Richmond’s alt-psych duo Illiterate Light has been on our radar since RVATRACK premiered their live music video for the song “Better Than I Used To” back in the spring. Most recently, the Harrisonburg natives have been busy goofing around with the folks over at GOOD DAY RVA to create a silly and fun video for their song, “Here Lie The Bones Of My Favorite Car.” Intrigued? With a song title like that, how could you not be?
Of course, for the making of this gritty piece of greatness, they headed to Chesterfield Autoparts in June to record the video right in the middle of the junkyard. Guitarist/vocalist Jeff Gorman and drummer/vocalist Jake Cochran jam out as they swing on strung up dead engines, eat hubcaps, race on wheelbarrows, and rifle through the bones of the car graveyard all while worn out tires roll by in the background like tumbleweeds. Between the visuals and Gorman’s solid guitar skills and Cochran going insane on the drums, what more could you ask for in a music video?
“The staff was super into it – and there were people scrapping cars all around us,” said Gorman of the video. “They were taking pictures and social media-ing it, kinda like, ‘man it’s 9 am on a hot Sunday and I came to scrap a radiator, and there’s a loud ass rock concert happening next to me.'”
Illiterate Light, who had been digging the local film collective’s work since first seeing NAVI’s 2015 video, finally connected with Good Day RVA a year later after continuously playing around town.
“We played a house show at the (extinct) Good Day RVA house. It was a four-band bill and we were last, which is often a toss-up slot,” Gorman said. “We still felt like out-of-towners and we assumed the crowd would thin out and die by the time we were to play. But our first song rolled around and the house was packed and people even sang along to tunes. That night, I really kicked it off with Evan Hoffman (Blush Face, Good Day) talking about philosophy and psychology, states of consciousness and such.”
And while normally the collective showcases local talent, Gorman said they were into shooting a video with the band. After sending songs over to Hoffman, and fellow Good Day RVA crew Chris Damon, and Ashley Travis, their dream came to fruition two years later. This catchy summer track will be on repeat for me way into fall and I enjoy those picking through scrap parts that hot day who got to witness an impromptu rock concert as they searched, which is a sentence I’d never thought I’d write in my journalism career. But, that’s the beauty of our music scene.
It looks as though the band is on a fall tour through October and no Richmond dates as of yet, but you can catch them in Blacksburg on Sept. 4. And to quote Illiterate Light, “Burn This Motha’ Down” this weekend, Richmond.
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