By EMILY GILMORE
Rilo Kiley is not satisfied just with teetering on the brink of becoming the next big thing in indie rock.
Besides touring seven or eight months this year to spread word of their latest album, last year’s “More Adventurous,” all four bandmates are involved in other projects that eat up their downtime.
Guitarist Blake Sennett, a former child actor known as Ronnie Pinsky on Nickelodeon’s “Salute Your Shorts” and bully Harley Keiner’s skinny sidekick Joey the Rat on “Boy Meets World,” has his own solo project, The Elected. The group released an album on Sub Pop Records last year.
Rilo Kiley singer Jenny Lewis, also a former child actor, has collaborated with Death Cab for Cutie offshoot The Postal Service and is readying a solo album.
Jason Boesel pulls drumming duty for indie-rock royalty Bright Eyes when he’s not playing with Rilo Kiley, and bassist Pierre de Reeder also is working on an LP of his own.
How do they all balance their disparate endeavors?
“I don’t know, to be honest with you,” Boesel said in a recent phone interview. “It’s difficult, and you make it work as you go along.”
Tours sometimes coincide, so the musicians can’t always do everything, “but sometimes it works out perfectly,” Boesel said.
He fit in one tour with Bright Eyes earlier this year, but his duties with Rilo Kiley will prevent him from participating in Bright Eyes’ current tour.
Rilo Kiley decided to tour together as much as possible on the release of “Adventurous,” Boesel said, and they embarked on an aggressive national headlining run at the end of last month.
Between shows in New York City and Norfolk, Rilo Kiley will stop at the 9:30 Club in Washington on Saturday.
Song selections will include tracks from the group’s previous two albums—2001’s “Take-Offs and Landings” and 2002’s “The Execution of All Things”—but the show will be “weighted heavily” toward “Adventurous,” Boesel said.
By the end of the tour, the group will have played 41 shows in 53 days, which means performing the same songs over and over and over again.
“You kind of have to find new ways to think about it,” Boesel said. “There are ways to get around it, but you do get bored A good crowd that really enjoys it can knock you out of that and make you enjoy it. On the whole, I think it’s possible to get yourself amped up every night.”
This current tour will continue until the middle of June and be followed by a stint in Europe before Rilo Kiley returns to the states to play more dates. The band may also hit up such far-flung locales as Japan or Australia.
“It’s a little strange, one and half years already kind of laid out,” Boesel said. “I pretty much know what I have to be doing until February or so.”
Rilo Kiley can’t even think about making another album until they can clear their full calendar, but “Adventurous” is their most accessible effort yet, and it has a lot of life left in it.
The band released the diverse collection of moody country–rock on its own Brute/Beaute Records with distribution through Warner Brothers, but now the album is an official Warner Brothers release, Boesel said.
“I think we’re going to try to not necessarily re-release it, but add some stuff. Maybe add new packaging Give it new life,” Boesel said.
The success of “Adventurous” has inspired speculation that this album will send Rilo Kiley into the mainstream in the footsteps of Bright Eyes or last year’s sensations Modest Mouse and Franz Ferdinand, but Boesel and company aren’t taking anything for granted.
“We made this record like we made all the other ones, really,” Boesel said. “We weren’t really thinking about that I think we already met our goals on this record so anything from this point on is a surprise and kind of like gravy.”
To reach EMILY GILMORE: 540/374-5426 egilmore@freelancestar.com