold Music & Dance Hall · 773.728.6000
Thursday, May 24, 2018 · 8:00 PM CDT
4545 N Lincoln Ave · The Myron R. Szold Music & Dance Hall · 773.728.6000
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.
Crooked Love, Reilly's seventh studio album, comes out May 18, 2018 on Rock Ridge Music, and it shows how Reilly has landed himself squarely in the raw, emotional zeitgeist of the times. 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. Walking a fine line between being topical and universal is a goal Reilly wanted to attain with this album. “I'm not sure if all the songs reflect what's going on right now,” Reilly says. “The songs were written under the shadow of all of that, but most people still just need and want love, affection, sex, and the simple pleasures of human contact. I have optimism for society and for its survival, though I am pretty fatalistic in the sense of, ‘This is what it is. It's right here, it's right now, and this is it.' That can either drive you crazy or motivate you to squeeze every last drop out of it, you know?”
Half Gringa is the songwriting project of Izzy Olive. An emotional scab-picker, her work explores the confluence of Latinx and Midwestern identity. Her first LP, Gruñona, reveals a palimpsest of wounds upon scars. Contemplative and choleric, all manner of memorials to the past are revealed—mountains, dive bars, orchards, trains, expressways, tiny kitchens, Chicago, Caracas, and outer space. Simultaneously boastful, scathing, forgiving, and hopeful, Gruñona confronts the human ache of wanting and curse of taking. It recognizes that an identity is a journey that names you.
Special thanks to event sponsors
