Brian Reilly took some good advice. Now his band, The Film Company, is up for two SD Music Awards

The story behind how musician Brian “Be” Reilly moved to San Diego sounds like something out of a movie. It happened when he was a young man living in Long Island, New York about 25 years ago.

“One day I was talking to my dad when I was just finishing school, and I told him, I was like, ‘I think I want to move to California.’ And he’s like, ‘no’,” Reilly told Times of San Diego. “He’s like, ‘You’re not gonna go’. And I was like, ‘No, I am.’ He said, ‘Listen, if you don’t go right now, you’ll be 50.’ He’s like, ‘if you want to go, you gotta go. Don’t wait. Don’t say someday. Don’t say soon.’ He said ‘you need to pick a day and go’.”

“And I said, ‘Well fine, I’ll go tomorrow.’ And he said, ‘Well don’t go tomorrow, Christmas is next week.’ I was like alright.’ So December 26th, the day after Christmas at 3 a.m., I just got in my car and drove away.”

“Retrospectively it was insane because, you know, I was like 19 or 20 and I had half a brain,” Reilly added. “I mean, if you tried to tell a young person to do that right now, they’d look at you like you were from space, like you were out of your mind.”

He wasn’t. And taking that chance eventually led to him joining the band The Film Company, part of a slate of San Diego Music Awards nominees playing at the Belly Up Tavern on Sunday.

But we’re getting ahead of ourselves. After driving out West, Reilly landed in Pacific Beach and settled into San Diego life. He then kicked around for a while, playing music off and on and working various jobs. At one point, when he had hit a bit of a rough patch personally and professionally, he received more advice that would change the course of his life.

“My partner asked me, she’s like ‘Why don’t you just go join a garage band? You love playing music, you hate not playing music, you’re very unhappy about it. Why don’t you go and do that?’ And then I was like, ‘Well, you know, I shouldn’t I be a grown up or something? And she’s like, ‘Who cares’?”

In late 2024, he became the singer, guitar player and lyricist with The Film Company. The band’s now nominated for two 2026 San Diego Music Awards – Best Indie/Alternative Artist and Best Indie/Alternative Album – for their second full-length LP, “Starving Artist and the Holy Ghost,” released last winter.

“And I joined the garage band thinking, ‘You know, this will be fun.’ And two months later we were headlining the Casbah, and then we were right out on tour. So music’s a funny thing, you know? You think it’s done with you, and then it shows you something else.”

The band, which also includes Declan Halloran on drums and John Falk on bass, is playing at the Belly Up Tavern for one of a series of showcases in and around San Diego promoting the awards ceremony – which takes place May 6 at Humphrey’s by the Bay – and its nominees.

Also on the bill are fellow SDMA nominees Anthony Cullins, Cassie B, The Brothers Burns, Zavala Sol and RM the Poet. Proceeds benefit the San Diego Music Foundation’s Guitars for Schools program.

Additionally, an autographed Jason Mraz Baby Taylor guitar is being auctioned off at the concert.

This is the second straight year that The Film Company – whose name was inspired by French filmmaker George Méliès – has been nominated for Music Awards, following a nom for Emerging Artist of the Year in 2025.

Reilly, who’s played in bands both in New York and San Diego since he was 10, said the newfound acclaim is kind of strange, because he didn’t have high expectations of The Film Company once he, Falk and Halloran formed the band.

“All of a sudden people started telling you, ‘Hey, you guys have got something that’s pretty unique here and pretty special’. And of course you just think people are just being nice. And then all of a sudden you start to get these much bigger bookings and then the nominations. And then you start to realize that, you know, after 35 years of running head first into walls made of brick, and all of a sudden you kind of just found a door.”

“Getting to play the Belly Up is a pretty awesome opportunity that a lot of people don’t often get,” he added. “I mean, that that’s pretty awesome.”