A year and a few months after Rilo Kiley’s first live show in 17 years, the Los Angeles indie rock darlings play Hollywood Forever Cemetery on Saturday, and less than 24 hours later, take the stage at Ohana Festival in Dana Point on Sunday, Sept. 27.
And that’s kind of the band’s new normal, bassist Pierre de Reeder says on a recent call.
“I think we’re just kind of taking it as it comes these days,” he says. “We’ve just had such a great, amazing nostalgic run.
“We did our thing and came back together last year, and continuing it was a little bit of taking it like it is,” de Reeder says of the 40-some shows Rilo Kiley played in 2025 and the 10 more the band has done this year. “I’m like, ‘Oh yeah, great, we’ve established this thing.’
“So this is in the same vein. It came up, this opportunity. First Ohana, and then Hollywood Forever after that. That’s fantastic. They’re back-to-back. So we just said yes.”
Rilo Kiley, seen here circa 2008, reunited this year 17 years after its last tour. The comes to the Greek Theatre in Los Angeles for shows on Oct. 14 and Oct. 18. (File photo)
Jenny Lewis of Rilo Kiley performs on the Stardust stage during the Just Like Heaven music festival at Brookside at the Rose Bowl in Pasadena on May 10, 2025. The band will perform Oct. 17 at Gallagher Square at Petco Park. (Associated Press)
Blake Sennett and Jenny Lewis of the Los Angeles indie rock band Rilo Kiley perform at the Grove of Anaheim in Oct. 2007. Rilo Kiley is reuniting for its first show in more than 15 years at Just Like Heaven Festival in Pasadena on Saturday, May 10, 2025. (Photo by Kelly A. Swift/For the Orange County Register)
Indie rock band Rilo Kiley, including, from left, Pierre de Reeder, Jenny Lewis, Blake Sennett and Jason Boesel are seen here circa 2005. They reunited this year 17 years after their last tour. The comes to the Greek Theatre in Los Angeles for shows on Oct. 14 and Oct. 18. (Photo by Wendy Lynch)
Blake Sennett of Rilo Kiley performs during the Just Like Heaven Music Festival on May 10, 2025, in Pasadena. The band will perform tonight Gallagher Square at Petco Park in San Diego. AP
Guitarist Blake Sennett and drummer Jason Boesel of Rilo Kiley perform during the Just Like Heaven Music Festival on May 10, 2025 in Pasadena. The band, which reunited this year 17 years after its last tour, comes to the Greek Theatre in Los Angeles for shows on Oct. 14 and Oct. 18. (AP Photo/Chris Pizzello)
Rilo Kiley’s Jenny Lewis performs during weekend two of the Austin City Limits Music Festival on Friday, Oct. 10, 2025, at Zilker Metropolitan Park in Austin, Texas. The band will perform this Friday at Gallagher Square at Petco Park. (Photo by Jack Plunkett/Invision/AP)
Blake Sennett, left, Jason Boesel, center, and Jenny Lewis, right, of Rilo Kiley perform during the Just Like Heaven Music Festival on May 10, 2025, in Pasadena. The band, which reunited this year 17 years after its last tour, comes to the Greek Theatre in Los Angeles for shows on Oct. 14 and Oct. 18. (AP Photo/Chris Pizzello)
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Rilo Kiley, seen here circa 2008, reunited this year 17 years after its last tour. The comes to the Greek Theatre in Los Angeles for shows on Oct. 14 and Oct. 18. (File photo)
Rilo Kiley singer Jenny Lewis has played Ohana twice as a solo artist, but the rest of the band – guitarist Blake Sennett, drummer Jason Boesel and de Reeder – have not.
Neither has the band played Hollywood Forever, which hadn’t yet started booking regular live shows on the cemetery lawn by the time Rilo Kiley played its last performance in 2008 before reuniting in May 2025.
“I have never even seen a show there,” de Reeder says of the cemetery lawn concerts. “I’ve seen them at the Masonic lodge there, but, yeah, I’ve never seen that in the outside so I’m really looking forward to it.”
Ohana, which runs Friday, Sept. 25 through Sunday, Sept. 27, marks 10 years since Pearl Jam singer Eddie Vedder created the annual festival held at Doheny State Beach.
“Jenny and everybody that I’ve talked to has said it’s such an incredibly welcoming and lovely festival,” de Reeder says. “Festivals can be all over the place, you know. This has consistently rated five stars. So that’s another one we’re looking forward to.”
In an interview edited for length and clarity, de Reeder talked about what it’s been like to be welcomed back by fans around the world, how he first met Sennett in middle school in San Diego, and how a Canadian TV and comedy star helped get Rilo Kiley in the recording studio for the very first time.
Q: Rilo Kiley played a pair of small shows in San Luis Obispo and Ojai to launch the reunion, and then a huge show at Just Like Heaven festival. What were those like?
A: I mean, it was just like old times but on another level. We didn’t know what to expect crowd-wise, you know. I didn’t know if our demographic was just going to be everybody our age or a little bit younger, and that would be the sea of people that we’d see.
I was walking around San Luis Obispo, and I saw some kids who, like, back in the day I would have said, ‘Those kids are going to go to the show.’ But then, ‘Yeah, they’re too young.’
But then I see those kids at the show, so it turned out to be this crazy multi-generational thing. It was beautiful and unexpected that there were people that had seen us back in the day, and there’s a bunch of new people who have never seen us, and had been looking forward to seeing us.
We’d accrued just a sense of love that we got over our absence. It was really special right out of the gates. And going from a smaller theater in San Luis Obispo, then we played the Libbey Bowl in Ojai, which is amazing. And then what was, I think still is, the biggest show we’ve ever played at Just Like Heaven.
Q: That kind of reception and the ability to play when you want must have made touring today a more comfortable thing.
A: Yeah, it’s certainly more quote-unquote comfortable now. Just because it’s a bigger show and all that stuff. Starting out, as every ambitious band knows, you’re just out there doing the grunt work. You’re in a van, crammed in there, driving all hours of the night and day. Chasing, if you get the chance to be on a bigger tour, a bus and trying to get to the next town.
Those are awesome and amazing memories, and I wouldn’t trade them for anything. As it progresses, you make a little bit more, and you’re able to get a better van, and eventually get to a bus. And it’s just crazy.
For us, there’s never a logarithmic rise. There’s always a steady progression. We kept working. We circled the country, and like, truly the first time ever, there’s 20-, 40 people. The next time out was 100 and something. Just a very steady incremental rise until we stopped in 2008.
Q: Now it’s growing more again?
A: What’s interesting when I said that about the accrued love, it’s as though that was a trajectory, a straight line that just kept going in our absence. And then we’re back where it might have been at the point we started last fall. That was really cool.
Q: You mean it continued to rise in your absence, and you just hopped back on the line 17 years later?
A: I mean, this is just postulating, but imagine that line being a steady increase from our start to our end in 2008. As I said, that line just kept going up, and where it would be in 2025, it feels like we hit that. We didn’t miss a beat in between.
And so the fact that it all happened, it’s pretty magical.
Q: There were definitely a lot of teary eyes around me in the crowd when you played Just Like Heaven. And everyone was singing, which I guess you could hear on stage.
A: That’s awesome. Looking out and seeing that everybody’s singing, that’s something that was different. Everybody’s singing every word, every song, you know, pretty incredible. And yes, it seemed like a lot of tears. I got a lot of exactly what you said. People, like a big dude with a huge beard, just weeping. And man, that’s amazing.
Q: I want to ask you about first meeting Blake in high school or middle school.
A: We met in eighth grade? Yeah, think eighth grade. We were 14.
Q: Was that here in L.A. or in San Diego?
A: San Diego. I remember the exact sort of moment. In PE, in soccer, and we were on the same soccer team. I was a pretty good soccer player, and Blake was just funny, always following me around and [he’d] hold onto my shirt like, “I’m following you; where you are going!”
We just sort of clicked. Something clicked immediately. We became fast friends, best friends, and we hung out all the time. And we both had some musical inklings. I played a little bit of guitar already. He played drums a little bit. And we started recording little things on four-tracks.
Q: Then in the ’90s, he’s living in L.A. and starts writing and singing together with Jenny? How’d you join up with them?
A: Blake moved to L.A., and I was still in San Diego and just visiting a lot. I’d come a lot. And I remember him saying, “I started playing with this girl, and she’s just amazing, and we played some coffee shops and it was just great.”
I said we had this history of four-tracks and eight-tracks, so I would meet Black and Jenny and we’d hang out, and then we started recording little songs on the thing. It just very naturally started out by tinkering. I just kind of came into the scene because of my association.
And we didn’t really form the band still for – I mean, that’s like ’94-ish [Rilo Kiley formally started in 1998]. That was just tinkering around. I finally moved up to L.A. in ’96, and Blake and I got a place together. It still took a little while, but eventually it was like, “Let’s just do this.”
There was this moment where we began to play and we went to their jam space in this house on Wilton that was just all band people. We played some songs, and it was just like, “Whoa, this is cool. This is amazing.”
Q: You recorded Rilo’s first album in the house in Echo Park where you and Blake lived?
A: Yes, largely. The very first thing we did recording-wise was we played our first show, and Dave Foley [of “Kids in the Hall” and “News Radio”] was there. And we became friends with him. He was such an awesome dude, and over time he’s like, “Have you guys recorded anything?” He’s like, “I’ll pay; I’ll find something.”
So we found a place, and we recorded a first batch of songs. Out of that batch, the only that made it onto an actual record was “The Frug.” There was another song, “85,” I think we did in some studio. But the rest we did in our living room. We had a little recording set-up.
We invested in some stuff. We had our 8-track cassette, and we got the cheap poor-man’s version of ProTools. That was just when digital started to happen.
Q: That’s a good place to segue to your other career as a producer, engineer and mixer. You’ve got a studio in Highland Park now, I think.
A: 64sound is the flagship studio I’ve got up here, and we make a lot of records, busy all the time. We’ve got these other little production places, making records there and other people making records there.
Q: Playing in a band and playing, or working, in your own studio must be fun in their own ways. What do you love most about the recording studio work?
A: I mean, it’s great. You get to be an objective member of the band. Even if I’m just engineering, I’m sort of in a producer role. Most of the time it’s great because you get to objectively listen, and take control of the sounds. It’s such a communicative environment, and everybody’s open and discussing.
I get to, from my vantage, be like, “Oh, that was amazing. What if this happened? That thing you did over there, let’s try that again over here.” You just get to be creative. It’s being creative with opinions and having all these great musicians collaborating with you on it. So it’s really, really fun to do.”