Ike Reilly, the coolest Ike since Turner (hopefully with fewer bad habits), and with more hair and hits than Eisenhower, is traveling light, doing a solo acoustic gig with The Nightwatchman at the Troubadour in West Hollywood on Saturday night.

He's usually fronting his raucous rock group, the Ike Reilly Assassination, so this quieter, lone gunman approach is perhaps just a prelude for his return to SoCal with the full band in the fall.

The working class-looking dude wearing the baseball cap, aka The Nightwatchman, is in fact the softer side of Tom Morello, guitar player for Rage Against the Machine and Audioslave. Less well-known for his acoustic stuff, Morello is yet another rocker against Bush.

His new CD, which would've been huge in the politically aware '60s, is "One Man Revolution.''

Morello and Reilly are doing about 15 shows together on this short tour. Reilly, too, has a new album, "We Belong to the Staggering Evening.''

That might be an apt description of downtown Ventura on Friday night, or any bar-crawl district around last call, but Ike rocks much more than he staggers.

A man of few words, but many good songs, Reilly was waiting for a plane when he discussed his latest and where it fits in with his vast body of work.

Reilly might be playing solo, but he's no stranger to traveling light.

"I enjoy traveling with the band and I enjoy the power of my band," he said. "But when it's just me and the guitar, it gives me a chance to change lyrics and length and be a lot more spontaneous. I started out being alone, so I'm used to that and I've been touring the last three or four years, about 40 percent of the time alone.''

Reilly's fans are more likely than Morello's to move their feet, and perhaps 40 percent less likely to act inappropriately by whacking each other in the noggin, depending.

"Depends where we are," Reilly said, describing audience reaction to his music. "When I play alone, people usually listen to the words, and when I play with the band, they punch each other in the head.''

To avoid unpleasant gigs, Reilly has adopted a foolproof plan that he calls a drive-by.

"The drive-by is when we drive by the gig and then go to the hotel and drink all night and don't play," he said. "If it looks like a strange gig, I just walk.''

With the present state of the recording industry and the possibilities available on the Internet, musicians no longer need to follow the antiquated rules of Rock Star 101, meaning that it's not necessary to get signed to a big label, be on the cover of Rolling Stone and have videos all over MTV. Reilly has four great albums and he's working, which evidently works.

"I have no master plan," he said. "Why do it? It's all I know how to do. I don't know how I got into it. I started writing songs, then next thing I know, I'm stuck doing it. I tour and put out records and try to reach more people by touring. I have a publicist and an agent, and I'm sure they're more desperate for me to make more money than I am.''

So Reilly knows what a good song should sound like and how to pick a good gig and delegate the worry out of his night job. The heap of hype surrounding the life of a musician has offered few surprises thus far.

"Everything I know about this, I knew when I started," he said. "It's a fun life. It has its shortcomings — lack of sleep, a lot of travel — but it's better than most people's jobs. On the road, I write. I hang out with my bandmates. I talk to people like you, which is fun. The band and I do a lot of socializing. There's no worst thing, you know, and the best thing for me is a lot of movement and action. And I like to move.''

And how would Reilly explain that indescribable moment when the band is rockin' out?

"I can't," he said. "But one thing a lot of people don't experience because they're not in a band is having some intimate, common knowledge with other people. We can play 60 or 70 of my songs, and it's kind of a weird connection when I start something and four other guys know what I'm doing. That to me is kind of the intangible beauty of being in a band.''

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Get Thee' to the Citrus Fest

The Santa Paula Citrus Festival is happening this weekend. Locals best celebrate all those trees and that wonderful small-town atmosphere before it gets paved.

In any case, there's stuff happening all weekend — especially music — in Harding Park.

Thee Midniters will take the stage at 9 p.m. Friday.

These kings of East L.A. in the early '60s had a hit with "Land of a Thousand Dances" and recorded one of the greatest instrumental songs ever, the speeding ticket-inducing "Whittier Boulevard,'' which lives long and prospers on oldies radio.

Check the event's Web site, www.santapaulafestival.org, for the weekend entertainment lineup. It might be worth the drive just to hear "Whittier Boulevard'' played live.

— E-mail music writer Bill Locey at blocey@pacbell.net.