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Harvest Sons Embrace A 'Rust Belt State Of Mind'

Harvest Sons plays The Apollo Theater in Peoria Saturday night.
Harvest Sons plays The Apollo Theater in Peoria Saturday night.

Seth Cocquit says he was at a gospel festival when music hit him like a thunderbolt.

He tells WGLT he was 7 when his grandparents brought him to that festival. That "thunderbolt" moment happened after they let him walk to the bathroom by himself.

“It was a gospel festival. What harm could be done at a gospel festival?” said Cocquit.

On his way back he ran into a group of kids.

“I’m 7 and I don’t know yet that people are mean,” he giggled. “I ended up talking to these kids, then one of them punched me in the gut for no reason. You get the wind knocked out of you for the first time, you’re not dying, but you can’t breathe. All I could hear was the music off in the distance, and that was kind of comforting for me.”

Cocquit remembers that day like it was yesterday, and though modern-folk Harvest Sons doesn’t play gospel, you can hear that spirit occasionally in the latest self-produced EP “Flat Black Sessions, Vol. 2.”

“When We Were Wildflowers” is one of at least two of the five songs referencing the road. Cocquit said he wrote it on a trip with his wife to Colorado.

“You don’t get those views in the Midwest,” chuckled Cocquit. “So being out there spoke to me and made me think about how life presents new things to you all the time and be ready to accept those things.

He says songwriting has helped him deal with anxiety, which he said he processes through music. He said a search for his center was the goal while writing “Wildflowers.”

“And I’ll probably have to write 20 more songs to fully process all that,” said Cocquit.

Twenty?

"It’ll take me 100 songs to say all I need to say,” he said. “A really good writer can say it in one song.”

He said the video for “When We Were Wildflowers” represents someone having a difficult time giving up control.

“Some people have a hard time letting things go. You can make up your mind to let things go. Some people can’t let the future go. Really all you need to do is live in the present moment,” said Cocquit, who didn’t duck when asked what he has a tough time letting go.

His ego.

“All I want to do in this life is live and love. And that sounds so cliché and simple. But the more my ego takes over the more unhappy I become. I think dealing with my anxiety, that was a lot of it … letting go of my ego and not worrying about the outcome of things. There’s only so much I can control, so the only thing I want to control is my ego.

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Harvest Sons is more than Cocquit. Nik Grafelman, Daniel Watkins, Nathan Cowan, Nathan Glaser, and “Harvest Sister” Elyse Wiley round out the sextet. On the band's Facebook page, it’s noted Wiley is featured all over both of the band's CDs in harmonies and on Volume 2 with her song "Nevermind".

Modern folk is the common descriptor for Harvest Sons, but band also likes to inhabit a “Rust Belt State of Mind.” It comes from road trips with destinations outside the Midwest. Cocquit said he feels differently when outside his home area of Peoria, which he feels is the heart of the Rust Belt.

“It used to be boom times when everyone had a job at the factory,” said Cocquit, who grew up near Galesburg where he has seen that decline first-hand with the loss of Maytag and Butler Manufacturing in that western Illinois town.

“I remember all my friends’ parents being laid off. My dad was a truck driver and that stuff affects people and their outlook on life,’ said Cocquit.

Media including the social kind has documented the flight of Illinois residents to other states, and many believe the Land of Lincoln has seen its better days. He appreciated the comparison made between Harvest Son’s music documenting that outlook to how John Mellencamp painted stories of his home state of Indiana in the 1980s and 90s.

“I love Mellencamp. I saw him at Farm Aid a few years ago. For me, some of his stuff was very Americana, which to me is about the way you see where you’re from."

Which is?

“I’m proud of it. I’m grateful for the changes I’ve seen and where I’m at geographically. We’re not the one making the big changes. The big changes are happening around us and I feel like the Midwest always makes the small changes that matter. The Midwest is probably the last region to value family and those good aspects of life that really matter,” said Cocquit.

Cocquit brings his Peoria-based modern-folk band Harvest Sons to the Apollo Theater in Peoria for a show Saturday night.

Jeremy David Baker and The Bashful Youngens are also on the bill.

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Jon Norton is the program director at WGLT and WCBU. He also is host of All Things Considered every weekday.