Just saw that Dexter Romweber passed away.
Who’s that?
A dude who didn’t get the recognition he should have. He was half of the Flat Duo Jets and, later, had a two-piece with his sister. (Sadly, Sara preceded him in death.)
Saw him live BITD, saw him live here in Ormond in modern times. Never phoned it in. Simple, old-school garage rock.
Some footage from Athens, GA: Inside/Out (Dex is the one in black), and I’ll find something more recent.
I remember him breaking a low E string during a performance–kinda necessary for power chords–and he just kept on playing, never missing a beat until the end of the gig.
I saw the Flat Duo Jets at WMNF's Tropical Heatwave many years ago. Became an instant fan.
He and his sister returned a few years later and it was amazing. The same energy, but different. More refined? Either way, I feel lucky to have seen him twice.
Fair winds and amps that go to 11. Peace, Dexter
Oh man....
Not Dex. 
In reply to hobiercr :
I wonder if we saw them on the same pass through the state.
Here’s the official word from the family:
Dexter was one of my musical heros. Back in 95ish one of my bands ended up opening for the Dexter Romweber duo. My noisy punk/garage band had no business being on the same stage.
We met during load in and sound check. He was cool. He played my Italian trash guitar and I played his Silvertone. We hung out for over an hour. I told him I could never sing and he told me I was wrong and what I heard in my voice didn't matter. I still think he was wrong about that but I appreciate what he was trying to say. You could tell there was some untreated disorder going on with him but he was genuine, nice and just cool.
Found some of my pics.
2014 in Orlando:
2015 in Orlando:
And the trailer for his documentary.
From the family:
John Michael “Dexter” Romweber II
June 18, 1966 – February 16, 2024
With immense regret, the Romweber family must announce the death of our beloved brother and friend, Dexter. Artist, writer and widely acclaimed musician, he burned bright in a 40-year career before passing from cardiac arrest on February 16, 2024 – just a few days after what would have been his late sister Sara Romweber’s 60th birthday. He was 57 years old.
“I’m in shock,” said Randy Evans, a longtime friend who worked as Dexter’s tour manager for five years. “We just spoke a couple of days ago. I always thought of him as Keith Richards status, like he’d be taking my kid on the road someday. But at the same time, he really held tragedy tight the past few years.”
Dexter’s death is just the latest in a string of tragic deaths the Romweber family has endured over the past five years, starting with former Snatches of Pink/Let’s Active/Dex Romweber Duo drummer Sara Romweber’s 2019 death from glioblastoma. Brothers Joe and Luke Romweber subsequently died within weeks of each other. And the family matriarch, mother Sara, died of complications from a stroke in October 2023.
It may have all been too much for one heart to take.
The Romweber clan originated in Indiana, spending eight years in Florida before the family moved to Carrboro, North Carolina, in 1977. Dexter’s earliest music enthusiasm was for the band Kiss at age 12. Around that same time, he took up guitar and discovered rockabilly, which would prove to be the most important base element of his own music.
By his teenage years, Dexter was playing in bands including The Remainz and Kamikazes with a revolving cast of characters including future White Zombie bassist Sean Reynolds Yseult and Sara’s future Snatches of Pink bandmate Michael Rank. But it was with Flat Duo Jets, formed in 1983, that he truly scaled the heights.
Flat Duo Jets started out as a guitar/drums duo with Dexter and drummer Chris “Crow” Smith, eventually expanding to a trio with the addition of bassist Tony “Tone” Mayer. Using cheap Sears Silvertone guitars, Dexter played old-style roots rock as if delivered by a massive rocketship. He could generate a tidal wave of sound with a single guitar, and his classic voice was well-equipped for either crooning ballads or howling at the moon. Dexter was blessed with an amazing interior jukebox, too, with total recall of seemingly thousands of songs both famous and obscure.
“People would call Dexter rockabilly, but I always thought he was punk rock even when it was just him playing an acoustic ballad,” said Michael Benson, a photographer, Chapel Hill nightclub owner and longtime friend. “He was loud, chaotic, dangerous with fire and rage and beauty, all in three minutes. Or sometimes 10 if he was really feeling it.”
Having one’s mind blown by Flat Duo Jets became a rite-of-passage experience for generations of new arrivals to Chapel Hill. Tom Maxwell, hitmaker in Squirrel Nut Zippers, has talked of coming to Chapel Hill to attend UNC, encountering the Jets at Cat’s Cradle nightclub and feeling like he’d been given “a secret handshake: ‘Welcome. You have come to the right place, and found your tribe.'”
From the mid-1980s to the late 1990s, the Jets were tireless road warriors as they crisscrossed America beyond Chapel Hill. They spent just enough time in R.E.M.’s Georgia hometown of Athens to appear in the 1986 documentary “Athens, GA: Inside/Out,” stealing the film out from under better-known participants including B-52’s and Pylon. They played stages large and small, highlighted by a brilliantly intense 1990 performance on “Late Night With David Letterman,” and released one brilliant album after another.
If the general public never quite caught on, other musicians sure did. In the 2008 movie “It Might Get Loud,” White Stripes guitarist Jack White was shown playing the Jets for Led Zeppelin’s Jimmy Page and U2 guitarist The Edge. Black Keys, Neko Case and Cat Power bear Dexter’s stamp, too. Following his death, some of them took to social media for tributes.
Writing on Instagram, Chan “Cat Power” Marshall called Dexter “responsible for me playing guitar…I cannot comprehend a world without you.” Jack White was even more effusive, writing on Instagram that Dexter “wasn’t a Rock N’ Roll musician, he WAS Rock N’ Roll inside and out…He was the type that don’t get 3 course dinners, awards, gold records and statues made of them because they are too real, too much, too strange, too good…He was one of my favorite people I’ve ever known and one of my most cherished influences.”
After Flat Duo Jets disbanded, Dexter continued playing music as a solo act as well as member of The New Romans and Dex Romweber Duo. The latter act’s five years with Dexter’s sister Sara as drummer were especially productive, and strengthened the bond between them. That made for an even harder loss with her death, which he never got over.
Despite his many recent losses, struggles and momentous grief, he maintained a performing career to the end, playing live and releasing a solid album in 2023, “Good Thing Goin’.” When the end came, it was sudden and unexpected.
“Other people say this more than me, but he was a tortured soul,” said Dexter’s sister Monica. “I say he died of a broken heart.”
In addition to Monica, Dexter is survived by two brothers, Steve and Paul.
At this time, funeral and memorial arrangements are still to be determined. We’ll keep you posted.
Really nice piece on WUNC.
https://www.wunc.org/wunc-music/2024-02-20/dex-romweber-north-carolina-musicians-remember
Thanks for sharing, John.
Maybe my favorite bit:
I think about how in spite of being told over and over by Sara and his mom that I profoundly hated being called Mike he would persist on calling me Mike nonetheless and then curiously more and more transitioning to calling me Mickel. Like the five-cent coin but with an M. I actually got to the point where I was ok with that one. I think about how he would leave a room. His exits were next-level purposeful. Totally committed to the choreography of departure.
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