Rilo Kiley were never a band with a real long-term strategy. They formed in 1998 when singer Jenny Lewis and guitarist Blake Sennett, who were dating at the time, realized they had a strong musical chemistry. With help from bassist Pierre de Reeder and drummer Jason Boesel, they released some of the best indie-rock albums of the 2000s, earned a fiercely devoted cult audience, and were seemingly on the verge of a commercial breakthrough before they imploded in 2008.
For several years, any sort of reunion seemed exceedingly unlikely. Lewis had a successful solo career, her breakup with Sennett left some lasting scars, professionally and personally, and communication between the two camps seemed largely nonexistent. “I would say that if Rilo Kiley were a human being, he’s probably laying on his back in a morgue with a tag on his toe,” Sennett said in 2011. “Now, I see movies where the dead get up and walk. And when they do that, rarely do good things happen.”
That quote has now become the indie-rock equivalent of Don Henley saying the Eagles will reunite when “hell freezes over,” because Rilo Kiley emerged from the morgue for a reunion tour last summer, and a lot of good things indeed happened. The shows were stunning, the crowds were enormous, and they’re coming back later this month for an encore run in the States before heading across the Atlantic to play two gigs in London, and the Primavera Sound festival in Barcelona.
The band did very little press after announcing the reunion well over a year ago. But we caught up with Sennett to chat about the history of the group, the breakup, his life during the long hiatus, the reunion, and what fans might expect going forward.
How soon after Rilo Kiley formed in 1998 did you realize that this was something special, that this was more than just friends playing around?
Oh, I think I realized that before the band was even formed. I think I realized when Jenny and I were just writing songs together. Even before we wrote a song together, I think I recognized her brilliance. Then when we started writing together, that just further solidified it. I’ve never been great at making art just for the sake of it. I need to dream of greener pastures. I think that’s just kind of who I am. I think I always dreamed that we’d make something special.
On the Pod Meets World podcast, the cast remembered you bringing Jenny to the set during your time as an actor on the show, and playing songs with her even then.
The truth is I have no memory whatsoever of that, but if they say it happened, then I certainly am not one to say it didn’t. Those guys are cool. I’ve done their podcast a couple times. I do remember them saying that, and I remember thinking, “Well, I don’t want to bum anyone out, so I’m going to just agree.” I have no memory of that. I think me and Jenny always had a good response from our friends. We used to play little parties and stuff, just the two of us. It always felt like people were engaged.
Was it weird to be in a band that was taking off as the industry was cracking up in that post-Napster era?
Great question. Yeah, it was hard. It was a little scary, at least for me. I had fully abandoned acting in favor of music, I guess because I just loved music so much more. It was hard to turn a blind eye to what was happening. And the narrative at the time was the sky is falling, musicians are fucked forever, and you’ll have to work 10 times as hard to make half the money.
Jenny and I had left behind acting careers. And I can’t speak for her, but for myself, I certainly looked over my shoulder and thought, “Huh.” My mom was like, “This is a bad idea. You shouldn’t be doing this.” I was fully aware of it. I guess that speaks to passion, that you just kind of do it anyway.
Things changed so quickly. In the 1990s, a band gets going, they get some buzz, they sign to a major label, get on MTV, and make real money very quickly. That world ended almost overnight.
Yeah, totally, dude. It really did. From that point to this point, we’ve been in such a technological parabola that hanging your hat on art these days seems scarier than ever somehow.
Sure. But once you guys got started, you saw each album do better than the last one. I’m sure you felt that momentum.
Of course.
At the same time, if you look through music history, if two members of a band are in a personal relationship, that’s almost like setting a bomb that’s going to go off at some point.
That’s right. Totally, dude. You’re so right. That’s perfect. I’ve said the same thing. You’re on a clock as soon as you sleep together, unless you stay together. Who stays together when they’re 25?
Almost nobody.
I guess quarterbacks or something, but not perseverating intellectual artists. We’re far too miserable. Man, that’s right. We were on a clock. God bless us, for whatever you want to say, for making it as far as we did, but…I mean, shit, life’s on a clock anyway.
Jenny tells a story about throwing your Pink Floyd out the window of a tour bus. Do you recall that? And which Pink Floyd album?
In my mind, it’s Dark Side of the Moon. It’s certainly not like Atom Heart Mother or some weird one. I like Floyd a lot, but I’m more of a songs guy. So if you give me weirdo shit, if you give me just soundscapes for an hour, I tend to lose focus. So it was either Wish You Were Here or Dark Side or The Wall or something.
I mean, it’s pretty iconic, pretty badass, she threw it out the window. I’m glad she did that. I definitely understand, man. When you’re on the road and people play music you hate, it can be grating. I remember we had a guy travel with us once. Our bass player was having a baby, so he sent this dude along, and all he played was like power pop or something, and I fuckin’ hated it. And he just endlessly would play it, so grating, so loud. I think it was Guided by Voices.
I did not throw his CDs out the window. We were not as intimate as Jenny and I. And she threw my CD out the window. I remember being stunned, but I don’t remember being mad. I don’t think I thought it was funny, but I don’t remember being enraged or anything.
If you put most young people on a tour with their ex at that age, they wouldn’t last two seconds. You guys went years.
I know, dude. It’s a miracle, and so absurdly foolish that we decided to keep going when I look back. I can’t speak for everybody, but I loved the music so much. I think I always struggled to feel at home anywhere. And I think Rilo Kiley was the first place I really, really felt at home. I think it was too scary to lose, man.
Tell me the good parts and the bad parts of signing with Warner Bros.
Oh, wow. That’s intense. I think the good parts were that Warner let us do whatever we wanted. They had a smaller voice than Saddle Creek Records did. And it felt like one more iteration forward or an evolution or a step up the proverbial ladder.
Again, not speaking for anybody, but I don’t know that everybody in the band was all in on this decision. I don’t know that everybody was as gung-ho. Some were more gung-ho than others, and I think the bad part was probably that it strengthened some of that distrust in the band between members, because some were all for it and some were not as excited about it. I think looking back, it’s like having a baby. Everybody has to be fully on board.
I think it ultimately was probably not as helpful as it was…I don’t want to say harmful because I don’t want this to sound like there’s any regret there, because there’s zero from me. It ended up being bittersweet because there was a fight within all of us.
At the time, there was a real indie ethic and a real pride and a real … for instance, when the Shins licensed their song to McDonald’s, remember we all were clutching our pearls and we couldn’t believe it. And now it’s like that whole discourse doesn’t exist. So I think at the time, signing with a major label, a corporation, felt like we weren’t probably fully sure, all of us, if we were walking the right path or if we were giving something away that couldn’t be taken back.
Major labels do have larger budgets for promotion. They can get you TV and expose your music to more people. There are certainly advantages.
There are, but I’m not sure those were accessed by us. I think Under the Blacklight is the first record to sell a little less than the one before. I think More Adventurous is our biggest one. At least that’s what it was at the time. It probably affected the way we wrote songs and approached things. That was my perception anyway.
What do you mean by it affecting the way you wrote and approached things? Do you mean Under the Blacklight was a little poppier?
Yeah, great question. Let me try to clarify. I think we had been doing stuff in an incubator that we created for so long as a band that going to a major was just a little overall destabilizing. I don’t think that’s a bad thing necessarily in art and in life, to put yourself in a slightly different environment that is going to change the way you make things and approach things.
I don’t think we were trying to write poppy stuff to appease the label, but I just don’t know that it brought the band closer. And I think everything you do as you ratchet up in that high-pressure environment of being on the road, everything significant that you do is going to bring you guys a little closer or a lot closer, or it’s going to push you a little farther apart.
So I’m not saying it had this nuclear charge where we all blew away from each other at all, but if it had a charge, I think it had a charge to distance us a little rather than galvanize us, rather than bring us closer together. So again, it wasn’t this horrible thing or anything. It was great, but you’re asking about the good parts and the bad parts. The good parts were more money and all that stuff, but the bad parts were maybe that we all had a little uncertainty along with our enthusiasm.
What’s funny is there were no real visible signs of that onstage. I saw you guys at Terminal 5 in 2008. The atmosphere was electric. Everyone in the room knew every song. I had no sense I was witnessing a band weeks away from breaking up for 17 years.
Well, you were.
The last show was at the Greek Theatre. Did you know by then it was over?
We knew by then.
How did it feel to play the show and know something the audience didn’t know?
I’m scared of these questions. I’m not going to lie to you. I don’t want things to get pulled in a way that makes it sound like the lede is about this.
If you don’t want to talk about this stuff, I totally get it.
Off the record, as a bro, I for sure would discuss that with you, but on the record as part of the interview, it doesn’t feel like I want to say stuff that would represent the whole band if people have different feelings about these things. I don’t know.
I totally hear you. I’ll move on. In 2011, you said something that’s been quoted countless times since in most every article about the band during the breakup period. You said, “I would say that if Rilo Kiley were a human being, he’s probably laying on his back in a morgue with a tag on his toe. Now, I see movies where the dead get up and walk. And when they do that, rarely do good things happen.” Do you regret saying that?
Do I regret saying that? God. I try not to have regrets, man. I don’t think that’s a healthy place to be. I think life in general is so filled with opportunities for beating yourself up. I was probably too transparent and too coarse with my tongue, but I still like to believe that things have a way of teaching you something. So I don’t know that I regret it, but would I say something like that again? No, I would not.
At Coachella in 2015, you came out and played “Portions for Foxes” with Jenny. So how did that come about? It was the first time that you played together in a very long time.
I was playing with this band called Night Terrors of 1927 and we had gotten signed to Atlantic Records. It was me and my buddy [Jarrod Gorbel], and I was playing Coachella, and Jenny was playing Coachella. She just texted me and said, “Hey, man. Would you want to get up and play ‘Portions’?” And I said, “Sure, no problem.”
What was interesting was how different it sounded because we didn’t rehearse at all. I just got up there and it sounded so different than Rilo Kiley. I was struggling to know what to do even though it was Jason, our drummer, and Jenny. So it was a lot of us, but it was very different. It was fun. It was beautiful. I think I cried rehearsing. I was rehearsing on my own with my phone, playing the song. It was kind of beautiful. It was neat. It was really special.
When did you move to Nashville and get into real estate?
Did I say I got into real estate? Is that a thing?
You talked about it on the Pod Meets World podcast. Is that wrong?
No. It’s not wrong. I moved to Nashville in 2017. I had been in this band, that Night Terrors thing, and it got dropped. We called it quits, and I just felt like I needed a change. I got to Nashville because I thought it seemed like a very musical town. And I was a musical guy, and then I looked around and started doing co-writes. And then I think I looked around and started going like, “Okay, well, this looks a lot like the east side of L.A. did in 2003.”
What happened is everybody started beautifying homes and beautifying buildings. So I thought, “Oh, that seems like a cool thing to do.” I was kind of depressed. I was kind of in need of a little, I think, direction. I needed something I felt like I could do and be successful at. So I started doing that.
It was kind of a grind. I’m not going to lie to you, man. Real estate’s so much less fun than art. I wanted to tell you that real estate’s as fun as art. It’s not. I mean, what’s cool about real estate is you’re the boss. So if you have an idea, you can execute your idea. No one really tells you that you can’t do it. And I do like that. I like that autonomy. But playing a show with Rilo Kiley or flipping a house, it’s not comparable. Playing a show is so fun.
When the Postal Service reformed a couple of years ago, and Jenny went on the tour, many fans felt a Rilo Kiley reunion was the obvious next step. Did you think so too? Were wheels in motion at that point?
Jenny and I had reconnected in Nashville a bit and had hung out a few times. At some point right around the Postal Service reunion, we talked about it. And we sort of both agreed that if the time was right, it would happen, and if the time was never right, then it wouldn’t.
I think what happened for us is a festival reached out and said, “Hey, would you do a show?” And so basically we all just connected and were like, “Do we want to do a show?” And we said, “Sure.” And then we said, “Well, let’s do a couple of warm-up shows to make sure we’re not shitty,” which then turned into an entire reunion tour.
To go back a bit, just how was it to reconnect in Nashville, hang out socially, and not have all the baggage of the band?
It was nice. It was cool. I think with all old friends, you have that baggage. All my old friends and I, we have baggage. Whatever baggage means. We have history. I’ll take “baggage” out because I think it has a negative connotation, but we have history.
I think at some point in my life, you either reconnect with those people and accept them for who they are and then you stop suffering, or you don’t connect with them because it’s just not fun anymore to connect with them. Whoever this might be, I don’t know, man. I think once we connected and it was like, “Great, we’re not in a band together. We’re not lovers. We don’t belong to each other in any way at all. I fully accept you for who you are. Be you, man. It’s all good.”
I think once I crossed that threshold with not just Jenny but everybody — but we’ll focus on Jenny — it became pretty easy, man. It’s all good. Let’s say I’m on tour in the past, way back when, and if Jason or Jenny or somebody was having a bad morning, in a bad mood, I’d go, “Hey, man. Good morning.” And they’d go like, “Eh,” and keep walking or whatever. I would take that deeply personally and really think somehow it was about me. And now that I’m older, I don’t think it’s about me anymore. I don’t care. I just keep walking and go, “Right on. It’s okay.”
I think at a certain point, the bullshit of your 20s just becomes ancient history. It’s like, “Who cares at this point?”
Yeah, man. I think so. We were kids. I forgive myself for what I did, and I forgive them, whoever they are, for what they did. If that’s a pull quote, that’s a dangerous one. So I should say all is forgiven across the board, for all my friends.
Where were you when you first picked up instruments and played together after all these years?
Me and Jenny played in her house in Nashville during Covid for some kind of Linda Perry event. But the first time we played as a band was in L.A. at our bass player’s studio. His name is Pierre, but we all call him Duke. So if you hear me say Duke, that’s who I mean. The first time was in Duke’s studio.
How did that feel?
It felt great, man. It felt fun. It was really cool because back in the day we were inventing it, so we were pushing, pushing, pushing. I felt this feeling in my body of pushing. And now I wasn’t. I was basically recreating it. So you knew exactly what the goal was. The goal was, “There’s ‘Paint’s Peeling,’ there’s the tempo, there’s the notes, play it exactly like that and you succeeded.” In the past it was like, “Well, we played this way on the record, but maybe it should be a little faster live,” or whatever. Does that make sense?
Yeah.
I knew what the assignment was. So it felt great. Probably the first rehearsals were like, “Okay, is everyone cool? Are we safe? Is everyone happy?” I think from that rehearsal to the Greek show that we played at the end of this last reunion run was the third act. It was first act to the third act, perfectly, so sweet. It was so supportive and cool. I have nothing bad to say about it.
I could tell that you put a lot of thought into the setlist. You open with “The Execution of All Things,” close the set with “Portions for Foxes,” and then end the night with “Pictures of Success.” It all really flowed.
We wanted to focus the set around a specific era. And I think we wanted to make sure we played those songs as they exist on the records, for us and for the audience. And then as far as the flow of that set, I have to give that to Jenny and Duke. Those two really shaped the set.
I mean, we all discussed it. If something wasn’t working, we were like, “Well, what if we move this here and this here?” But the guys who make the first draft, which is the hardest draft, are always Jenny and Duke. I think we talked a lot about, “What should that first song be?” And it just seemed like “Execution” because that intro seemed like a fun way to set the tone.
What’s funny is that you don’t have hit songs in the traditional meaning of that world. There’s no Top 40 singles or anything like that. But when I looked around the room at the shows, every single person knew every single song.
Yeah. We have a cool fan base. This is hyperbole, but when people ask, “What band are you in?” I say, “Well, you either haven’t heard of us or you have a tattoo of us.” It’s not exactly true, but you know what I mean? We have either passionate fans or they’re not our fans.
There was nothing really done during the breakup years to grow the movement. It’s not like there was a documentary or a huge song in a soundtrack or something. It just grew organically.
Yeah, it’s wild. Even the reunion was similar, where we just did so little press and so little to support it. We just kind of went like, “Here we go. Let’s go play some shows.” And it was pretty cool. It kept it pretty pure.
It was the same feeling I had seeing the Pixies in 2004.
That’s amazing.
The Pixies had been gone for a long time, and as much as they’re beloved, your average person isn’t really aware of them. They’re not even close to a Soundgarden or anything. But that almost becomes an asset since it allows a cult to grow. And then they’re bigger in the second run than they were the first run. It was the same for you.
Well, first off, thank you for invoking that band and that reunion, because not only is that one of my favorite bands of all time, when I saw that reunion, I was so lifted and so transformed. It was so meaningful to me that what I said to some people before, and our band too, was “Maybe we’re somebody’s Pixies.” And dude, that’s exactly what I felt was happening. “Maybe we mean as much to somebody as the Pixies mean to us.”
You can’t make that happen artificially. All you can do is put your music out into the world, let time pass, and see what happens.
I guess not. I think Jenny and I have an alchemy. When we write stuff, it’s cool. I’m grateful it stuck.
Did it surprise you when they kept adding more and more shows?
It’s surprising with Chicago or some bigger cities. You sell a lot of tickets quickly, and then you’ll put us somewhere else and we don’t. I try to keep my expectations low. It seems like we have a threshold. We can sell a certain amount of tickets super fast. Like I said, you either haven’t heard of us or you have a tattoo of us. We have very passionate, incredibly loyal fans that I feel like we’ve really grown up with. When you say you were at certain shows, I feel like, “Oh, shit. Okay, you and I have known each other for a long time.”
I feel that, whether it’s practically true…in a sense, it’s not. But you and I, we went through life and we probably liked similar books. You know what I mean? We never were writing just empty songs. I think we were always trying to search for meaning and help connect with people who were feeling similar.
It must be trippy to look out into the audience and hear people screaming “Mexico can fuckin’ wait!” at the top of their lungs.
Yeah, it’s the best. I don’t identify as someone in Rilo Kiley. I identify as someone who was in Rilo Kiley. So I look back at Rilo Kiley with the same nostalgia as you in a way. So when that happens, I go, “Holy shit. Look what we did.” Not look what we’re doing. I revere it for its history and for its meaning, but I don’t take it personally.
Today, I was just caulking a house all day. My hands were covered in silicone caulk. I am more of a guy who puts caulking on windows than I am a guy who plays in a band. I have no ego around it, but I do look over and go, “Holy shit, that’s Jenny…” Jenny said that. She said, “Mexico can fuckin’ wait” into a microphone, and now all these people got to somehow connect with that very sort of esoteric lyric. But for whatever reason, she knew how to capture you with that.
You didn’t do a ton of Under the Blacklight songs on the tour. Was that not an album you wanted to really lean on?
Well, we tried to pick our favorites off of it. We did “Close Call” and “Dreamworld” and “Silver Lining.” That record probably fell a little outside the envelope of the core group of songs we were really focusing on. Most of the material was probably from The Execution of All Things and More Adventurous, but I think we tried to honor those other albums. We did the songs off of Take Offs and Landings and the songs off of Blacklight that we really, really dig. It was not like we were turning our back on it. I mean, it’s four out of 18 or however many songs we did. It’s not bad.
You’re about to play some U.S. shows and then you’re going to Europe in June. Are there any plans beyond that?
No. That’s the God’s honest truth. There are no shows beyond that.
Is a new album or a new single a possibility?
God. It would surprise me. But I’m not mad about it if it surprised me. You know what I mean? It’s all good. I think letting it be exactly what it is, free of any pressure to be anything but exactly what it was, was the right place for it to exist and is the right place for it to exist today. I don’t know. Your guess is as good as mine.
So you didn’t write any new music on the road?
Correct.
Do you hope the group stays together and keeps doing tours and maybe does a new record? Do you think about the future?
Yeah, I think about the future. I think about it. Do I hope it does? No, I don’t hope it does and I don’t hope it doesn’t. I don’t have a hope either way. That’s the truth. I think for it to do that, the band would have to … Dude, I can’t see the future on that.
Taking a big step back, if the band had stayed together, this likely wouldn’t be happening. There was no bad record. You guys never jumped the shark. You have this perfect legacy trapped in the amber of that time.
I agree, dude. And I love that you say that. I feel the same. I feel really positive about it and I feel like … We got out before we got … Like you said, we never jumped the shark. That’s a great way of putting it, and I agree. I mean, we had a relatively short burn. From the point at which we started to really catch on to the point where we broke up is a pretty short time.
I think it was a blessing because it gave us all an opportunity to go live multiple lives. I got to do a bunch of stuff. I look at some of my contemporaries who stayed in their bands, and they know how to do one thing, which is be in a band. But I think we were all able to go and do some other stuff and return to this.
Would it make sense to do more? We’ll have to see. But I know I love these guys. I know they’re family. Family is family. You have your history. They’re good people. I feel like I’m in really good company when I’m onstage.
