Observations of a wiseguy

In his first career as a doorman at Chicago’s Park Hyatt Hotel, Ike Reilly hobnobbed with everybody from businessmen to barflies, from partyers to politicos. He learned a lot. Like humility. “Everybody should have to work in the service industry at some point in their life,” he says.

That job might have been the perfect incubator for Reilly’s music -- barroom rock narrated by a wiseguy who’s as comfortable regaling PhDs and poets as he is pimps and porn stars. On “Sparkle in the Finish,” the album due Oct. 12 from his band the Ike Reilly Assassination, the cast of characters is dizzying, their foibles apocalyptic. And Reilly, the raconteur whose Dylan-on-caffeine lyrical delivery propels these rock melodramas, might be the only lucid guy in the house.

“I was at my 6-year-old’s tee-ball game,” he says, “and one of the little kids says, ‘Are you still livin’ on the golden crumbs, Mr. Reilly?’ And I said, ‘Yes, Ethan, I guess I am.’ ”

The “golden crumbs” line comes from the chorus of “Whatever Happened to the Girl in Me?” -- a ditty inspired by an encounter Reilly had with a Venice Beach local. The song has the same memorable quality as much of the material on 2001’s “Salesmen and Racists,” the overlooked album Reilly put out on Universal/Republic. His new collection will be released on Rock Ridge Music.

Reilly makes a tour stop tonight at the Gig, sharing the bill with Tom Morello (Rage Against the Machine/Audioslave), who’s performing as the Nightwatchman.

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The Ike Reilly Assassination, with the Nightwatchman, the Gig, 7302 Melrose Ave., Hollywood. 9 tonight. $8. (323) 936-4440.