Nurse the Hate: Dexter Romweber

 

I learned that Dexter Romweber had died in the way that one does in 2024, a social media post adorned with the tear face emoji.  The news impacted me more than I would have thought.  I wasn't particularily close with Dexter but we had played together ten times or so and he had stayed at my house at least three times.  The impact had something to do with the combination of familiarity, my admiration for him as an artist, and that we are the same age.  Wayne Kramer passes away and you think, "Damn, that's a drag." as you do the mental calculations and remember seeing the footage of Wayne playing the 1968 Democratic Convention as you buffer yourself with the knowledge of "I guess he was pretty old".  Shit.  I remember staying at some college party flophouse in Gainesville Florida with the Flat Duo Jets when we were all in our twenties.  Clock is ticking.

When I think about Dexter it takes me through a Greatest Hits of Indie Rock venues.  Like a lot of people I became aware of the Flat Duo Jets from their scene stealing performances on that "Athens GA Inside Out" documentary.  I cannot stress how many times I played that "Flat Duo Jets" record, it being one of the first examples of how the "rockabilly revival" that was rearing its ugly head was an artistic dead end, and these Flat Duo Jets guys were onto something with their primal energy.  I saw them for the first time when they opened up for The Cramps at the Phantasy Theater.  That's the only time I saw them with Tone on bass, and even that night Dexter was yelling at the poor guy for whatever infractions he had made during the chaotic but great set.  

The next time I saw them was when they played the Babylon A Go Go on some weird package tour with the Chickasaw Mud Puppies.  This is probably 1991 or 92.  I talked to Dexter for the first time that night and I remember thinking "this guy isn't like anyone I've ever met".  He had this raw emotional edge and animal intensity even as we talked about old records.  It was just obvious that he experienced things differently than everyone else, like he was sensitive to things other people didn't notice.  That was right around the same time we were attempting to get the Cowslingers airborne.  Within a few years we had played with them at the Magic Stick in Detroit, the Local 506 in Chapel Hill, The Covered Dish in Gainesville FL, The Grog Shop a couple times, and Stache's in Columbus maybe?  

One night when they stayed at my place in Lakewood, Dexter didn't want to sleep on an available couch or futon and instead slept on the floor in the spare bedroom.  I woke him up to go to a late breakfast at this brunch place near my house as soon as I could corral Crow, and he woke up so completely disheveled and lost that the image stuck in my head.  It was like he had gone 12 rounds with some demon as he had slept.  I named my basset hound Dexter after him when the puppy woke up from a nap at the exact spot on the floor bearing more than just a passing resemblance to Mr. Romweber about a year later.      

That show in Gainesville is one I really remember.  It was one of those Thursday night gigs in a room that was too big for the bill.  The Cowslingers opened.  We had played our way down to the Florida panhandle and I was feeling crispy.  I sat in the back dressing room.  Dexter was in a dark mood, very introverted and was deep in his head.  I just gave him his space and sat there in the quiet.  Eventually Ken walked in and felt the vibe and sat quietly as well.  Crow walked in and flopped down.  It was quiet for a bit until Crow spoke to Dexter.  These two guys had this really quiet caring conversation about their tour, if they should be doing it, and how they felt as if Ken and I weren't there.  They both revealed they felt resigned about the tour but just wanted to make sure the other guy was OK.  It was so genuine.  About an hour later they went out and completely destroyed, closing with a version of "Sing Sing Sing" that lasted 20 minutes + with both of them leaving everything on that stage.  We ended up at some shitty college townhouse where Dexter grabbed a cold shower, threw some clothes on his soaking body, walked through the after hours party like it wasn't there and disappeared into the night with crazed eyes.  

When the Flat Duo Jets ended I was bummed that Dexter seemed so low profile.  I saw him solo a couple times, played with him in Atlanta and somewhere in the Midwest, but he was struggling.  I saw him in a session at Kudzu at Rick Miller's place during that period where it was all just a bit off.  It appeared to me that he found his stride again with the Dexter Romweber Duo with his sister.  That time period produced some great music where his ability to rip the essence of obscure old songs and make them his was reignited.  His spirit seemed lifted to be in the band with her.  I remember an amazing set they played with us at the doomed Jigsaw stage where he played like he was in a sold out stadium.  That guy was the real deal. 

The death of his sister hit him especially hard as I understand it.  He had many disappointments and self inflicted wounds over the years, but the loss of his sister had to be uniquely brutal.  Within a short period he lost his sister, two brothers and his mother like some sort of terrible Southern Gothic curse.  He had a haunted genius quality to him with an inner conflict that must have produced so much of his greatness as well as making the day-to-day life a heavy burden.  I had just found a podcast he had done promoting his latest release "Got A Good Thing Going" a couple weeks ago and bought the record.  It just seemed like he would always be there, doing what he did.  I suppose the ending to his story was what it was always going to be, sad but with an amplified resonance.  

I saw a shaky youtube clip of him doing an instore appearance at a record store.  He stopped between a couple of songs and stalked around the area they had provided him for his performance.  He was talking to the crowd, but to himself really.  He made some awkward jokes and then said, "I'll go a little bit longer.  As long as I can.  I'm not sure what I want out of life any more.  I've done this for over 30 years.  I just don't have any other means...  any other skills... I really don't... and this is the only thing I've had since I was a young man, if you call it a skill.  And it's the only thing that's never left me.  Women have come and gone, but the guitar?  The guitar always stuck around.  So...  anyway..."  And then he went into a sad song facing the back of the room, singing with everything he had.        

Nurse the Hate: A Week In The Fatherland or MW Stage 2 Seminar Blues

 

I was in Germany last week for the Stage 2 Master Of Wine seminar.  Sorry for not getting a Super Bowl column in, but as anyone that texted me will attest, I was on Kansas City +2.  Winner.  Anyway, let's get back to my little German Blitzkrieg.  For most of you reading this, it would have been a brutally boring week of sitting in a small conference room in the morning after taking a 2 hour and 15 minute test of blind wines discussing your answers.  Now this would bore the shit out of any rational human being, because most of the conversation isn't even about what you answered but how you answered it.  There are other Stage 2 students taking the course in Napa this week, so I won't get into the particular wines, but here's an example of what the morning was like for four days.  There's 12 wines in glasses in front of me.  I get a question like "Discuss the relative quality of wines 3 and 4 in regards to context of origin" as part of the analysis.  I think wine 3 is better than wine 4 and I spend about 100 words in my answer.  Later, after the mock exam, I'm sitting there with 12 other people and we discuss our answers.  My favorite part of the process is when we get bogged down for 20 minutes discussing the validity of a certain word choice.  

Let's pretend that wine 3 is "Wooly Bully" by Sam the Sham and the Pharoahs.  Wine 4 is "Desolation Row" by Bob Dylan.  I say "Desolation Row" is higher "quality" than "Wooly Bully", but that doesn't mean that I like it more.  It just means that I think it hits a higher level of ambition and has more depth of content, not that I necessarily don't want to crank up Sam the Sham driving around in my car.  During the discussion period after the exam we get into our answers.  I might write something like, "Desolation Row is the higher quality track.  Wooly Bully has wild energy with the funky keyboard driving the song compared with Desolation Row which has tight dense lyrical content offering great complexity with the virtuoso uplifted Spanish guitar playing offering counterpoint to the solemn vocal delivery."  We might spend 20 minutes talking about my use of "funky" in that answer, completely ignoring that I was correct overall.  Imagine a posh English accent saying something like "Funky?  Is that the best word choice here?  I don't know what "funky" means."

Now this guy isn't wrong.  He doesn't know what "funky" means, but that's because he is the product of British boarding schools and he has never been within 10 kilometers of anything remotely funky.  Now I can agree that "funky" might not be the best word for describing Sam the Sham's organ in "Wooly Bully", but it's probably more widely understood than if I had used the phrase "garage punk".  The problem is that phrase won't work for whoever is reading it as they probably have never seen Thee Headcoats and have a secret affinity for late Elton John recordings.  So now the room bandies about different word choices to "fix" my answer.  How about "frantic"?  No, that's not quite it.  Perhaps "primitive"?  No, that's a negative connotation.  "Energetic?"  Yes, that's probably better the English advisor intones.  We move on with me thinking "energetic" would be better used to describe one of those first two XTC records keyboards.  Whatever...  "Energetic" it is.

That's the tricky part.  There's only a few minutes per wine and you have to capture the essence of the thing in a few lines that can be agreed upon regardless of your cultural background.  I got lit up by a guy because I was scrambling at the end of a mock exam and wrote "Euro tourists make up an important market for this wine region and the entry level quality of this wine would have broad appeal to these consumers."  The person that reviewed my paper said "Euro Tourists?  Euro Tourists?  What does that mean?  Do Bulgarians come buy this wine?".  Now I have no fucking idea if Bulgarians drive to Alsace France to buy affordable white wines, but I read that a shitload of tourists drive through and load up their little campers as they go.  The guy reviewing my paper was adamant I missed the mark and killed me on points.  It should be noted that three days later I was in Alsace and a producer there said to me "We get tourists from 17 countries, all over Europe mostly, and they all buy wine."  It didn't matter that I was right.  The person grading me didn't think I was, so that means I'm wrong.  Had I put "An important market for this wine are primarily French, German and Belgian tourists that travel though the region on holiday and make purchases via the cellar door.".  Am I saying the same thing?  Yes, but now I'm saying it the way the reader wants to read it.  

It can be very frustrating for me, and English is allegedly my primary language.  My cultural shorthand doesn't work.  Now if I'd used a phrase like "pear drop", that is completely acceptable because there is an English candy flavor called "pear drop" and most of these blokes are English and they write the rules.  Americans dominate world culture, but not here.  The Brits have planted their flag and will make their last stand extolling the glories of port and sherry,  I try to remember to type out answers like I'm role playing being a British business middle manager for a consumer goods company.  There are people there so gifted that they are doing this in their third or fourth language.  I'm struggling to come up with the right word and some guy from Singapore is knocking it out in a language he barely knows.  It can be disheartening to be a filthy ape like myself.  Yet, I soldier on and sit in a conference room watching German chemists present reams of data regarding TDN formation in wild chemical fermentations as I pretend to grasp what he is saying.  It's really a hell of a thing.

I made a quick day trip into Alsace with my associate Felix.  There are these unbelievably charming little villages built in the 1400-1500s where at any moment it looks like a gnome is going to jump out and do a little jig.  A winemaker we visited was the 14th generation winemaker and his family lived in a house built in the 1470s.  Afterwards we hustled back to have dinner with Jochen/Evil and crew knocking back a half dozen regional wines and some local beer.  I woke up early after going to bed late, my sleep schedule a complete disaster.  My plan had been to escape to Frankfurt and spend the day regrouping, but as I watched costume clad young adults in their Fasching gear jumping on trains to whatever street party was happening I thought "I gotta get out of here".  I booked a train to the airport from my phone and muscled my way into an open Premium Plus Business Class seat on the 530p back to Washington-Dulles.  I caught the second half of the Super Bowl in the United Club lounge and had to hustle to my gate when it went into OT.  I streamed the overtime on my phone as we readied for takeoff.  Just as the Chiefs went to make the winning score, I lost the signal.  I fell asleep in my seat secure in the knowledge that my KC +2 had hit.  All and all, a successful trip.