Jeffrey Runnings, Founder, Bassist and Vocalist of For Against, Dies at 61

Jeffrey Runnings, founding member, bassist and vocalist of the Nebraska-based indie band For Against, has died. He was 61.

Runnings died March 3 after a battle with Stage 4 cancer, Independent Project Records announced.

Since their start in 1984 in Lincoln, Nebraska, For Against was known for a drifting, rhythmic dream pop sound that one critic noted had “one foot in the British post-punk of Joy Division and the other in the gliding atmospherics of Kitchens of Distinction.” Their first single was “Autocrat/It’s a Lie.”

Their albums included 1987’s Echelons and 1988’s December, both on the Words on Music label; 1993’s Aperture and 1995’s Mason’s California Lunch Room, off the Rainbow Quartz label; and 1997’s Shelf Life, from the World Domination label.

The band returned to Words on Music for LPs in 2002, 2008 and 2009, and Runnings recorded a solo album, Primitives & Smalls, released in 2016 by Saint Marie Records.

Another solo LP that Runnings recorded last year, Piqued, will soon be released by IPR and feature a four-track EP of rare recordings from the late 1980s. The first single, “Batman Forever,” can be heard here.

“Jeffrey Runnings was not only a good friend and an outstanding musician and songwriter, but someone whose life revolved around music,” Independent Project Records founder and co-owner Bruce Licher said in a statement.

“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.”

Born in Omaha, Nebraska, on April 22, 1963, Jeffrey Scott Runnings grew up collecting records and taking piano lessons. A left-hander, he learned to play right-handed guitars upside down. He also loved cats and worked at a cat café in his hometown.

Survivors include his husband, Sean; his brother, Steve (and his companion, Linda); his nephews, Rudy (Darcy) and Phil; his niece, Christina; and his uncle, Gerald. He was preceded by his sister, Karen.

Donations can be made to his GoFundMe page.