It’s amazing that it took this long for a documentary to be made about rebel rocker Ike Reilly. He has one of those bootstrap stories that breathes with Americana morals, a working-class hero like John Lennon once sang about and a rough-and-tumble, punk, rock-blues, rock-folk rock stalwart who writes songs with the kind of poetic insight that gets people Pulitzers.
Reilly comes from Libertyville (the same smalltown bedrock that gave us Tom Morello and Marlon Brando) yet he never left. Reilly has had friends like actors Chris Farley and David Pasquesi yet he never reached that level of fame. And Reilly has stuck by a recording career that has made him a cult classic around the I-94 corridor even when the mainstream turned up their noses. He is nothing if not a local legend and critical darling (even Stephen King loves him), and yet not many people really know who he is.
A new documentary, “Don’t Turn Your Back On Friday Night,” just may change all that. Premiering with two screenings and concerts at Metro on Aug. 15 and out on digital platforms Aug. 27, the nearly two-hour overview covers all facets of Reilly’s life. And it does so by weaving the songwriter’s beloved body of work throughout, bringing the realism with which Reilly writes front-and-center.
“It’s not a typical rock doc,” Reilly forewarns during a phone conversation between gigs on the road. At 60, he’s still one of the hardest-working guys in the biz. “I couldn’t believe what they came up with,” he adds about co-writers and co-directors Michael O’Brien and Mike Schmiedeler, a TV and documentary production team that has contributed works to A&E, The History Channel, Nat Geo and PBS, among others. This is their first project about a musical figure.
Schmiedeler met the artist in 2013 through O’Brien, a Reilly friend who has worked on his music videos. “I went to an Ike Reilly Assassination show at Schubas and they were phenomenal,” says Schmiedeler. “I was so amazed by their level of music, his songwriting, the performance. I was like, how are these guys not huge? And O’Brien is like, yeah, exactly. … I had the idea to do a documentary so people could learn about him. … He’s become one of the most interesting people I know.”
Reilly admits he was hesitant about the idea at first but says, “For the purposes of self-preservation I thought, ‘If they make a film that’s interesting it can’t hurt and I need to keep working for the next 25 years of my life.’ ”
He just had one parameter: “I just didn’t want a film about the music industry … that stuff bores me,” he says with his typical real-talk gruffness. Instead, Schmiedeler and O’Brien made a film that sticks close to the heart of Reilly with religion, alcohol, family, being broke and making money central themes. “Those are the kinds of things I’ve been writing about pretty much all along, so it mirrors that well.”
The film, with a wealth of interviews and show performances filmed in 2021 and 2022 as well as hand-picked moments from 200 hours of archival footage from Reilly’s own collection, isn’t chronological but it hits all the necessary timestamps of the artist’s life. There’s a look at growing up in Libertyville (“I’ve lived in the same square mile for my entire life,” Reilly jokes) to first earning his keep as a teenage gravedigger at Ascension Cemetery before becoming a doorman at the Park Hyatt near the Mag Mile, including a hilarious story about Donald and Ivana Trump. It would come full-circle in 2017 when Reilly wrote the provocative song “Bolt Cutter” about the then-President Trump’s travel ban.
There’s also an extensive look at Reilly’s family — wife Kara Dean and their four children, Hannah, Shane, Kevin and Mickey — and the family’s trials and tribulations such as losing their beloved log home. Of course, there’s also ground covered about his work as a musician, including finally getting signed at nearly 40 years old and releasing eight albums beginning with “Salesmen and Racists” in 2001. (A new album is slated for later this year.)
Many voices in the film are left wondering just why Reilly never really broke out. The New York Times has called the Ike Reilly Assassination “one of the best live bands in America,” and a journalist in the film says Reilly’s impeccable songwriting has the weight of “a Bruce Springsteen reading too much Bukowski.”
“Ike Reilly is kind of like a real-life version of Jimmy Stewart’s character in ‘It’s a Wonderful Life’ … an incredibly talented yet underappreciated heartland troubadour,” Tom Morello, executive producer for the film, said in a press release. He has been a staunch Reilly supporter for years and will be a special guest during the Metro showcases this week.
Morello is just one of several key figures interviewed in the film. Others include Cracker’s David Lowery and Johnny Hickman, the Rev. Matt Foley (Reilly’s friend whose name Farley borrowed for his motivational speaker character), Assassination band members and even two late figures, musician Mars Williams and WXRT DJ Lin Brehmer. “I am very grateful they are captured in the film,” says Reilly. “Mars was a really good friend of mine … Lin too. Any time I played in Chicago, he’d show up and announce me … and I’d get long notes and calls from him about any release I had.”
Another choir of voices in the film is Reilly’s own family, including his three boys, who now join the band when they can; the eldest, Shane, also has his own album coming out soon. “I didn’t expect [the documentary] to be so family-oriented when I agreed but that is a huge part of who I am,” says Reilly, adding the message of the film ultimately is, “Don’t wait for anybody or anything to do what you feel compelled to do, whether it’s writing a song, loving your kid, loving your wife, loving your friends. It’s all too short.”