When Jeff Gorman of Illiterate Light steps on stage, it’s not hype you feel, it’s heat. Not the kind that grabs at you immediately, but the kind that builds steady, loud, and unflinching. Just two guys onstage with a sound that hits like a full band.
Offstage is where the real story takes shape.
In the van, at the merch table, over weak coffee and long drives, this is a band that earns every day. You can hear it in the way Jeff talks about Virginia like an old friend he never quite figured out but never gave up on either. And you feel it in the way they’ve stayed rooted in a set of values of community, intention, presence – even as they’ve scaled stages and sharpened their sound.
This isn’t just a band grinding it out. It’s a slow build. Less about momentum, more about staying power. What came through in conversation wasn’t tour stories or album promo, it was a conversation on how music becomes purpose when you keep showing up, day after day, with both hands on the wheel.
Photos by Joey Wharton
A Day in the Life on Tour
“It’s not as glamorous as I’d like to admit,” Jeff Gorman says, laughing. “You wake up in a hotel usually a Holiday Inn or Comfort Inn. It’s me and Jake, typically sleeping in the same bed. Then in the next clean bed over, you’ve got two or three other guys our sound engineer, lighting guy, maybe someone helping with merch or running a camera. We’re all just crashing together.”
Mornings start with the basics: a continental breakfast, weak coffee, and packing up. Then it’s three to five hours in a glorified sprinter.
“We roll up to the venue around two or three, load in, and soundcheck. We work through some material and make sure everyone’s feeling good. We’ve been playing a bunch of tunes off our new record Arches, so we’re still fine-tuning arrangements, getting lighting cues dialed in.”
After that, they break for dinner, nothing fancy, just a chance to eat together and reset. “We talk through the setlist as a team, make sure everyone knows what we’re in for. And then we’re off to the races. We play the show.”
If they’re in a city where they have friends, they’ll sometimes hang out after to shoot some pool, grab a drink. But more often, it’s back on the road.
“A lot of times, we’ve got a bit of a night drive ahead. If we’re in Columbus and have to get to Chicago, we’ll knock out an hour or two after the show. Then crash at a hotel off the highway.”
The drives aren’t quiet.
“That’s when we listen to new music, sometimes bands we’re about to tour with, stuff we want to check out. Maybe throw on some dumb YouTube videos. But mostly we’re just jamming out together, letting the night unwind.”
There’s not a lot of downtime. Not much stopping. But that’s the rhythm of tour.
“That’s pretty much a day in the life.”
Scenes Still Matter
“When we first formed the band, I was really curious where music scenes still existed in the country,” Jeff Gorman says. “I felt like that had been disrupted by the internet.”
He rattles off examples from the 20th century like a mental map of American music history: “Greenwich Village in the late ’50s and early ’60s with Beat poets and the folk revival. Then you’ve got the late ’70s in New York with CBGBs, Talking Heads, Television, that whole post-punk, art rock wave. In the early ’90s, there was Seattle, where grunge just exploded with Pearl Jam, Alice in Chains, Nirvana.”
Even the mid-2000s had pockets of that energy. “Baltimore had a whole scene with Dan Deacon and Animal Collective, a kind of indie-electronic, experimental stuff. And all of it was tied to neighborhoods, to relationships, to physical space. That’s what I was looking for. Where does that still exist?”
The answer, at least for Illiterate Light, started to reveal itself not far from home.
“Conveniently enough, Richmond was one of the few places that still had that energy. We were living in Harrisonburg, so we started spending a lot of time there.”
It wasn’t just about music. Jeff gravitated to places with a local culture that felt alive, creative cities that were manageable in scale, where the food was good and the scene was built from the ground up.
“I’m not huge on big cities. I love Charleston, South Carolina. I’ve come to love towns in Colorado too—Buena Vista, Telluride. The Northeast has always meant a lot to us as well. Newport’s obviously special, especially with the Bike Stage. And we had a solid fanbase early on in Boston, so we just started going up there a lot. Some of our best shows have been there.”
But Richmond stayed central.
“It’s always just been a blast to tour. It’s not far from home, and now Jake lives there. So it still feels like a hub for us.”
The Newport Connection
When Illiterate Light played the Newport Folk Festival for the first time in 2019, it wasn’t just another festival slot. It hit differently.
“We had just put out an EP that was starting to get some traction,” Jeff Gorman recalls. “We recorded it at Montrose in Richmond, and that summer, we were booked for a bunch of festivals – Lollapalooza, Shaky Knees, Newport. I was excited for all of it, but Newport stuck in my head.”
What happened onstage wasn’t flashy, it was emotional.
“The audience was so locked in,” he says. “They listened to every word, every note. When we finished, they stood up. Me and Jake actually teared up. It’s hard to explain. It felt like every part of the performance was received and digested. It just meant something.”
That one set changed the trajectory of their summers for the next six years.
“I didn’t see it coming, but Newport became a cornerstone for us. I really consider myself part of the Folk family now. And even though our music doesn’t exactly fit the traditional folk lane, the people there get it. They receive it. So as long as they’ll have us, we’re going to keep showing up and contributing.”
That sense of contribution became literal in 2022 when the band was asked to host Newport’s new Bike Stage—a pedal-powered setup that fit perfectly with their ethos. But they didn’t just play a set. They curated the lineup and this year organized a bike ride all the way to Newport, which you can follow on their YouTube channel.
Follow the Bike Ride to the Newport Folk Festival HERE
“We got to bring SG Goodman that first year. Jake and I had been obsessed with her new record. Langhorne Slim was around that weekend too, and we had a great hang. Then in 2023, we got to connect with My Morning Jacket. Jim James is kind of a spiritual anchor there — he doesn’t even have to be playing, he just shows up and sets the tone. That year, they invited us to their festival in Florida, One Big Holiday.”
Over time, the connections grew deeper and not just for Illiterate Light. The band started bringing others with them.
“One of the things we’ve loved most is being able to introduce other artists to Newport,” Jeff says. “Palmyra is the first one that comes to mind. They formed in Harrisonburg in 2019, live in Richmond now. We brought them up for two years on the Bike Stage. Their third year, they played one of the main stages and ended up signing with John Prine’s Oh Boy Records.”
This year, they’re bringing Dogwood Tales, a band from Harrisonburg that Jeff’s been tight with for years. “They’ve got a great new record coming. Plus, I’m related to the drummer, so I’m biased.”
They’ve also helped connect Philly-based artists like Mo Lowda & The Humble to the Newport orbit after crossing paths in Richmond.
“Newport’s just really pro-community, pro-artist, pro-voice,” Jeff says. “So we’ve tried to take that seriously. If we have a chance to bring others into that space, we’re going to do it.”
Even with everything going on like curating lineups, performing, coordinating logistics, Jeff tries to soak it in.
“I wear a lot of hats up there, so I’m not always in chill mode. I’m usually orchestrating something. But each year it gets deeper. The roots grow. And what I love most is seeing people from our community become part of it too.”
He pauses.
“The more musicians from Virginia that go to a place like Newport and come back? That’s how scenes grow. That’s the whole point.”
Virginia Is the Root
Ask Jeff Gorman what Virginia means to Illiterate Light and you don’t get a slick answer. You get something more lived-in.
“It’s very important,” he says. “It comes up more than I would’ve expected when we started the band. I find myself thinking about it a lot.”
Jeff wasn’t born in Virginia, he grew up in Baltimore, but he’s called the state home since 2008. And that sense of place, especially the Shenandoah Valley, runs deep.
“I feel so grounded in Virginia,” he says. “Insanely grounded in the mountains. I can’t always put my finger on it, but it’s where I feel inspired. It’s where I feel whole.”
Even now, he’s calling in while biking around Cape Charles and Eastville on the Eastern Shore. “I did 25 miles this morning,” he says, “I’ve toured through most of the state, played just about every corner, and biked a lot of it too. It’s shaped how I see the world.”
The geography, the rivers, beaches, ridgelines feed him. But it’s not just the landscape that shapes the music. It’s the culture.
“I’ve always felt like Virginia is this mini California,” Jeff says. “We’ve got the coast, the mountains, incredible rivers, great food, and a really cool music scene. Between Harrisonburg, Charlottesville, and Richmond, I’ve probably played 300 shows. That kind of connection to a place, it’s rare.”
Richmond, in particular, stands out. But not because it has a singular sound.
“You’d never say, ‘That’s the Richmond sound,’” he says. “And that’s the beauty of it. It’s not a Motown situation where everyone’s tuned to the same frequency. It’s the opposite. Everybody sounds different, and everybody supports each other.”
That open, supportive ethos drew the band in. And over time, Virginia stopped being just a place they lived and became the ground they grew from.
“I didn’t sit down to write songs about Virginia,” Jeff says. “But I write from Virginia. My whole adult life, my whole artistic formation. It all happened here.”
I tell him asking a Virginia artist how much the state matters is kind of like asking someone to explain their love for their mother.
He laughs: “Great analogy. Yeah, you’re right.”
Where the Fire Started
When it comes to taking a stand, Jeff Gorman doesn’t trace it back to some deep-rooted family tradition. It wasn’t part of his upbringing.
“I grew up in a pretty conventional household,” he says. “It’s not like I came from this long line of advocacy. It just wasn’t part of the conversation.”
That changed in college.
“I always joke that I was kind of naive until I was 20,” he says. “I took a course on organic agriculture, kind of ironic, studying farming in a classroom but it just flipped my whole world.”
As part of the course, Jeff started interning on farms. Getting his hands in the dirt. Seeing the difference between industrial agriculture and local, sustainable practices. “I didn’t realize the depth of the problems, how unhealthy our systems were, how it was all connected to things like fossil fuel use, food insecurity, environmental damage. But once I saw it, I couldn’t unsee it.”
He found himself drawn into the early 2010s food movement. “I met people living off the grid, growing their own food, trying to live with intention. It just turned something on in me. I felt alive. Like I had purpose.”
Music didn’t go away, it became the next piece.
He and Jake played farmers markets and DIY shows in places like Richmond’s Food Not Bombs house, building connections with people trying to live outside the status quo. “We were trying to forge our own path,” he says. “Music was a part of that, but it wasn’t just about art. It was about living differently.”
When they formed Illiterate Light in 2015, that ethos carried over. But so did the tension.
“We had to ask ourselves: Are we going to keep a local voice, or try to say something nationally? We chose to hit the road, to tour hard. That came with tradeoffs. Touring isn’t exactly environmentally friendly. You’re burning fuel, living on the move. We’ve never totally solved that tension.”
But they’ve tried to answer it in their own way, small solutions, intentional choices. Hosting the pedal-powered Bike Stage at Newport. Biking from town to town when they can. Writing songs like “I Wanna Leave America,” penned the morning after Trump’s 2016 win. “It’s all rooted in that early awakening,” Jeff says, “from that moment in Harrisonburg when I started seeing the world differently.”
At this point, I tell him, “It’s integrated in your art and your personality. If everybody just took some personal responsibility and accountability, that’s the basics, you know.”
Jeff agrees. “Yeah, I feel that way too. At least that way, I can speak on something and not feel like a hypocrite.”
He pauses, then adds: “At the end of the day, we need both, right? We need individual responsibility and systemic change. Like take fossil fuels, how do we reduce gasoline use and car dependency? We need towns designed for bikes and walking, not just cars. But our infrastructure’s not set up for that.”
“So what do you do?” he asks. “At a certain point you just say, ‘Alright, I gotta start biking. I’m gonna go spray paint my own fucking line so I can have a bike lane.’ It sounds ridiculous, but that’s the energy. You change yourself, and sometimes that’s how you start changing the system.”
That tension between systemic change and personal action keeps showing up in their work. It’s not something they’ve resolved. It’s something they live with. Try to live through.
“I want change in the world,” Jeff says. “And I think what I can offer is a willingness to change myself. That’s the best place to start.”
Richmond Photographer Joey Wharton
Ask Jeff Gorman how he linked up with Richmond photographer Joey Wharton, and he doesn’t miss a beat. “I remember it so clearly,” he says. “We played Gallery5 in 2016, and Instagram wasn’t what it is now. It existed, but people weren’t glued to it. So when we saw these photos show up on Facebook after the show, it was like whoa.”
He didn’t know who took them at first. Just that the band looked “so much cooler than we actually were.”
“They were tagged ‘Photo Joe’ or something,” Jeff laughs. “I messaged him right away like, ‘Hey man, these shots are amazing. I’m gonna share them—just wanted to say thank you.’”
That kicked off the start of something that would become both a friendship and creative partnership. The next time Illiterate Light came back through Richmond, they played a house show hosted by Good Day RVA. “We were going on last, which is always risky at a house show,” Jeff remembers. “You think people are gonna bounce. But it was packed. Totally slammed. And Joe was there, camera in hand, just capturing the whole thing.”
That night cemented it.
“He just had it,” Jeff says. “I don’t even know if he knew how good he was. His presence, the way he moved, the vibe, he wasn’t just some dude taking pictures. He was part of it. And that really matters when you’re inviting someone into your world. When you’re on tour, it’s like do I want to share a meal with this person? Do I want them in the van? Joe was an easy yes.”
By 2018, when the band signed their first deal and started pushing out on bigger tours, Joey was right there with them. “He documented everything from those early shows through the 2019 run and even into the pandemic,” Jeff says. “Some of our most pivotal moments, he captured.”
Jeff doesn’t hesitate when he talks about Joey’s talent. “I think he’s one of the best music photographers out there right now period. It’s not even about genre. Rock, punk, indie, whatever, you give him a lens, and he’s in his element.”
He’s also relentless. “We just played The National a few weeks ago and 9:30 Club earlier this year. He sends us the shots afterward and I’m like were you sprinting through the venue for 90 minutes straight? He covers every angle. He sinks into the moment. He’s a fucking wizard.”
Joey’s work has gone well beyond Virginia now. “This year will be his fourth year shooting Newport with us,” Jeff says. “The whole team up there loves him. You hear it: ‘That dude Joey Wharton: he’s amazing.’ He’s got this national presence now, and he still underplays it. But we’re all so proud.”
I tell Jeff, “Joey’s gonna be insufferable after reading this.”
He laughs. “I love him.”
Photos of Illiterate Light at The National in Richmond, VA by Joey Wharton
No Half Steppin’
Catching Illiterate Light live at The National, it’s hard not to marvel at just how much energy Jeff Gorman and Jake Cochran generate between the two of them. With no backing band and no safety net, every note, every drum hit, every breath has to land. I asked Jeff what happens when one of them isn’t feeling it.
“We’ve never actually had to cancel a show because of sickness,” he says. “We really take care of ourselves on the road.”
That means no wild nights before big shows. “We love to have a good time and on an off day, yeah, we’re out late seeing friends or exploring a new city. But I’ve got zero interest in playing hungover,” Jeff says, dead serious. “We treat this like a job. Like professionals. Because it is.”
There’s a sense of responsibility woven through everything he says from showing up for the crowd, to respecting your bandmate. “Jake’s leaving his wife and son to be out there with me. I owe it to him to show up locked in. Not dragging myself on stage half-baked.”
Still, the body doesn’t always cooperate. He tells a story from a 2022 show in Austin that pushed him to the edge. “I felt awful. Like, absolutely wrecked. Took three COVID tests, all negative, but something was off. I should’ve canceled. But I didn’t.”
Instead?
“I took six shots of whiskey and got on stage. I sounded like hell, but I gave it everything I had.”
And it wasn’t about pride. It was about the fans. Jeff breaks it down: the couple who buys tickets for $20 each is really spending more like $300 when you count the babysitter, the dinner, the parking, the merch. “This is their night out. Maybe the only one for three months. I think about that, and it means something. It’s not just a gig, it’s a moment in their lives. And I owe them my best.”
That ethos runs deep. “I watched my dad die five years ago,” Jeff says. “And I know how fragile life is. I don’t want to walk off stage thinking, ‘I held back.’”
That’s what powers their shows: the urgency, the sweat, the commitment to make every performance matter. “I don’t know how much longer I get to do this. So I try to make it count. Every single night.”
Redefining Success, Ten Years In
The last question I had was is he happy?
“You know, I really am,” Jeff says. “It’s funny because you start with this idea of what it means to ‘make it’ – you watch some friends’ bands blow up, you see others self-destruct, and somewhere in the middle, you start asking what really matters.”
For Jeff, the answer’s become simple: “Play music I love, with people I love, for people I love.”
That’s the framework now. No A&R rep shaping their sound to fit a trend. No pressure to chase the algorithm. Just the freedom to create on their own terms and the partnership with drummer Jake Cochran, who Jeff calls “salt of the earth” and “my family.”
“We’ve built something real. Our fans aren’t one type of person. It’s not a single scene or sound,” he says. “We played a high school at 10am to help boost the arts program and had a bunch of 14-year-olds singing every word. Then we’ll play a college town like Blacksburg, and it’s packed with Virginia Tech students. Or a venue like The National, and there’s Gen Z, millennials, Gen X, even boomers in the front row. I love that mix.”
It’s not just the music, it’s the connection. “I like our fans. I go grab a Guinness with them after the show. I love hitting the merch table and saying hey. That means something to me.”
“There are bands playing Madison Square Garden who aren’t happy. They’re always chasing their own carrot. Me? I love what we’ve built. And yeah, next year is ten years for us. We’ve got a new record coming, a little time off the road, and honestly, I still think we’re just getting started.”
As the conversation wraps, I thank Jeff for the time and for the music.
“Thanks, man. That means a lot,” he says. “I’ve been following RVA Mag for years. You all cover everything I care about. So this was a no-brainer for me.”
Photos by Joey Wharton
More information on the band HERE.
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