Jeffrey Runnings passed away on March 3 after battling stage 4 cancer, as announced by Independent Project Records.
Born in Omaha back in 1963, Jeffrey’s journey with For Against started when he and some friends came together in Lincoln during the mid-80s, first with him playing keyboard before switching over to bass and vocals as the band found its final shape. Alongside Harry Dingman III on guitar and Gregory Hill on drums, they poured their hearts into music, dropping Echelons in 1987 and following up with albums like December, In the Marshes, and Aperture through the early ‘90s.
The group didn’t stop there; they kept releasing new sounds for more than fifteen years, finishing up their run with the album Never Been in 2009. Years later, fans got a treat when Captured Tracks put out a box set of those first three records in 2014, and Saint Marie pressed some rare vinyl editions from their ‘90s catalog just four years ago. Sometimes I think we don’t realize how much these bands mean to us until something like this happens.
Even after all those decades making music with For Against, Jeffrey wasn’t done—he recorded a solo album called Piqued that’s coming out this year. It’ll include an EP of hard-to-find tracks from way back in the late ‘80s too. Earlier this year he even dropped “Batman Forever,” his debut single from that project.
Bruce Licher shared:
“Jeffrey Runnings was not only a good friend and an outstanding musician & songwriter, but someone whose life revolved around music. Jeff was always enthusiastically sharing music that he thought his friends would enjoy, and for years he would send me handwritten letters often accompanied by records he thought I should have, or a mixtape he’d made that he thought I should hear. Even now, in the middle of the second decade of the 21st Century, when he sent me his new album to hear for the first time, it was on a cassette tape that he mailed through the post. I couldn’t have asked for anything more special. His unique voice will be missed on so many levels.”
People sometimes forget how much one person can shape what we listen to or love about music—Jeffrey definitely did that in his own quiet way (and apparently really liked cassette tapes).
