Ike Reilly Explores Lust, Nuclear Threat Via “Missile Site” (premiere)

Ike Reilly returns with the third video in a series of clips shot at the Loft at City Winery by One on One Cellar Sessions in New York City. The song, which appears on Reilly‘s latest batch of razor-sharp observations on life, romance and the dark places in between, Crooked Love, is a further reminder of the Chicago-based troubadour‘s wit and uncanny ability to turn simple situations into the poetic.

“I overheard this couple who were watching a NASCAR race at a bar. I don’t go too much talking about music,” he says, recalling the tune’s origins. “They were pretty fucked up on that licorice shit people do shots of, and they seemed casually interested in those cars going around the track up on the flat screen. I heard a lot of rambling and confrontation.

“I was kind of waiting for things to get miserable. I was thinking this could escalate, but things never did. They got a little cozy, some sloppy making out took place. Seems they’d come to an agreement that there just weren’t enough songs about nuclear missile sites and forbidden relationships. I didn’t expect I’d have much in common with these two, but I was wrong. Instead of writing about NASCAR, I wrote ‘Missile Site’.”

The Loft at City Winery Clips have captured Reilly solo, and he points out that performing alone or with a band, he’s comfortable on the stage, even if both manners require a different frame of mind.

“It’s not more difficult or less difficult to present a song with or without my band. It’s different for sure but not more difficult. When I play with my band, I must stay with the lines of what we’ve agreed upon that works for an arrangement. Certainly a full-band song can convey much more information than a solo song. However, a solo performance requires more nuance and attention to subtlety. One is not more difficult than the other, they just require different attention.”