Illiterate Light, with its unique sound, flexibility and a willingness to undergo new situations, is already making waves, including attention from NPR — and for good reason.
The band, from Harrisonburg, Va., is a two-man army of Jake Cochran and Jeff Gorman. They met in 2010 at James Madison University and became friends then. The two even ended up running a farm together.
Experimentation seems to be a reoccurring idea regarding them. The two certainly aren’t strangers to unique situations and trying new things. Just consider their setup alone and what they’re like live.
Cochran plays drums in the group, laying solid groundwork for each song to build upon. Gorman, on the other hand, divides his attention – he sings, plays guitar and is playing bass with his feet through a synthesizer that “looks kind of like an organ foot pedal,” in Cochran’s words.
Like many other music creatives, the art form and Cochran have had a long-time affair, although where he is now perhaps differs from peers. He started piano lessons relatively young, probably seven or eight-years-old.
“[I] had a lot of music in my household,” Cochran said. “My dad played piano and guitar and grew up in a Baptist church more or less with lots of music around there. And then … I really started with drums probably at about age 11.”
According to Cochran, he was in the percussion class at his elementary school in fifth grade. From there on, he became “obsessed with it” and “made some sort of music from then on out.”
He taught himself guitar in high school because he wanted to write some songs and learn to record some “basic stuff” so that he can get through that and get his ideas out, and even played “a little bit of jazz in college, drums mostly.”
“And [I] always tried to have my own songs,” Cochran added. “I was writing just acoustic guitar songs or starting a rock band and getting things out that way and definitely have always identified most as a drummer. I’m a very rhythmic person, no matter what I’m playing or doing. But I’ve also always had a yearning to be a performer outside of just drums. So, to sing and to move around on stage and connect with people that way. And, in a lot of ways, that’s kind of how my role in Illiterate Light has evolved as I’m playing drums standing up.”
According to Cochran, this gives him a lot of “freedom to move around.” He’s singing a lot of harmonies and he’s also getting the crowd engaged and involved, which, Cochran noted, isn’t a normal job for a drummer.
“It’s an exciting mashup of the things that I’ve loved most about music,” he said.
The two very much believe in always growing and always looking for what he described as the “new and the next thing.”
Illiterate Light has been playing Neil Young’s “Vampire Blues” and the band has a single out of the track live at The Golden Pony.
“It’s a cool song [“Vampire Blues”] … it’s one of the only, like, I guess like, blues songs that we play,” Cochran said. “A lot of what we’re doing is clearly influenced by the blues and by that type of music. But, it’s a more basic format and a format that … the solo section of it particularly, just has been a place for Jeff and I to kind of experiment on stage and sort of see what we’re feeling every night and where to go with it. And it’s also just been a way, one thing that as a duo that Jeff and I are both really excited about is how do we push the limits of a duo and how do we make … the crowd that’s watching us just have no idea how we’re making the sounds that we’re making.”
The song, Cochran said, has been a “cool way” for them bridge that gap, experiment and push each other to new levels with the solos.
Illiterate Light’s “Vampire Blues” cover is a sludgy, grooving and ultimately hard-hitting interpretation of the track. It demands to be heard.
The group has seen another exciting release: 2019 saw the unleashing of the band’s debut album.
According to Cochran, the two have always felt like they’re a live band first, and it’s taken them four years of being in the band to figure out how to record themselves in a way that sounded like them, Cochran said.
A “really special moment” for him each night is the track “Sometimes Love Takes So Long,” off the album.
“And the rest of our set is pretty raucous and pretty crazy, but on this tour particularly, we’ve decided to do that song where we strip completely back, Jeff picks up an acoustic guitar, I just have one drum that I kind of sling around my shoulder and we don’t use any mics, we just kind of get in the room and feel the energy of the people in front of us,” Cochran said.
He described the song as a really “beautiful and special love song.” It talks about the reality that love can be difficult and a journey. People seem to “really identify” with that, he noted. Hearing people sing along with it or watching people’s faces as they sing it to them has been “really special,” Cochran noted.
“A new experience for sure,” he added.
As far as their debut album goes, they’re “completely thrilled” with it, to quote Cochran.
“…And we feel like that album did a really good job of representing this stage of our growth and what we’re doing and what we sound like right now,” he said.
In January, the band played at the Cat’s Cradle Back Room in Carrboro. They love the venue, which they’ve been able to play twice, according to Cochran.
However, if you missed out on the January show, don’t fret. Plenty of shows are there for the taking — and you should take advantage of those opportunities, if you can.
Writer and artist Miles Bates became infatuated with the arts at an early age. A former student of The Kubert School, a sequential art school in Dover, N.J., his entertainment loves include television, film, video games, books and comic books. Since having been introduced to Metallica in middle school, music has remained a key conversation starter and puzzle piece in his life. His joy is to expose others to all things art related, particularly music.
