Photo Credit: Joey Wharton

Illiterate Light Interview

By Rob Hinkal

Fresh off of the release of their newest EP, Slow Down Time, we got the chance to sit down with the Virginia-based rock duo, Illiterate Light, to dive a bit deeper into the production of the EP, talk about their approach to touring life, their musical inspirations and what fans can look forward to from the band in the coming months.  

Looking back on your last full album release, Sunburn, this EP, at least to my ear, has a more naturalistic sound and vibe. Was that a conscious choice after taking on a heavier and more intense musical style on your previous album and the more electronic sound of the Aloe EP? Or did it sort of come about naturally?

Jeff Gorman (JG): I think it was pretty organic. We’ve always had a little bit of a folky, sort of singer-songwriter side to us. But we’ve never really been able to capture that in the studio. A lot of times during our live show, we’ll have at least one or two songs during the performance that we just strip everything back and kind of do more of an unplugged thing, especially as we’re playing longer shows now, and headlining for seventy-five or ninety minutes sometimes, I think we’ve been looking for some songs that will be able to extend the acoustic part of our set from one song to three or four songs. We’ve noticed that people really dig that portion and we really dig that portion because it just creates a space where we can (be allowed to) not be going loud and crazy, but just be super intimate with the crowd and with each other. So, it was kind of natural. So often when we’re making music we are thinking about the live show and how things are going to fit into that. So, I think it kind of came out of being like, “Alright, cool. Let’s showcase that side of ourselves. Let’s be willing to get quiet for a few minutes during the show and then get loud again,”. So, this EP was us taking a cool step in that direction, which, full transparency, the new music that we’re working on that’s going to come out later on this year is definitely much more in, like, the heavy/alternative and rock veins. So, it’s not really signaling a new sound as much as it is just showcasing another side of what Jake and I like to do with each other. 

As anyone who has seen your live show knows, you guys put on a high-energy set that is hard to match. How do you prepare yourselves physically and mentally for a multi-month tour? What’s your process on the day of a show to get into that mindset?

Jake Cochran (JC): I’m sure that Jeff and I have our own ways of staying sane on the road/energized. But I think a big thing for us is that we just come from a mindset that every time we step on a stage it’s meant to be not only our best performance but also the most enjoyable thing that we do. I think it’s a real decision every time we get up to perform that all the annoying and hard stuff, getting there, loading in, social media, all of that is just really a setup for this moment and it’s a conscious decision to choose to unleash all of our energy, passion, and fury for every single live show. We just played a casino and knew that it was not our crowd at all and we knew that it was going to be a silly gig, but we went just as crazy there as we have playing for a thousand people in our hometown. So, I think that it is kind of a mindset, an attitude that we both really believe in. 

JG: Yeah, it basically starts with that and it’s just full commitment, you know? Even if it feels like playing that casino gig, for example, or house shows we’ve played where even if it feels like this isn’t the ideal venue for what we like to do, the commitment is there and we just know that our heart is going to be in it and it’s just going to be the best show we’ve ever played because it’s the show we’re playing that night. And then beyond that there are other things like just staying healthy. I exercise on the road which is something I’ve incorporated post-pandemic. It was never something I was able to do pre-pandemic because it was just hard to really prioritize that. But Jake is pretty much getting a workout throughout the entire show. For me I am a little more stationary, so each morning I exercise and make sure that I am present with my body that day. Also, some of the classic stuff of just sleeping, making sure we are drinking water and we aren’t really out there to party or go crazy. We have a good time and we like to hang with our people but we’re really committed to the music and the music has to be first. And if the show is suffering because we’re not taking care of ourselves, then it’s going to be a problem. So, we’ve never really had that happen because we feel like the art and the music is first. 

Your new tour sees you performing shows at different festivals, do you find that a festival crowd differs at all from a crowd at a club or regular venue?

JG: We have kind of come to find that every festival is different. It’s really true. (We have played at the Newport Folk Festival three times now), and it’s a really, really musically engaged crowd. And that’s been the case at several of the festivals we have done that have been great. There are a few times where we get up there and it’s a little bit more like a party and that’s fun too, but we feel a little bit more like we’re background music to a bunch of people hanging out. Kind of getting back to what Jake said, it’s amazing when you feel it coming back from the crowd, but there are plenty of times where you’re playing a show and you’re not feeling it back and you still have to just, one hundred percent, go and give everything you’ve got. So, sometimes with festivals, it’s just, like, a really big area. It’s not like a contained space where everybody’s right up in your grill. So sometimes you don’t feel that energy coming back at you because people are so far away and you just have to bring the inner commitment either way. It doesn’t matter if I’m getting the feeling back, it matters that I’m putting the feeling out. In that way, it’s kind of the same as playing clubs. 

Is there one song that, no matter how many times you play it, you’re always excited for that specific song in the set?

JC: I think that Better Than I Used To is a song that ticks that for me. I love that song and it’s also a song that is meaningful to a lot of people. We usually play it at the end of each set and it’s a moment where get to kind of look out and see people not only smiling and enjoying themselves towards us but also towards their friends and family and whoever they come with. I think a thing that we really enjoy about our concerts is when see groups of people come together and come to the show and it’s an event for people. There’s usually one or two people who discovered us and then showed all of their friends and that’s, a lot of times, the moment where they are like, “See? This is it!”. It’s a really cool thing to get to experience from the stage and I’ll happily rock that song until I die.  

JG: I love playing that song as well, and then, it’s not our song, but, Vampire Blues. It’s actually a cover and a lot of people don’t know it’s a cover because we play it so often, but I love playing Vampire Blues every night. Like every time we go into it, it just feels epic. I just know that it feels like we are going to go do something that we didn’t do the night before because the solo section is kind of always changing. We often play those two songs pretty close to each other in our set, so it’s always a real epic moment. I definitely love bringing new stuff into our set, but there’s no song that we play that when we kick it off, I’m like, “Okay, here we go again…”. I always really love it!

And you can always tell when you see you guys’ live because there is just a lot of energy and joy on stage. I think that’s definitely something that’s great to see. Talking a bit more about the new release, the overall sound of Slow Down Time incorporates many elements of folk and the singer-songwriter genre you talked about earlier. Were there certain artists or albums that you referenced or were inspired by during the recording of this particular EP?

JG: Honestly, I haven’t really been listening to much music that’s in the vein of this release (laughs). Both Jake and I are definitely big fans of Big Thief and really dig their sound and ethos and vibe. The other day we were just talking about (their latest album), Dragon New Warm Mountain I Believe in You, it’s a great album and it just had this real sort of ease to it. I remember we were watching some of the videos for that from when they put it out, and it was just, like, these one-shot video takes of, like, all of them just in a tiny room playing together and it seemed like that was the live take that made the record. And we were like, “Man, they are making it look easy,”, and it was so appealing to just see how sort of simple it was. And, they are masters of their craft so they can do it that way. But I think we were definitely pulling a bit of that energy because most of these songs were recorded with me, Jake, and our buddy Danny all in one little, confined space together. It wasn’t like we were in this epic studio where we had isolation in different rooms. Everything was kind of like, bumping up against each other, and a song like High, we kind of ran it, like, once or twice and then clicked record, did a pass, and it was just like, “Great! That sounded cool. Let’s move on,” (laughs). Even in the Beatles documentary that came out a couple of years ago (The Beatles: Get Back), when you watch them in the studio, they were so not precious with things and were, again, masters of their craft. When you watch their writing process, they’re just kind of making it up as they go. I think that is a little bit of what we were going for. It might be a little bit ambitious of us to say like, “Big Thief and the Beatles were our inspiration,”, but that’s definitely some of the energy that was rolling around in my head. 

You guys recorded this album privately in your own studio, how did that impact the sound of the record? Did you feel that creating something in a space that is totally your own made you approach the songs differently than you would in a commercial studio environment?

JC: We took an approach to this that, we wanted to feel comfortable in our own space, but it was also a decision to take more time on each song as opposed to preparing a bunch beforehand, coming in, doing a few takes, and getting the best version. I think that the main thing the home studio provided us was the ability to experiment for longer. With the song Slow Down Time in particular, I think we had probably three completely different, finished, versions by the time that we were happy with one of them. One with a full-on drum beat, one that was even more broken down and acoustic, and then one that changed tempos pretty drastically. It’s the kind of thing where, a lot of times that’s what we would do in the demo process and then we would go into a studio and have, you know, twelve hours to do our best version of that song. But, our mindset with the home studio is that there’s no difference between demo-ing and a finished recording. It’s like, anything that we record is on the table for release. It doesn’t matter how it was recorded. It doesn’t matter if it was on an iPhone that was put in the middle of a room that captured a cool moment and then we record around that or if it was the best, coolest mics ever. It was, (let’s) let the process breathe and take the time we need to feel excited about it. 

How does the production and thought process behind an EP differ, if at all, from the process that goes into an album release? Do you go in with a clear idea of the themes that you want each to represent or does that differ between the two formats?

JG: I guess, to be honest, and we can’t go too heavily into this because we don’t have everything completely squared away, but it wasn’t the case of, “Okay, here are the 5 songs, it’ an EP, let’s go cut them,”. The real joy of having our own space is that we just have a little bit more flexibility to figure things out in real-time. And so, we kind of came into the studio and were like, “Alright, we have a list of twenty-two songs, (and) some extra riffs here and there…”, and we just started tracking. In the midst of tracking Slow Down Time and some more acoustic, heartfelt songs, there were other songs that were very much big, rock and roll, electric guitar riff sort of stuff. We were just kind of flowing with the energy of the session and then after a few sessions, we were just kind of like, “Okay, now I’m seeing the themes emerge. Like, these five songs are all talking to each other and these twelve songs over here are all talking to each other,”, then they start to kind of go in their own, sort of separate, little worlds. And then, in my experience, they kind of show you what they want to become and where they want to go and how they want to group together. Just in my experience on that, it’s rare that I’ve gone into something fully knowing what it is. It’s usually kind of through the process or even afterward where it’s like, “Cool, I think that’s a record, I think that’s an EP, (and) I think that’s a song that just hasn’t really found itself yet and it’s just going to kind of sit there,”. So, within that, we’ve got kind of an LP that’s emerging as well out of all of this and that’s kind of its own thing. 

What is the thought process that goes into sequencing the songs on the project? Was it always the plan to end Slow Down Time with Killer Not a Lover, or did you find that organically through the process as well? 

JG: Sequencing is really fun. I think that both Jake and I have really come to enjoy that side of it. Certain songs start to end up popping out. Usually, I have a kind of gut feeling of, “Alright that feels like it’s an opener, or that is going to close something,” … It’s usually kind of easy to see the beginning and end of the book. Then, in the middle, that’s where it’s kind of like we have to figure out how to get from here to here. So, I think Killer Not a Lover felt like the ending for a while. It was just like, “Okay cool, let’s close it out with that,” because that’s going to send us off into the next realm, which is a realm very much about just, like, going for it. And, Killer Not a Lover is a song about standing up for yourself and being resilient, and the next album has this feeling of… I don’t know! We’re just going for it. We’re doing what we love. But we definitely spend time sequencing out things. It can really change the feeling of a record or an EP to just switch three songs or something like that. All of a sudden it just feels like a completely different thing. So, we definitely try a lot of different track listing orders out, but the right one usually emerges. It’s kind of just like a story.   

Jake, anything you want to add on?

JC: No, I think that’s pretty right on. It’s the process of creating and then editing or really just, like, listening to ourselves. “What actually happened?”, is a good question that I try to ask myself when moving into that stage. Everything up to that point is, like, hyper-focused on making it as cool as it can be and then we step back and just really listen to it. It’s not just like, “A” and “B”, those things definitely overlap, but I think Jeff nailed it. 

Many of your songs reference Virginia. What does Virginia mean to you as a place and as a common thread between many of your albums/songs?

JG: Well, full transparency, I didn’t grow up in Virginia but I’ve been waving the state flag pretty heavily for the last ten years or so. I grew up in Baltimore, Maryland, which is a neighboring state. But Jake and I met here, in Virginia, in 2010, so we’re coming up on fifteen years of friendship and making music together. Not all of that time was with Illiterate Light, but for me, in a lot of ways, it’s just about home, you know? I do feel like Baltimore is my home as well but there is something about being here, in the valley, in Richmond, on the Eastern Shore. It’s where the people that I love are. It’s where the people that have helped birth our creative vision (are). I love this place because it feels good to me but it’s also a place that has just kind of shown up for us and helped support us and really made our lives as artists possible. And so, there’s a real deep sense of pride, and there’s a real deep sense of gratitude. I’ll riff on the fact that there’s just been a killer music scene and a lot of bands and a lot of really great people that we’ve been fortunate enough to be friends with and be in community with for the last ten years. When we started this band and started going to Richmond, the Richmond music scene was really inspiring to us, and there are still all of these great bands coming out of there. At that time, the house shows and DIY scene in Harrisonburg was really popping off, so there were tons of very underground, college, arts, and music shows happening all of the time that we were a part of. So, I think that there is just this sense of, as we travel, and you kind of get a pulse on a culture (you realize that) not everywhere has that, and we’re really stoked that we do have that here in Virginia. So, we like to just bring a bit of Virginia pride to what we are doing because it’s a place that has a lot of cool stuff going on. 

You’ve been talking a little about new music during the interview, is there anything coming up in the next few months that you want to plug or anything that you’re excited to release in the future? What can fans look forward to? 

JG: We’re really rolling out the release of this EP over the next few months. We’re going to be telling stories about some of the songwriting, what has kind of been on our minds, and then also diving into the production side of things. We try to get cool sounds and things that we dig and we know that a lot of other artists kind of listen to us with that sort of perspective of like, “Oh cool! How did they get that drum sound?”, or, “What was going on for them when they were working on that chorus?”, and we try to illuminate the creative process a bit more. So, really, the next few months are dedicated to expanding on these songs, and we are touring heavily come May, June, and July. There is going to be more music coming out later this year. We don’t really have much to say on it right now just because we are focused on this, but we were out in LA at the end of last year working on a new record with Joe Chiccarelli*, who’s a killer producer. We’re doing stuff on our own here, (and) we’re just basically at a point where (if) we have an idea, we want to try to materialize it and get it out to the world relatively quickly. I think we’re both happy to embrace a little bit more of the digital age and how fast we can take an idea and a song and get it out to people. We’ve been in positions in the past where it’s really deflating to write a song and feel like, “Oh man, I feel like all of the energy is packed into this song right now,”, and when you have the feeling like, “It’s going to be eight months for us to record that and another year and a half for it to come out,”, it really starts to make you feel like, “Man, it’s going to be two years before anybody really connects with this song,”, that’s really deflating and we’re trying to inflate, and not deflate. 

Jake, do you want to add anything before we wrap up? 

JC: Inflate, not deflate, I like that! (laughs) 

* Chiccarelli is the Grammy award-winning producer of The White Stripes’ Icky Thump and The Raconteurs Consolers of the Lonely among other iconic albums

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