Funk & Wagnall, and the Death of Luke Reilly

Tom Williamson sent me a text message saying that he had some awful news. I was standing in line at the pharmacy and there was a pause as he typed his next message. Then he told me that Luke Reilly had passed away, and I immediately took a deep breath and put the phone back in my pocket. I started to focus on my breathing, trying to stay grounded because my head was starting to spin. Let me compartmentalize this just until I’m done at the pharmacy and then I’ll deal with whatever is going on. I said to myself. I finished up at the counter and walked out to my car, and when I got into my car I took a deep breath, and took out my phone again. 

My initial thought was that Luke had died in a car crash. Snowy Colorado roads, a semi truck collision, instant death. Perhaps my own near death experience in a car crash long ago had subconsciously put that image into my mind. Then I read Tom’s words, how Luke’s death was being investigated as a murder-suicide, and how the bodies of both Luke and his wife had been found, and I became very confused. Tom sent a link to the Winter Park Colorado news article, which had few details, and only said that the bodies were found with traumatic injuries, and it listed the names of Lucas Reilly (38) and Kirsten Reilly (32), and as I read the names none of it felt real. I left the pharmacy, and as I drove away, I began making some phone calls.

. . .

I first met Luke at an open mic that I ran at Bar Pico in Santa Monica. It had been a very small unknown hangout when I took over on Tuesdays, but over time it had become somewhat of a sensation on the West side, and it became very popular. I loved hosting the open mic, I was happy to be a part of the music community in LA. Some of the best talent I’ve heard in LA was at Bar Pico open mic, and many of the closest friendships I established during my time in Los Angeles were from there as well. 

Luke showed up one Tuesday to play, and he sounded good. His voice was strong, his guitar playing intermediate, with a country kind of vibe. The first time I spoke with him, we connected instantly, and I knew that we were going to be close friends. That kind of bond happens very rarely with me, and I recognized it immediately as I spoke to Luke. He was tall and good looking, and he looked much younger than his age—I was dumbfounded when he told me he was thirty years old (!), an astronomical number that I would surely never reach (at the time I was 24). He began showing up to the open mic regularly and established himself in the scene, and we started hanging out outside of Bar Pico. 

Luke’s sense of humor was on par with mine, which, again, is a rarity. Some of the funniest things I’ve ever heard came from Luke; things that I still laugh out loud about, even a decade later. My sense of humor, when I’m comfortable, is dark, sharply deadpan, and caustically sarcastic. Luke had no problem keeping up. There were so many similarities that he and I had, effortless links that brought us closer as friends, with an almost brotherly kind of affection. 

One day Luke came by my apartment in Mar Vista and started playing my guitar, and he sang “The Only Living Boy in New York,” by Paul Simon. We started harmonizing and it sounded very good. I stopped and asked him, “Do you know how many Simon & Garfunkel songs I know?” I asked him if he wanted to learn more S&G songs and sing them with me. He was down, and started learning a list of Simon & Garfunkel tunes that I had given him.

To say that I am an admirer of Paul Simon’s work would be inaccurate. To say that I’ve had a lifelong obsession with Paul Simon’s music would be closer to the truth. In high school, I was involved in choir and musical theatre, and a friend and I began to play “Sound of Silence” and “The Boxer.” I didn’t want us to be called Simon & Garfunkel, so I jokingly decided to call us Funk & Wagnall, after the famous dictionary writers. While I greatly enjoyed playing those songs, and working on the harmonies and dynamics, Funk & Wagnall was limited to my high school years. 

Before meeting Luke, I knew maybe twelve Paul Simon tunes; a respectable amount, I suppose. But when Luke decided to get on board with learning more songs, I was so excited that I immediately began learning as many Simon & Garfunkel songs as I could. I gave Luke the album Live in New York 1967 as a reference for the sound that I wanted us to focus on. Just two voices, one guitar; intimate and melodious and beautiful.

Within a few months, Luke and I had learned

1) Only Living Boy In New York
2) 59th St. Bridge Song (Feeling Groovy)
3) America
4) Mrs. Robinson
5) A Poem On The Underground Wall
6) The Boxer
7) Sound of Silence
8) He Was My Brother

Later on, we would also learn

9) I am a Rock
10) Homeward Bound
11) Weds Morning, 3am
12) Leaves That are Green
13) At the Zoo
14) Blessed
15) A Most Peculiar Man
16) Cecilia
17) Blues Run the Game
18) Baby Driver

I also learned the song “Anji,” which is a complex and challenging guitar instrumental, as well as “Song for the Asking,” and “April Come She Will.” This put us at over twenty songs.

Learning and relearning all these songs was a passion that I fell into completely, and Luke was all for it, completely committed. Together, we crafted all these songs into our own interpretations; they were unique and confident arrangements that put a modernized, stripped down, contemporary indie vibe on these classic, well known songs, while still preserving the beauty of the source material. My knowledge of Simon & Garfunkel’s discography is relatively vast, and being able to pull from so many different studio renditions and live recordings, as well as my own personal style of playing and singing, allowed me to create guitar and vocal arrangements that encapsulated my favorite parts of so many different variations. Together, Luke and I started to sound really fucking good. 

When it comes to playing Simon & Garfunkel’s music, I’ve always held myself to a nearly unattainable standard. I put our harmonies and my guitar lines side by side with the source material, and if I don’t think it does it justice, or brings something new and impressive to the song, then I don’t move forward with it. Luke soon understood my meticulous exactitude and great respect for these songs, and together, we reached a level of our sound that truly impressed me. Even with me being our harshest critic, there was never a song that we walked away from.

Luke and I would practice at Bar Pico whenever we wanted because I had the key to the place, and we’d play at the open mic night on Tuesday, where our friend Henry Rust would accompany us on bass, and later on dobro guitar for our rendition of “The Boxer.” Henry  was an older fellow who played several different instruments; every Tuesday he’d bring in four different kinds of guitars and an electric bass and sit in with all the other players that showed up for the open mic. He was a staple of the Bar Pico open mic scene, and he was (and still is) a damn good musician. Over time, he would end up playing a lot of tunes with Luke and I, tastefully accompanying the songs and adding a nice layer of nuance and melody to our arrangements.

Bar Pico’s open mic, at the height of its popularity, was epic. The level of talent each week was mind-blowing, and we had become a family. It was a strong, supportive, creative scene that grew every Tuesday; it had become the best open mic on the West side. One night Henry turned to me at the bar, and as we looked around at the packed and enthusiastic crowd that filled the room, he said to me, “Casey, you did this. You put this thing together.”

Fuck yeah.

At the same time all of this was happening, I had a horrible substance abuse problem. I had nearly died in a car crash with a drunk driver the year before; it happened immediately after my move to Los Angeles. The driver was going the wrong way on a freeway offramp; it was a head-on collision coming down off highway speed. I broke my knee, my arm, my back, my spleen was removed, my face was torn apart, my liver was lacerated—that’s what almost killed me. (And it’s funny, I would later joke: I always figured my liver would kill me, but I had no idea it would happen like this.) 

After the crash, I tried to jump back into life like nothing had happened, but I was truly fucked up. I had gotten addicted to prescription pain killers, and I had also started abusing cocaine and speed, as well as head pills like Klonopin, Valium, and Xanax. I was smoking weed and cigarettes, and I eventually started drinking again. My depression, which is something I’ve always struggled with, became so dark in the aftermath of the crash that I became suicidal, suffering from serious PTSD and suffocatingly excruciating anxiety attacks. I didn’t have anyone to help me, and I didn’t know what was happening. I was scared and alone, free falling in a downward spiral of dangerously self-destructive, nihilistic, and fatalistic behavior. I was self medicating, trying to survive the only way I knew how. I simply didn’t have the tools to recover and process all my trauma in a healthy way.

I had also started tending bar for the open mic nights, which didn’t help curb my behavior. I’d get blackout wasted, hooking up beers and wine for all my friends; we’d drink and smoke and I’d take pills and jump back and forth between the stage and the bar. It got pretty messy at times. Yet even in the haze of this drugged chaos, it was all so much fun. Luke helped to host the Open Mic sometimes when things got too busy at the bar, and he’d help run the sound. Bar Pico was a beer and wine bar only, which was good, and made it much easier to bartend, if you could call what I did bartending. I don’t know how I got away with it for so long. Some nights I’d sleep at the bar, I’d wake up in a booth the next morning with my pockets stuffed full of cash tips from the night before. The owner liked me, and he was kind of checked out with managing the place. Other nights, I would drive home, sometimes taking girls home from the bar. It was truly out of control. I was reckless and completely hedonistic. These are some of my favorite LA memories.

Besides hanging out and playing music with Luke, I wrote and recorded a lot of my own solo material in LA too. Some of my best work came out of that time: my EP 1984 Sessions, my album Live at the Pocket, Santa Cruz, and my fourth studio album Desperate Times were all recorded or mixed at Timewarp music in Mar Vista, near my apartment. Actually, many of the Bar Pico open mic artists, including Luke, had had recording sessions at Timewarp; I brought my friends there to check out the new projects I was working on, and helped them record and produce some of their own original material.

At the height of my drug abuse in LA, Luke and I had a serious falling out. I couldn’t even tell you what happened, but it was bad. Around the same time I lost my job, Bar Pico closed down, and my relationship with my girlfriend had exploded. I left LA a total mess, returning back to Northern California with a huge drug problem and serious emotional and psychological issues. I was lost, alone, and my life was on fire. I didn’t really care about leaving LA, although I missed the open mic night, and I truly, truly missed Luke, and the music that we had created together. Funk & Wagnall, and my lost friendship with Luke, were my only true regrets.

Eventually, in Northern California, I reached a breaking point, and I was finally able to turn my life around. I got clean and sober, I started doing yoga, meditating, and recording new music. I was also publishing my writing and producing my own music videos. I had tried to reach out to Luke multiple times both before and after my sobriety, but he never responded. Even sober, I still hurt from losing my friend, and I missed Funk & Wagnall.

I made a music video for my song Orange Grove, a single off of my album Desperate Times. It was an artistic and aesthetically beautiful project, and I was very happy with it. After the release of the video, I got a message from Luke. He said he loved the video, and asked if I was clean. I told him that I was, that I had been clean for a while, and that I always regretted how he and I ended our friendship. We made amends then, and it felt so healing to be able to be on good terms with him again.

Luke told me he was coming to San Jose for a few days, and we could meet up. I met him at a hotel near downtown, and I had brought my guitar and my recording set up. That night, we picked up right where we had left off; joking, laughing, and playing Simon & Garfunkel. The harmonies and words were still there, our tone and blend had improved greatly, and we were both better singers and healthier people. That same night, we recorded The Hotel Sessions. The tracks were recorded live in Luke’s hotel room; I later mixed and produced the tracks, which I was just learning how to do, and I was blown away by how much better we sounded. This was the first recorded collection of Funk & Wagnall songs.

Later in the year, Luke flew into Oakland for a few days, on what happened to be my 28th birthday. I drove up to his Oakland hotel and we jammed again, learning the song “Blessed,” although we never recorded it.

The next year, I came down to LA to record “The Boxer” with Luke and Henry. Henry was on dobro, and he later dubbed electric bass over the track. Recording “The Boxer” was such a fantastic process for me: recording and producing all the different instruments, vocal tracks, working with the recording software and figuring out how to layer, balance and mix the song. The single was recorded at Henry’s house in Brentwood. Henry’s got a killer set up, with a hundred guitars and a nice mellow vibe. It was perfect for Funk & Wagnall. The single was released as “The Boxer Session.”

Then came the summer tour. This was in the summer of 2016. I came down to LA and brought the two cinematographers from my Orange Grove video and other projects, and they came to Henry’s and shot footage for an entire evening and the next day. We got a ton of beautifully artistic shots that I used to make our Funk & Wagnall promo video, as well as the music video to “Only Living Boy in New York,” and the many short video clips for social media. I also recorded our entire set for the tour, live in Henry’s living room. Over three years later, I would mix and release the recordings as The LA Sessions. This is the most comprehensive collection of Funk & Wagnall’s repertoire; it was so fulfilling to capture all the sounds and banter and energy that we had at the highest point of our musical collaboration. 

That summer tour was magical; I had never played that much S&G before. We practiced for six hours a day, three days in a row to prepare for the line of shows. It was a four date tour: Hollywood, Brentwood, Santa Barbara, finally ending at Red Rock Coffeeshop in downtown Mountain View, where we played to a sold out room and received a standing ovation at the end of our set. This resurrection of Funk & Wagnall was a crowning achievement of my sobriety; my time with Luke and Henry, totally immersed in the music, was a profoundly gratifying experience of redemption and self-healing. What we had that summer was something that could never be replicated.

There were a few one off shows that Luke and I managed to play; here and there we’d reconnect, pick up right where we had left off, and find ourselves performing at an even higher quality, more comfortable than before. Every time we played together, we sounded better.

The last show that Luke and I played together was a private party in Burbank, for our friend Tom Williamson. Luke had moved to Colorado at this point, and I hadn’t seen him for a long time. He flew into LA and I drove down from Silicon Valley and we stayed at our friend’s place in the Pacific Palisades; the house belonged to good friends from the Bar Pico days. We hunkered down and went through the set again and again, rehearsing for two days before playing the party. When we finally performed, it was one of our finest hours. Tom’s party was another fantastic show in the Funk & Wagnall canon. Years later, it would be Tom Williamson who would give me the news about Luke.

In the years following the party, Luke and I spoke and texted, keeping in touch, talking about a reunion, and how good it would be to get back to playing music together. He was living in Winter Park, Colorado, and he told me he had just gotten married. I met his wife briefly while video chatting with Luke, but they were both very drunk, and it was mostly incoherent. The last text we shared was at the beginning of September 2020, when we spoke about arranging a live stream concert for a paying audience. He had talked about flying out here for it, but those plans never materialized.

It’s now two months later, and I suddenly found myself calling Henry Rust and other friends from the Bar Pico days to tell them that Luke and his wife were dead from what appeared to be a gunshot murder-suicide. 

. . .

I can’t picture Luke under such horrendous circumstances; the cognitive dissonance for me is just too great. The Luke that I knew and loved, that so many knew and loved, surely doesn’t fit with this shocking, senseless, tragic event. Is he a monster? A murderer? The violence of the situation is absolutely unbelievable; there are questions here that will never be answered—questions that will hurt and refuse to subside even when we know that there will never be a logical, reasonable answer. All I can say is that, in his final moments, Luke must have been in such incredible pain, a deep tortured suffering, to have done what he did. The level of despair that drove him towards his final moments is a kind of dark and overwhelming sickness, a possession that hopefully I will never understand.

I’ll always remember Luke in the way that I see him in my writing, in the way that I hear his voice blending naturally with mine, in his sense of humor that was fluent with my own, in his friendship with me and his friendship with others. The pain of his family and his wife’s family is beyond comprehension to me. I’m grateful to be able to walk away from this with warm memories and a strong feeling of tragic loss. There are things in life that don’t make sense, that will never make sense, and in the darkest sorrow we can sometimes find stillness, but we’ll never find answers. 

In many ways, Luke was one of my best friends. The night I found out about his death, I spent the evening meditating, journaling, listening to old F&W recordings, and compiling old photos and videos. I texted his cell phone telling him goodbye. Later in the night I wrote a statement for social media, and I’d like to end this writing with what I said there:

Some of the most beautiful musical moments I've had were with Luke Reilly. As details emerge about his death, and the death of his wife, I'm holding space for his family, friends and loved ones, as well as myself, to take all the time needed to process through this senseless situation. Funk & Wagnall was truly one of the greatest joys I've had playing music; my time with Luke, Henry Rust, and all our friends, is something that I'll always cherish.