[…continued from last post]

THE SOLO/DUO YEARS

Oddly enough, Dexter’s solo career debut snuck out tentatively two years before “Lucky Eye” was released. The 1996 “Folk Songs” disc is one I’ve still yet to find and it’s packed with 27 songs. I did recall seeing 2001’s “Chased By Martians” and 2004’s “Blues That Defy My Soul,” but I was on a tight budget in those years so I still need copies. In 2001 I moved to Western North Carolina and naively thought that now that I was in Dex’s home state, I’d see him playing even more than I had in Orlando. Not quite.

I rejoined the Dexter parade with 2006’s extreme outlier, the “Piano” album. This was, yes, a solo piano outing from Dexter, but most emphatically not Rock ‘N Roll! Instead the questing artist had taken a deep dive into classical music [Frédéric Chopin, in particular] and had emerged obsessed with writing for classical piano. The thirteen instrumental compositions were a surprising new wrinkle for an artist we thought we knew well.

The new millennium also brought some strange changes in the dynamics of entertainment which were related to Dexter through circumstance. In 2001, the year that I moved to Asheville, I saw in the local freekly that a guitar/drums duo from Detroit whom I’d not heard of were playing at the Vincent Van Gogh club. Which comfortably held around 120 people. Maybe. I’d not previously heard of The White Stripes, but they were the hot tip in that week’s issue. They were compared to Flat Duo Jets but I was not convinced that anyone could achieve that goal, thus I demurred. Within the year, their third album exploded like a platinum time bomb and Jack White would never play tiny rat hole clubs like Vincent Van Gogh ever again. Would that it were so for Dexter.

To his credit, Jack White did his best to boost the Dexter Romweber brand by any means possible. By the middle of the noughts, Dex had linked up with his sister, the talented Sara Romweber late of Let’s Active and Snatches Of Pink, to occupy the drum stool in the Dex Romweber Duo. I started seeing their gigs at the Grey Eagle and was doubly grateful since I had missed Sara with Let’s Active all those years ago. She was an excellent partner in crime for Dex and by that time Jack White owned his own label and pressing plant! His Third Man Records inaugurated their live album series with Dex Romweber Duo and also issued a 7″ single, with the label owner guesting on the B-side with the artistes. Here’s a hot taste of the fiery opener, “Gurjieff Girl” from a Duo show I saw in the summer of ’12.

I can’t remember what year it happened; I think it may have been earlier in 2009-10, but for one of the most memorable Dex Romweber Duo shows I ever saw, the opening act was a documentary on Flat Duo Jets! FIlmmaker Tony Gayton had featured Flat Duo Jets on the crucial documentary “Athens, Georgia: Inside Out” and wanted to make a film about this Rock ‘N Roll firebrand and the work was begun but abandoned as these things sometimes are. But almost 20 years later, the director finished the movie with a look at what had happened in the interim with Dexter and Flat Duo Jets. It was a bit of a heartbreaker as Dex could be seen discussing and taking the various medications he stabilized with and frankly discussing his life. As well as throwing shade on his former drummer Crow.

It was somewhat surreal to have this viewing of such an intimate film in a club with the artist present to give us a rocking show afterward as if nothing had happened before! The years with Dex Romweber Duo saw the group signed to the ideal Bloodshot Records label, where they fit like a glove. I still need the first album, “Ruins Of Berlin” but I have the others and “Is That You In The Blue” was another perfect cocktail of explosive power and pathos as only Dex could deliver. The album opened with “Jungle Drums” as seen below, and if you can listen to that without your pulse quickening, then get thee to a morgue! Over twenty years in the game and Dex was channeling raw emotion and impact as though his life depended on it. I’ll bet it did!

The Bloodshot albums also have the participation of Rick Miller of Southern Culture On The Skids, one of America’s best guitarists and a real spitfire himself, to helm the production on the last two. Miller knows how to make great sounding albums on a budget so the sophistication he made possible could support whatever Dex’s goal was on a song by song basis. 2014’s “Images 13” featured an absolutely lovely cover of The Who’s “So Sad About Us” on it. Not the usual example of a proto-rock song that Dex often favored to cover, but he really captured the bittersweet heartbreak of the song like a pro. It’s definitely my favorite version of the popular song.

I think the last time I saw the Duo was the 2012 show in the video above. My next visit with Dexter was as a solo act in 2016, also at The Grey Eagle. This was the first solo performance I’d seen with him since 1994 and the Beefstock Festival show in the last post. Dexter’s command of the forces of Rock ‘N Roll were so adroit that he didn’t need a drummer to get it across. That guitar tone with nary a stomp box was more than sufficient for his purposes. His rip roaring guitar, along with his powerful baritone vocals, which ranged from suave and lilting to feral and baleful at a moment’s notice, were all he needed for his art.

Though the shows with Sara continued for some tours that didn’t come nearby, the successful run that she and Dexter had as The Duo ended sadly with her death in 2019 from a brain tumor at age 55. I didn’t know it at the time, but two more of Dexter’s siblings also died within a year of Sara. It couldn’t have been easy for the man. I saw Dex one more time after her death when he played a solo show at the Sly Grog Lounge, a colorful Asheville club mere weeks after her death. I went with my blues rocking neighbor [who had his own band, The Unrepentant Heathens] who was dismissive of Romweber without a full band, but I had no such misgivings.

Dexter Romweber was trafficking in primeval forces with his Rock ‘N Roll music. He was a southern-fried Icarus who more than once flew too close to the sun and singed his wings time and time again. One could read between the lines of the songs about his heartbreak issues that dogged him his whole life. On later albums, the dedication of specific songs to specific women in the liner notes spoke volumes. I still cannot believe that a teenager in 1986 could channel the raw emotions that someone like Howlin’ Wolf did over a quarter of a century earlier as if synthesizers, drum machines, and hairspray never existed.

I can’t imagine we’ll hear the likes of another Dexter Romweber any time soon. The man was most likely a one off. The sort of player who stands apart from the cold professionalism of the music industry as it further removes itself from the human condition that spawned it. I’ve been listening to Dexter’s music in heavy doses since last weekend and it’s a treasured part of my Record Cell. I wish I had paid closer attention to him in the beginning, but the last thirty years of my music listening would not have been nearly as rocking without the turbo-charged feeling he brought to the mic and amp. My condolences to his family and friends during this painful time. He loved his music, “in the red,” full of feeling, and we’re all the richer for it.

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