Soft War was born in 1984 when
singer/multi-instrumentalist Tim Z* (now known as John Ludi) joined a
Detroit-based band named Gon Moros that had recently lost it’s lead vocalist.
Musically, the band could have been best described as a blend of the Smiths and
80’s era King Crimson and Ludi felt that it had great potential as a musical
canvas to work with lyrically and melodically.
The band soon changed its name to Soft
War within a few months of Ludi joining the group and proceeded to play a
generous amount of local shows, later expanding into the Midwest, Near-South,
and a bit of the East Coast. Soft War also recorded several projects, some of
which met with a warm critical response and a fair amount of college and
independent radio airplay.
After a time, the usual rock musician
issues reared their heads. There were various membership changes, but the core
three members who defined the sound of Soft War remained the same: Greg Kutcher
on guitar and vocals, John Dennis on drums, and Tim “Eldair” (Ludi) on vocals
and rhythm guitar.
The sound of the band became
progressively more strident over time, in some ways anticipating the Grunge
trend by several years with songs that featured abrupt dynamic changes and
Pixies-like intensity.
One of the core essences of the band
was the songwriting. Kutcher and Ludi became a veritable songwriting factory,
in some way echoing the classic songwriting duos of the 60’s and 70’s.
Time marched on, as it will. Despite
the overall quality of the songs and the band’s generally decent ability to pull
the material off live, fleeting brushes with opportunity came to very little by
the time Ludi decided to leave in 1989.
After Ludi left, the band marched on
with the new name Trust Fund, Greg taking over the lead vocalist role (along
with his wife Diane Kutcher-Wilson and several changes of bass player). Ludi
moved to Minneapolis and began to record a great many projects on his own,
though he greatly missed the incredibly fruitful collaboration with Greg and
never found any collaborators that could equal their combined quality.
After 14 years of working separately,
Greg and Ludi got back together when an unfortunate serious of incredibly
foolish life decisions forced Ludi to move back to Michigan for several years.
Greg and Ludi decided that it would be interesting to try recording together
again, to see if the “magic” still existed.
Apparently it did, as this album will
attest.
Both Greg and Ludi are immensely
pleased with how this album has come out. It remains to be seen if the
listening audience feels the same, but whether or not they do they are proud of
this accomplishment and are likewise proud to present it to you.
