Soldiers of Fortune

Some folks might think Soldiers of Fortune are a band, but that's not the way they see it; SoF proudly proclaim they are an "anti-band," dedicated to making music without writing songs, rehearsing their material, or making records. Of course, they've fallen short on that last point, but they've managed the first two better than anyone might have expected. At the same time that they're an "anti-band," Soldiers of Fortune are also something of a supergroup. The band is the brainchild of Brad Truax, a member of Home and Interpol. Truax originally formed SoF in 2004 with his friend Marc Moore, who played in the Ospreys, with the notion of creating a band that embraced jamming, but without the hippie-influenced excess that usually came with it. Moore died as the result of a head injury a few months later, but when Mike Bones of Oneida asked to join in his place, Truax opted to keep SoF going. Performing when they felt like it, Soldiers of Fortune expanded into a fully staffed anti-band with the addition of Bones' Oneida bandmates Kid Millions, Papa Crazy, and Barry London; Jesper Eklow of Endless Boogie, and Matt Sweeney of Chavez and Zwan. Soldiers of Fortune managed to gig periodically despite not being an actual band, and in 2011, Mexican Summer Records persuaded them to commit the Cardinal sin of making an album, with the four-song, 37-minute Ball Strenth (it's spelled like that on purpose) documenting the Soldiers' attack for the ages. In 2015, lighting struck again, with SoF ambling into the studio to cut another set of high-impact jams titled Early Risers. This time out, the group invited several guest vocalists to join in, including Stephen Malkmus, Cass McCombs, Dan Melchior, and Clark "Yeremias" Bronson.
© Mark Deming /TiVo