Saturday Night, Live, with Prime Time Comedy and a Stellar Musical Act -- Review: TJ and Dave, plus Ike Reilly

Theater / Improv / Music Review

TJ and Dave (an improv duo)
with opening act Ike Reilly (a singer)
July 14, 2012
Theater on the Lake, Chicago
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As this blog reflects, I've been to many types of performances at a great number of venues in and around Chicago (and beyond). But until Saturday night I had never been--or even ever seriously considered going--to one of the city's most venerable theatrical spaces: Theater on the Lake.

Although I had long presumed that this was some kind of small outdoor amphitheater, the theater space is inside a building just east of Lake Shore Drive at Fullerton.

Built in 1920 as a sanitarium--not for insane people but babies with tuberculosis--the red brick structure has presented summer Theater on the Lake programming since 1953. At least in recent years, if not longer, it seems TOTL stages productions by various local theater groups, typically works those troupes have presented during the past theater season.

I've seen some shows that have been reprised at TOTL, but Saturday was my initial visit to the lakefront venue for a summertime production, and rather than a play or musical, I took in an improv duo preceded by a rock/folk singer.

As the program notes indicate, TJ Jagodowski and David Pasquesi have been performing as TJ and Dave for over 10 years. They can be seen weekly at iO Chicago--where I caught them once--and every other month in New York at the Barrow Street Theatre.

Rather than take any suggestions or stimulus from the audience, they simply play off each other for the better part of an hour, seemingly with a central scenario around which tangential dialogue revolves and occasionally intersects.

Saturday, their primary strain of improvisation was a job interview, including preparing for it, arriving at the office, being greeted by an employee and finally being interviewed by a manager, in the company of the greeting employee. That TJ and Dave each at times played the interviewee and the manager, while TJ also played the "greeter," should give some indication as to how quick and adaptable these guys are.

I rarely found it laugh out loud funny, as the woman next to me did seemingly non-stop, but much of it was quite humorous. Especially in the far too warm Theater on the Lake, I was glad TJ & Dave didn't go on much longer than they did, but they made for a worthy enticement to check it out.

Especially with Libertyville's Ike Reilly playing a solid half-hour set accompanied only by his acoustic guitar. I came to know of Reilly a few years back and have been tremendously impressed by full-band gigs I've seen by The Ike Reilly Assassination. Ike wasn't quite as exciting on his own, but certainly reiterated that he's a gifted songwriter and singer.

Highlights included "Devil's Valentine," whose lyrics come from a poem Ike's late father had written in 1942, a new song whose title I didn't catch and the closing "Commie Drives a Nova"

The same combination--TJ & Dave with Ike Reilly--performed at Theater on the Lake Wednesday through Sunday. Although you've missed this run (unless you didn't), either act--let alone both--is well worth your time for an enjoyable evening of entertainment.

As for Theater on the Lake, I'm glad I went, but am not planning to rush back real soon. That might be more the fault of the crazily hot weather than the programming--a couple other shows on their schedule did catch my eye--but although it was a satisfying evening, a bit more A/C would've been nice, or, on a cooler evening, simply the outdoors.

The Ike Reilly Assassination Blows Me Away With High-Powered Show: Concert Review

Concert Review

The Ike Reilly Assassination
with Pie-Eyed Pete
Fitzgerald's, Berwyn, IL
November 27, 2010
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I often bemoan, mostly to myself, sometimes to my friend Dave, that I don't seem to be hearing a whole lot of new rock music that really excites me.

But the truth is that although I have a vast and somewhat diverse music collection, if I were to look at almost anyone else's collection, I would undoubtedly find a whole lot of music by artists I've never heard, or even heard of.

So while I would still love to hear of some great new bands coming along, and even getting popular, there's probably enough great rock music that's already been made to which I remain oblivious to satisfy my exploratory urges for many years to come. I just somehow need to find it.

Last night, I saw a tremendously satisfying concert by a band called The Ike Reilly Assassination at Fitzgerald's Nightclub in Berwyn. Reilly, who hails from Libertyville, and his gang played exactly one song that I recognized, and that was only because Dave--without whom I still probably would never have heard of the IRA and without whose brother Curt, Dave would still be in the dark--had lent me a couple of Ike Reilly CDs in the preceding weeks.

But even though I often have a hard time appreciating live music without being somewhat familiar with the recorded version, the hard-charging literate rock of the IRA transcended my ignorance to sound great even for the first time.

And while Reilly fits somewhat within the stylistic cross-section of artists that I know & like, from the famous--Dylan & Springsteen--to personal favorites--Willie Nile, Alejandro Escovedo--he and his band were unique enough for me to not write them off as derivative. They just played good music in a vein I like while being fresh enough to constitute something engagingly new.

And while like hundreds of other acts--some that I know, most that I don't--one can say that The Ike Reilly Assassination deserves to be more popular, the truth is that they fit so perfectly into a venue like Fitzgerald's (with perhaps a couple hundred people in the room) that it would be hard to imagine them translating to the Auditorium, let alone the United Center.

While I have seen many concerts in football stadiums, basketball arenas and outdoor amphitheaters, and have no aversion to doing so, this year I have also caught a number of shows in smaller venues. Along with the aforementioned Escovedo, these have included acts like Graham Parker, Bob Mould, Ray Davies, Teenage Fanclub, Jason & The Scorchers and John Prine. While I prefer venues where I can readily sit through all, or at least part, of a show, I tend to imagine that a higher percentage of future concerts will be by smaller acts in smaller rooms. And so it's nice to add to the Ike Reilly Assassination to the roster of artists that warrant my support, especially when last night's show cost just $20.

Although the sound of this clip I found from a recent IRA show doesn't really do Ike Reilly justice, perhaps it might whet your appetite to learn more. And if you know of artists that I should know but likely don't please feel free to let me know. Because I'll always be enamored by discovering what I haven't yet, and with songs like "Girls in the Back Room" and "Whatever Happened to the Girl in Me?" still ringing in my memory along with the lyric, "somewhere between dreams and fear is life" (from "Devil's Valentine"), it sure feels good to say "I Like Ike."