Illiterate Light bend members Jake Cochran, left, and Jeff Gorman. Joey Wharton photo

Today’s column is another new-to-me band called Illiterate Light and is made up of Jeff Gorman and Jake Cochran.

CONCERT INFO

ILLITERATE LIGHT
TIME: 8 p.m.
DATE: Friday, July 12
VENUE: Portland House Of Music and Events
ADDRESS: 25 Temple St., Portland
TICKETS: $17
WEBSITE: illiteratelight.com

After watching videos on YouTube, I arranged an interview with Gorman to get some background information about the band’s origin and unique performance style. I contacted him at his home in Harrisonburg, Virginia.

Q: What you two do is very compelling and interesting, could you tell me how you came up with that kind of minimalistic but still full-bodied and dense sound?
A: Well, the CliffsNotes history of the band is we formed in Harrisonburg, Virginia. I play guitar and sing and my bandmate, Jake Cochran, met at James Madison University, which is the college here in Harrisonburg. We played in a few bands together in college and we felt a real quick chemistry. We’re both multi-instrumentalists and both he and I like to jump around on different instruments.

Q: Does that figure into your gigs?
A: In our live show we’re pretty locked in to me on guitar, I aIso play a bass synthesizer with my foot, and then Jake stands at his drum kit. We both sing so we’re pretty locked into that live. But behind the scenes, he and I are both just music lovers and music junkies, so we’re all kind of into experimenting, and one thing that separates us from other musical duos is that we’re both pretty fluid on the studio.

Q: When did Illiterate Light start as a band?
A: We formed in 2015 and we didn’t actually have a vision for what we’ve become. We started as a trio and our bassist left, so out of necessity, we really wanted to find a way to simplify it with just the two of us but still have a big sound and still have a really energetic live show.

Q: You mentioned a bass synthesizer you play with your foot?
A: Yeah, it was used by artists like Geddy Lee from Rush, John Paul Jones from Led Zeppelin and some other progressive rock bands from the 70s. And over the course of about three years, I developed a comfort level with playing the guitar with my hands and then simultaneously playing a keyboard with my foot, which no one really sees if you’re not in the front row.

So, long story short, we took about three years to just play a lot of house shows. Toured all over the East Coast and we’d also pick up bar gigs and weddings. The whole goal was for me to feel comfortable playing bass with my foot without having to look at it. In the mean time, during all of that, we were writing our own music and slipping that in, as well, and then we started gathering a following from that.

Q: There are a few other duos out there, right?
A: We looked around and said, “The White Stripes are so amazing and the Black Keys are so good”… those duos that have come before us that have really successfully nailed the blues/rock thing, and that’s a little bit of what we do. But I think we wanted to add something different and bring something new.

So we asked the question: “What would it sound like, as a duo, if we sounded like a four-piece or a five-piece sonically but also energetically?” So we started watching videos of like James Brown and other performers, and reading books by guys like David Byrne of the Talking Heads where he talks about showmanship.

We came from this music scene where that wasn’t really happening, we want to engage people. I want to entertain people, I want people to sing along and I want there to be a big guitar solo and I want to jump into the crowd, we want to give it our all!

Q: Have you ever performed up in Maine before?
A: Yes, we have had some great shows in Portland, this coming show in July will be our third time. The first time we played in Portland was in February of 2019 and then we came in the summer of 2023 and played at the Portland House Of Music, which is where we are playing again this July.

We really love New England and love the area, it’s one of our favorite places to tour: the people are great and we also are total suckers for seafood, it is a beautiful area and we are so fortunate to be able to tour there.

Q: What can people expect from your upcoming show in Portland, especially if they haven’t seen or heard you before?
A: The show is entertaining because every night we leave it all on the table, we always go hard, and the music is fun. The music’s great and it’s rocking and it’s going to be a good time. Me and Jake are going to run around on stage, there’s going to be moments where people can sing and join in with us, and we also like to improvise a lot, we really blend a lot of musical elements in that way.

Q: So the bottom line would be?
A: The show is high-energy and a good time, people tend to leave going, “Man, that was really a breath of fresh air for a rock band!” So, if people know our music they always enjoy it, but even if people don’t I think we win a lot of fans just because we like to engage people.

Q: Is there anything you’d like to pass on to the folks reading this article?
A: Well, I would just highlight that we really love the area, the Northeast has been good to us, and we want to keep coming back; and we’re excited to throw some new music to people of Maine.

Lucky Clark, a 2018 “Keeping the Blues Alive” Award winner, has spent more than 50 years writing about good music and the people who make it. He can be reached at luckyc@myfairpoint.net if you have any questions, comments or suggestions.