Main Line TV Filmmaker Highlights Jamey’s House of Music in Lansdowne
When Main Line TV filmmaker Jill Frechie met Jamey Reilly, she knew she’d found a good story.
Reilly, 75, who plays bass guitar and is the proprietor of Jamey’s House of Music in Lansdowne, is doing his part to keep American music–and the Blues genre–alive. Frechie’s new short film about Reilly, “Jamey and the Blues,” was chosen for the prestigious 2025 FirstGlance Film Festival.
In the film, Reilly recounts growing up in Buffalo, N.Y., where he played the accordion. In high school, Reilly realized that girls were more interested in guys who played guitars and wisely switched instruments. He joined a band that already had two guitar players, so he then switched to bass.
“The Blues is a feeling more than anything,” said Reilly. As a bass player, he is not the front man for bands. “I’m happy to be in the background,” he said. He did the sound engineering for a Philadelphia band, Musical Orbis, at the Walnut Street Theater, and traveled around the city.
The Philly Blues Kings. Joey Stout on guitar, Frank McKitty on sax and Paul Abrecht on drums.
“Philadelphia is a Goldilocks city, not too big, not too small,” Reilly said.
Then the band moved to Boston, “where I cut my musical teeth,” he said.
Reilly has played for 58 years. He was the sound engineer for some big name bands, including Aerosmith, Frank Zappa, The Beach Boys, and The Who. He was based in Boston for several years, playing at the Fenway Theater and traveling with various bands. But since his Rochester days, Reilly gravitated toward the Blues, a musical art form that traces its roots to enslaved Black Americans in the South.
He paid his bills in ways other than as a musician, such as running a large yoga studio in Putney, Vt. One of his students recommended he come to Philadelphia to meet Bawa, a “saint” from Sri Lanka, and he did. He came repeatedly to listen to Bawa. He ended up settling here in 1994.
Reilly opened his first Blues club in the city, and when he had to close it after 10 years, he scoured the suburbs and found the current location for Jamey’s House of Music in Lansdowne. He opened it eight years ago. It was once a bank, a printing shop, and a recording studio.
“We bought the building and converted it into a first-rate listening room,” he said.
The cozy nightclub has 75 seats and a capacity of 99, he said.
Jamey’s House of Music welcomes various Blues entertainers and a smattering of other musical artists. There’s a Blues Brunch at noon on Sundays, with free entry.
Reilly’s wife, Suyun, cooks for the club, and his son, Johnathan, 17, waits tables.
Reilly met Suyun when he traveled to China and fell in love with her. She was a chef and owned Heaven Heaven a restaurant in southern China, near Hong Kong.
Reilly asked her father’s permission to marry her. Her family reluctantly assented to her relocation to Philadelphia. 
The venue was packed at a recent Sunday brunch. The menu features American classics and Asian delicacies. The Philly Blues Kings, one of three house bands, played a set, then Reilly announced open mic, and Blues musicians took to the stage and jammed.
Frechie met Reilly at the club’s first movie night when a film she made with John Ricciutti, “Heat of the Beat,” about Hooter’s drummer, David Uosikkinen, played. They’d met Uosikkinen through filming their first documentary, “Kensington in Crisis.”
“They showed the movie and I said, ‘This is such a great place,’” said Frechie. “And we came back, and the music was great, and everyone was so hospitable. And there was a bar and Jamey…It’s one big happy family.” She didn’t know anything about the Blues then, but knew she enjoyed the music. “I came back from a couple of shows and told Jamey, ‘You’re such a cool guy. I want to interview you.” Reilly recommended she also interview John Colgan-Davis, a historian of the Blues who taught at Friends Select School, so Colgan-Davis is also part of her film. While “Jamey and the Blues” is a short film now, Frechie has more footage and plans to make a longer version.
The club is also home to the Philadelphia Blues Society, a non-profit with a mission of preserving the Blues. Andy Rosen, a dentist who owns the Conshohocken Brewery, is a major benefactor, said Reilly.
Reilly is thrilled that the newly renovated Lansdowne Theater will reopen soon, bringing more people into the town, which is becoming “a vibrant cultural center.” Lansdowne has “a wonderful community of people (with) musicians, artists.”
The FirstGlance Film Festival will show “Jamey and the Blues” at 5 p.m. on May 16 at the Bourse Theater in Philadelphia.
