Ludent Tremmel grew up in an atmosphere that was rich with music.
His eldest brother Frank was an accomplished jazz trumpeter in a band called
the Starliners that toured with Ritchie Valens, The Big Bopper, Bo Diddley
and Buddy Holly. As a child, Ludent was exposed to Coltrane, Miles Davis,
Bill Evans, and other Jazz greats. His closest brother Ron meanwhile inundated
him with Muddy Waters, Ledbelly and Paul Butterfield. After Ron returned from
a summer living at the Factory in New York with Warhol and crew, he formed
the band Outside. This band broke down conventional musical barriers creating
a form that would later be called Fusion. Meanwhile, Ludent and Ron created
little experiments at home that drove their parents nuts. Stereo reel-to-reel
recorders became available and the two of them would go into ‘what would
happen if…?’ mode, devising a series of pullies around their bedroom and
running recording tape between two recorders and the rest of the room. Ludent
recalls,” we delighted in doing things that were unheard of at the time and
had the added benefit of pissing off the parentals”. The afore mentioned
tape experiment produced a bizarre demonic sound on sound recording, “ I
remember mom saying, ‘and you wonder why I send you to church’”. The duo
also achieved critical success filling their room with old turntables and
‘show & tells’; each with records on them that Ron had taken a razor to
so they would skip at precise places. “The resulting cacophony was beautiful.
Dad burst into the room and threatened to kill us”
Age twelve was a pivotal point in Ludent’s life. He was immersed in the politics of war and civil rights, reading Keroac, Burroughs, and R.D. Lang, and ran away from home in order to see a little known guitarist at the Bushnell Memorial in Hartford. “ I walked the hour and a half to get there and paid my $2.25 to get in. There were maybe 300 people at most. Jimi Hendrix blew my little mind; I was so not ready for that. But it was the opening band Soft Machine that really intrigued me”. That same year, Ludent was in a basement in East Hartford listening to an Outside band rehearsal when his brother handed him his old Telecaster and said, “Just play it”. “ I was filled with terror and ecstatic delight…we jammed for more than an hour, all free form loud meaty and driven. I was hooked. To this day I haven’t a clue what the written language of music is; scales, notes, keys…total block…nothing. I work with sound, strung together, which I can only communicate to other musicians through metaphor. I still have a tape of that night”
His high school band ‘Nova Express’ won the battle of the bands contest playing all original weird music. They were disinvited from Dickie Robinson’s Caravan of Bands showcase after a Marine threatened to kill Ludent if he didn’t stop playing, at a gig at the Knights of Columbus in South Windsor. “ There we were with all these cover bands with their identical costumes and choreographed la di da, and us in torn jeans and dirty white t-shirts playing what amounted to feedback with screaming over the top of it . As I look back, I’m beginning to sense a reoccurring theme regarding my demise via homicide. I do empathize though…had I been a marine and played in band like that, I surely would have killed myself”.
photo credit: Peter Crowley
