“The key to the future of the world, is finding the optimistic stories and letting them be known.” — Pete Seeger, the legendary folk singer and co-creator of the Newport Folk Festival.
This statement from the legendary folk singer and activist rings truer and truer as the days progress in 2025.
One story that must be told is that of Illiterate Light and there “Road to Newport.” The Virginia-based alt rock duo of Jeff Gorman and Jake Cochran decided to tell a tale of environmentalism, hope, creativity and art with with Odyssey-esque journey from their homes in Harrisonburg, VA to Newport, RI … on bike.
You did not read that wrong.
The duo has embarked on a 700 mile bike ride from their homes to the Newport Folk Festival. Along their journey, where they will be joined by Jake’s wife and one-year-old son, the duo will stop to create content, promote the cause of their sponsor 11th Hour Racing, and stop for special performance — including The Clinch Transparent Gallery in Asbury Park, New Jersey on July 18. Once the journey to Newport is complete, they will go on to house the Bike Stage where audience members will jump on bikes and generate enough energy to literally power the performances onstage.
All this is being done in hopes of spreading the word about making the world a better, cleaner or more sustainable place. A true story of optimism if there ever was one.
Recently, we caught up with one half of Illiterate Light, Jeff Gorman, to discuss so many things. Jeff talks about the band’s history with Asbury Park, 11th Hour, the decision behind this epic bike ride, the band’s environment ideology, their hopes for the future, the message of the Newport Folk Festival, what’s kept them together and their hopes for the future.
You are playing Asbury Park at The Transparent Clinch Gallery at The Asbury Hotel on the 17th, but this is not your first time in Asbury — can you talk about the band’s history with the Jersey Shore.
It’s so funny, because I read Springsteen’s autobiography Born to Run a couple of years ago. Actually, I listened to it in an audio book, and it was amazing. I’ve listened to it a couple of times now, because it’s so dense and there’s a lot to unpack there. But, early on in his career Richmond, Virginia, and obviously coming from Asbury Park were the two places where he was able to make a buck and find fans. It was the exact same thing for us when we formed our band. Richmond was sort of our hometown, even though we live a little ways from there. I think we first played New Jersey years ago at Inkwell Coffee House in…?
Long Branch.
Yup, in 2016 and from there we’ve come to Asbury like a ton. So we love it there.
The Road to Newport is an absolutely wild concept. You’re biking from Harrisonburg, which is in the Shenandoah Valley, all the way to the Newport Folk Festival in Rhode Island. Why do this, other than, as they said on Family Guy, it’s a great way to stay in shape.
There’s a lot, you know. I was thinking about writing a Substack post. We’ll see if I get around to it because we leave in two days titled, “Why, I’m biking 700 miles to Newport Folk Festival This Summer.” Every time I think about it I seem to find seven or eight poor motivations or reasons why this feels so exciting to us?
The sort of quick context answer is that we host this stage at the Newport Folk Festival that is powered by bicycle energy. We have six bikes right next to a small stage, and we also have eight solar panels. We help curate these artists and performances on our stage. They’re really short, sort of pop up sets and they’re about 20 minutes in length. We have all these fans come and they jump on a bike and they create the electricity for the performance.
This was a concept that we pioneered with some friends around 2012. Before we even formed Illiterate Light, we were traveling throughout Virginia and doing this alternative energy type of concert. Then long story short, we pitched the idea to do something similar to this at Newport Folk Festival in 2022. And here we are four years later and it’s the 4th year hosting our bike powered stage at the festival. Every year we’ve just done a few little things differently to make it more exciting for us; more exciting for fans. It’s our 10 year anniversary of being a band, and Jake and I wanted to find something fun and exciting and fresh to do this year. Back in November, I was curious. I’ve driven from Harrisonburg to Newport several times, but I just looked it up.
I just hit Google Maps and [selected] biking. Then I did Harrisonburg to Newport and I just took a screenshot of that. And I was just going, “Let’s up the ante man like what if we do something different this year for our bike stage? What if we do something like a pilgrimage? And we bike there and we do a few shows along the way like, could we could, we find a way to do that.” So we just started dreaming it up. A couple of months went by, and we started to really figure out that it would be a sort of crazy thing. We’ve never done anything of this magnitude but we figured out we could actually do this and we could publicize the bike stage, and we could have a really non-traditional tour for us as artists.
I’ve been touring for 10 years, and I love it, and I’m so grateful for it. But, I’m looking to mix it up, man. I want to push things. I want to do things a little bit differently. I watched Jack White’s entire “No Name Tour” that he did over the last year. I just thought the whole concept was really cool. He’s just popping up in places. He’s not really publicizing it. I just saw that and I thought that is different, and that’s cool and I want to try to do some version of that for Illiterate Light. So we were like — what if we travel by bike? We’ll document it along the way. We’ll when we find a cool river to play a song and shoot a Youtube video. But you know, the whole point is let’s bike. Let’s publicize biking. Let’s publicize getting people out and invite people to bike to the show. We’re going to go for a three to five mile bike ride with our fans before each show.
Oh my God.
In Asbury we’re meeting at the Carousel building, and Second Life Bikes is gonna help lead a bike ride with us. We’ll have a big speaker going, we’ll play a bunch of music and take over the town. We’ll end at the Transparent Clinch Gallery, and then we’ll rip right into our show. I’m just looking for something new and fresh and to get people participating in the music that we’re making. And so that’ the long answer we’ve got. The Newport Bike Stage is our end goal. Along the way we want to just do all this stuff that’s different and breaks the mold of just going out and playing clubs.
I’ve seen the press photos of you both, and you seem in shape … but this ride is huge. How have you been training for this? How are you mentally and physically getting ready to ride, make content, ride before a show and then perform a concert?
Day One of the Road to Newport, which is Tuesday [July 8]. It’s the hardest day. It’s an 80 mile day and we climb I think, like 3,500 feet of elevation. So climbing a mountain and it’s an 80 mile day, which in one sense I’m actually happy to kick off with the biggie because once we’re on the East Coast it gets a little bit flatter and there’s some more green ways and things like that. We have been training for like three months now, but the honest truth is that we’ve also been on tour and so it’s not like we’re out riding every day. We got back from the tour and took a minute to settle in, and then the next day you’re out. I’ve basically been hitting 20 or 30 mile rides as frequently as I can for about three months now. So I feel good about that side of things. Physically.
We’ve done a few bike tours in the past that were about 300 miles each and this one is a little double that. We’re both a little bit older now; we’re not 22 so you know, there’s some legit concerns there. But, man, I’m feeling good. I think half of it is mentally committing, and I’m so committed to this thing. It’s going to be fun. It’ll be hot, and I’m sure there’ll be moments where I’m going like, “What on earth am I doing but that you know?” Hey, man, it’s like, that’s life.
You should just have you just been eating carbs for like three months just saving all this energy.
I’m kicking myself. This is sort of nerdy, but like … there’s no caffeine. I love coffee but unfortunately I’ve upped my caffeine tolerance now where I’ll have like four cups of coffee, and it doesn’t even impact me. So I’m sort of nervous. I don’t want to be drinking like a thousand milligrams of caffeine each day [because] I’m gonna completely swamp my adrenal glands. But anyways, neither here nor there. We’re feeling pretty excited. I don’t know what we’ll do if we have another heat wave come through. We just played Minneapolis with Dispatch and there was a heatwave coming through. And of course, months ago I got the routing, and I was like, “Oh, great! We’re playing the Midwest in June. That’s perfect, you know. It’ll be amazing weather!” Of course we get out there, and it’s like 105 degrees and direct sun. So I don’t know what we’ll do if we’re dealing with that, but I’m looking forward to jumping in the water in Asbury.
You’re teaming with 11th Hour Racing on this tour — can you talk about why you’re working with them. Also, the floor is yours to talk about environmentalism.
So let’s start with the 11th Hour because they are so awesome. They are an ocean conservancy organization based out of Rhode Island, based out of Newport, actually. They have really done a lot with Newport to help essentially green the festival and part of that is the bike stage. So when you get like a lobster roll at the festival they’ll help station people all throughout the festival at every trash receptacle to basically say, “Hey, there’s a little part of your bun that you didn’t finish and we’re going to put that in our compost bin here.” Then another piece of your meal will go in the recycling bin. Then another one piece is going to go in the trash bin. These are really smaller actions but they take a lot of manpower to actually do this type of thing on a huge scale. There’s 10,000 people a day coming into the festival and so 11th Hour really looks at the really practical elements of a festival. They’ll start with compost and make sure all of the food waste instead of going to the dump is actually going to be turned into more topsoil which is huge in our country right now.
If you look on their website, the amount of grants that they give and sustainability initiatives all throughout the East Coast that they fund. It’s really impressive. We were really fortunate to link up with them and have them support this vision. They’re helping us fund the ability to record and film the entire experience. I told them, “Look, guys, at the end of Newport Folk Festival you can sit there and say, here’s how much compost we made. Here’s how much single use plastics we were hopefully able to reduce or recycle.” What we’re doing with this bike tour, I don’t really have hard, statistical scientific data on the change that we are hoping that we’re able to concretely make, and that can be a little bit difficult.
And they said — I was so thankful for what they said — what they were hoping to do is just create cultural and behavioral change. They want to get people to ride bicycles. They want people to be talking about bike infrastructure and moving our bodies. They want people talking about the food system. They were like, “This is so vitally important and we need every band. We need artists. We need everybody that is passionate about this to raise their hand and say, ‘All right, here we are humanity. It’s 2025. We know what’s going on with the planet. How are we going to change this?'” It’s not going to be a big company or corporation or government that comes in and solves and fixes the problems that we are facing. It’s just it’s going to be different. It’s going to require collective action. It’s going to require small changes. It’s going to require people raising their hand and saying, ‘I don’t 100% know all of the solutions, but I’m willing to start trying. I’m willing to change for me.’ A lot of this is battling our own sort of complacency.
It’s part of the [spirit of the] Newport Folk Fest tradition which was founded by Pete Seeger and George Wein in the late ’50s. Pete Seeger, one of the things that he had said in the late ’90s and early ’00s was that participation will save the human race. To me it is like the gospel. I love that. And that’s what the bike stage is doing. Its people are able to participate in a solution as small as it may be. That’s what The Road to Newport is all about. Let’s jump on some bikes. Let’s talk. Let’s have music be the center of all this.
Our history is working on organic farms in the Shenandoah Valley. That was where I learned that our food system is actually a bit jacked up. We’re not the healthiest society. There’s a reason for that. We’ve subsidized corn and soy and so the answer for a lot of these things is a local economy, a local agriculture. That was Jake, my bandmate, and I’s roots as a band was — the local food movement and that is something we just wholeheartedly believe in. I know where I get my beef in Harrisonburg. My wife is the marketing director of the farmers market. We’re thankful to have an area that really values local food. I’ve always looked up to Neil Young and Dave Matthews Band, and Willie [Nelson] with Farm Aid — an amazing festival that they’ve been able to cultivate over tons of years now. And so for us, I think we’re just trying to find our own way to plug into awareness around what’s happening with our environment.
I start every show at the Bike Stage telling the audience there’s people sitting there ready for a performer to go on. We have six bikes to my left, and they’re powering several of the speakers you’re hearing. We have eight 225 watt solar panels to my right, and they’re powering the rest of the sound system. For 20 min here we’re gonna go off the grid and we’re using green energy. Solar panels aren’t perfect. There’s there’s still issues that need to be solved there. The batteries that we’re charging use lithium and cobalt. There’s issues there.None of these things are perfect and I’m not not out to Greenwash everything and say, ‘Hey, we figured everything out.’ What I am willing to do is to say we’re gonna keep trying. Each year I want to ask more questions. I want to keep moving forward. I hope, start to plant some seeds for the future.
So I ask people, let’s all think about this for a second — we love live music. What’s it gonna be like to tour 30 years from now? What’s it gonna be like to tour 15 years from now? I don’t know, but we need to start as a crew here teaming up and thinking and acting differently. I really feel that my job is to plant these seeds and to just start somewhere. That’s what I’m able to give to the world and I hope and sense that people are responding to that. I think that we all have to collectively figure something out here. I know that sounds a little vague, but that’s sort of what motivates this whole thing.
I think the inclusiveness of what you and 11th Hour are doing could really draw people. I see it at Sea.Hear.Now every year — people collecting trash to get free t-shirts. It’s a trade, but that festival is always spotless.
I’ve been trying to find the language for it for a while. I love this writer, Seth Godin. I’ve been listening to a lot of his stuff. He talks a lot about something he calls “scaffolding.” He says= people need scaffolding. People want to participate and they’re willing to change — but they need the scaffolding to do it. I realized that’s what we did with the Bike Stage. We’ve had, at this point, over 50 performances on our stage over the last three years. We’re for another 12 this year. So to paint the picture for people — there’s six bikes, and there’s a line. I introduce the stage and Jake, my band mate, is helping folks to get in line. We’ve never had a shortage of bikers. There’s a line of 65 people for our performances. They only bike for one song.
I was gonna say, man, I would be dead if I had to bike like that 20 minutes.
It’s a four-minute thing. I always want to give people a cold beer, but we get in trouble when we do that. So we give people cold ice water. We make sure people are comfortable. I always say it’s not a spin class and so we get people on and provide that structure. Here’s where the line forms. Here’s what we’re doing. Here’s our bike coaches. They’re going to adjust a seat when you sit there. People line up right up. They want to help. They want to be a part of this. They want to help create the music I want to create. We are our own sort of small power plant for 20 minutes when people get on a bike. They’re spinning. There’s a little bike generator underneath the bike. For 20 min, you know, six people on a bike and some solar generators and it’s a little miniature power plant. It’s so cool. People really get it. You are creating electricity with your body.Somebody on stage is using that electricity to make art and for me that’s the peak baby. I’ve been really thankful that people have taken to this concept.
Excellent, and I’d be remiss if I didn’t ask about the Newport Fall Festival. It’s one of America’s oldest music festivals. It’s a major part of A Complete Unknown, the Oscar-nominated film with Timothee Chalamet who played Bob Dylan. How does it feel to be a part of the festival’s infrastructure, as well as performing on it?
It really is so special for me. I love legacy, and I love history, and I love tradition — Especially this year with the Timothee Chalamet film that came out which really focused on Newport.
There’s sort of two sides to that festival.
It’s kind of got this sense of Bob Dylan. His job is to break things; that’s what his whole career is about. And we need that. We need somebody to go out and break something and be destructive, because that’s how art works. That’s part of the creative process.The other side of that coin is Seeger and his job was to build things. He was an organizer, and he was somebody that was dedicated to building things. My favorite scene in that whole film is the morning after Dylan went electric, and there was the huge blowout and fight. The next morning you’ve got Edward Norton as Pete Seeger, and Dylan’s about to ride away. He stops by the festival, and Pete’s out there by himself, cleaning up chairs. I could almost cry just thinking about that, because it’s the two sides of the coin of creativity. It’s about creation and destruction, and we sort of need both. It’s like light and dark. It’s like the sun and the moon. Pete Seeger was the guy. He doesn’t get enough credit in my book.
photos courtesy of illiterate light via manasco media
I’m tying this back to your question. The 1st bike tour we ever went on in 2012 we biked all throughout Virginia. One of the songs that we played throughout the whole tour was, “If I had a Hammer” by Peter, Paul and Mary which is a tune that Pete Seeger wrote. I’m sure a million people have played it at this point. But to think that at the roots of us biking throughout rural Virginia and and playing these songs on our bicycles. Fast forward 10 years and we would be hosting a stage at a festival that Pete and to think that five years after that we’d still be doing it, but actually biking the entire way. For me it’s a real honor to carry on that legacy. I don’t take it lightly.I’ve played a ton of festivals throughout the country. I love them all. They’re all very special to me and unique. There’s a spirit at Newport which is a spirit of everybody that’s there really wants to hear you. They want to listen. They want to feel what you want to give them. It’s a feeling that I haven’t experienced at a lot of festivals. I’m a huge history and junkie and this year marks the 40th year that the festival has been happening at Fort Adams. The festival’s been happening since 1959, but of course there were some site changes in the ’50s and ’60s. So it’s 40 years now that people have been getting together at Fort Adams in Newport — that’s longer than I’ve been alive.
I just feel very grateful for it. I’m grateful for Jay Sweet [producer of the festival] for believing in this. We talk pretty frequently and I know the entire Newport team. I just really do feel like a family up there. It’s become a centerpiece of my summer and my hope is that we can continue to add something to it. That’s why I wake up and think, “Can we bring something new? How can we add something to this? How can we get people to do something different? How can we bike there?” Our hope is to sort of put our own little flavor into it. And so I appreciate you asking that question because I take it very seriously.
Two part question for you. You’ve been with this band for over 10 years so what do you love about this band? Second, what’s the biggest lesson that you learned about yourself in those 10 years? Let’s just get real deep.
Sure. Hell. Yeah. Being in a duo is sort of a wild thing. It’s a real marriage between me and my bandmate, Jake. I’m insanely fortunate that we’ve done a tremendous amount of non-music related life and activities together. We ran this farm together. We’ve done these bike tours. We’ve just been buds, you know.So what I love about being [in the band] is I have an amazing musical partner. We’re able to communicate with each other when shit hits the fan. Growing up seeing The Black Crowes [Jeff is the nephew of original Black Crowes’ drummer Steve Gorman] and how dysfunctional that was I sort of thought that was just kind of how bands work.
What I love about being in this band is if I’m being honest, this is a funny answer … but it’s pacing. I love being able to make a decision and move on it really quickly, and that plays out creatively all the time. An example of that is … we’re playing a show, and I can throw in songs that we haven’t played in three years. Jake can follow anything if he hasn’t played it in a couple of years. There’s that sense of time that a bigger band just requires.
Things take time, and it’s not that I’m impatient, but I like being able to move fast. I like being able to have an idea or a song, and just lock into it right away. We can pivot during our shows. We can have a jam that goes five minutes long. Great bands can do that, too. It’s not just because we’re a duo. I really love the feeling that it’s not bureaucratic. It’s just quick, and there’s a pacing there that feels good. It’s just the duo and when we’re hitting our stride, and we’re really on the same page together [we can ask the question] “Hey, dude what do you think about biking 700 miles this summer? Like, could we do it?” [And the response is] “Yeah, let’s do it!” Jake’s got a one-year-old and a wife, and they’re gonna tag along. He’ll carry a baby for part of the ride. We don’t hit these crazy roadblocks. It’s not all these people saying “I don’t know about that,” or “You’re not gonna make enough money,” or “You’re not gonna it’s just like.” It’s two guys. We have ideas and we go do it and that has been like that 10 years into it. We’ve only intensified that. We haven’t let that part of this vision go.
The thing I’ve learned about myself…
Behind the scenes we’ve taken our own hits with COVID, with record deals. I don’t have any problem just saying in 2019, and even into 2020 we were just getting on track for bigger things. The shows were getting bigger, more opportunities. 2020 was the year. We’re going to Europe. We’ve got every festival in the summer. That crashed and burned pretty hard for about two and a half years. There were a few ways to respond to that. One was, We’re in our early thirties and it’s gotten really hard. We live in 2 different cities, and the team is a little fragmented. We took a hit and do our fans care? Does the industry care? Is this thing able to keep happening? Should we call it a day?” That was one way to respond.
The other way to respond was that we didn’t get into this to sign a big record deal or any of that stuff. We got into this to make music and follow a dream. 2020 didn’t happen. Post-COVID it’s been difficult as a musician — but we’re going right back into it. We’re gonna create something new. We’re gonna push ourselves, and we’ll build our own studios. We’ll go DIY and we’ll just keep this thing alive and keep finding things that inspire us. We’ll inspire our fans and that sort of fierce resilience.
I’ve been surprised by myself, which is a funny thing to say. It’s a funny thing to admit that, like there’s been moments where I’ve kind of felt like I can either roll over or I can just jump right back up and keep rolling. Without a doubt me and my bandmate have just jumped right back up. We’re not the biggest band in the world but that’s not our goal. Our goals are to do something different and unique, something that we really dig, and to pay our bills in the process. I think that there’s people out there that have caught wind of that. So for me, I love just moving fast and being a duo. I’m just at the point now where I look at my bandmate, and I think, anything we put our minds to we can go do it, man. I feel pretty fortunate and blessed to be able to say that.
It’s kind of going back to the Pete Seeger thing. You’re putting up your own chairs after stuff got destroyed.
Exactly, man. Yeah, for sure.
I feel like more and more bands are just doing that. And those are the bands I like to talk to. They create more intimate connections with the fans
The bands out there that are just running their own small business, running a little community, and creating things for their community that’s the change has been. I’m not the change. But the vision is that I’m not making things to go get a big playlist. I’m not making things because that’s gonna sound great on this Triple A radio station. I don’t have anybody encouraging that mindset and that’s not my mindset. We just make things that we’re into and our small fan base is going to be into this. It’s a really joyful way to make art.
Let’s close things out with a question I’ve been asking everyone this summer – what are five things you’re excited for for the band in 2025, outside of Newport.
Man, we’ve got a ton. We also just did a bunch over the last few months so I’m kind of riding on a high from that right now. So immediately following Newport, we are going, and we’re playing Red rocks for the first time. I’ve only seen one show at Red Rocks 2013 and I saw Dispatch. We’re friends with Brad and they were playing out there, and we have some family out there. I love the fact that 12 years later, my first time playing Red Rocks is with Dispatch.
In early August we’re celebrating 10 years by playing a three-night run at The Golden Pony, our home club. Every night we’re playing a record. We’re playing our entire catalog front to back. I’ve always loved when bands have done that. I thought it was so cool, and we haven’t totally had the catalog to be able to do it. So we’re doing a three-night run like in our hometown and closing out the year late October. It’s the best time in the Shenandoah Valley. So I’m like insanely stoked for that.
In addition to that, building out my home studio. I’m starting to work on our next record. So we have a little bit of a window of time in late August. I’m just really excited for writing. I’ve got a few pieces of gear I’m buying. I got all juices flowing, so I’ve got my mind on, you know. LP4. I’ve probably got 10 half-baked demos that are floating around. I’m really excited to be writing and doing that.
In 2026, we haven’t put too much on the table right now, but we’re focusing on festivals next year. We’ve really focused on growing our headlining shows over the last like three years, and finding our core fans. Next year is more of a festival year for us. I’m really excited for that, because I always like it. Sea.Hear.Now (which the band played last year), I met Springsteen at The Stone Pony, I hung with all the Guster guys, I met all the dudes from 311. I only say that because I go to music festivals as a fan. We’re not too cool for school. I just want to watch sets and stand front row and go out afterwards, and just tell them like, “Dude, that was amazing.” So number 4 is a festival year because I get to go discover tons of new music.
Number 5 is having a kid next year. Life is a journey, man, and it’s like life is like, you know. There’s that one Mary Oliver quote, “What is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?” For me to be able to raise a family as an artist… I hope to be very present.[I want to be] an active and engaging father, and also raise my child in an environment that is exploratory and fun, and where music is a part of it, and traveling is a part of it, and being outside and in nature is a part of it. So number 5 for me is I’m at that point now where you know I’m ready for that. and I’ve got an amazing wife and we’re ready to bring some kids into Illiterate Light.
