Dexter Romweber of North Carolina psychobilly/garage-punk legends Flat Duo Jets died on Friday at age 57. News came via his family who released a statement and tribute on Romweber’s official Facebook:
It is our sad duty to inform the world that our beloved youngest brother John Michael Romweber II – you know him as Dexter — died at home on Friday, Feb. 16, 2024. He was 57 years old, and found by his sister Monica. It is believed he died of natural causes; a medical exam is pending.
Singer, guitarist, artist and bon vivant, Dexter Romweber was one of the most acclaimed artists of the roots-rock underground, going back to his time with the Kamikazes. But the band that put him on the map was Flat Duo Jets, the guitar/drums duo he started in 1983 with Chris “Crow” Smith (and later with Tony Mayer on bass). While the Jets never broke through commercially, their fiery sturm and twang was a major influence on artists including the White Stripes, X, Cat Power and Neko Case.
After the Jets broke up in the late 1990s, Dexter played in a variety of acts including The New Romans and Dex Romweber Duo with his sister Sara. He released more than a dozen group and solo albums over the years, playing everything from wild-eyed rockabilly to Rachmaninoff-styled classical piano. His most recent album was “Good Thing Goin’,” released in 2023.
Romweber was preceded in death by his sister Sara; brothers Joe and Luke; and most recently his mother Sara.
We will have more to say soon, but ask for privacy at this time.
Dexter was a charismatic eccentric from the start, as anyone who has seen the very memorable segment on Dex that aired on MTV’s The Cutting Edge in the mid-’80s knows. “Dexter is no poseur. He loves American rock n’ roll and lives it 24 hours a day” is how Cutting Edge host (and Fleshtones frontman) Peter Zaremba introduced Dex to viewers. (You can watch that below.) He may have inspired by Gene Vincent, Hasil Adkins, and The Cramps but Dex was a true original, and absolutely electric live performer, and was a huge influence on the next generation of underground musicians, including The White Stripes. Jack White reissued Flat Duo Jets’ 1991 album Go Go Harlem Baby on his Third Man label in 2011.
Jack White paid tribute to Dex on his Instagram, writing, “A brick crashed through my window last night. Cat Power had wrote to me; John Michael Dexter Romweber had passed away, passed on, bill past due. He wasn’t a Rock N’ Roll musician, he WAS Rock N’ Roll inside and out, without even having to try, he couldn’t help himself. People toss that around a lot, but in Dex’s case it was actually true. To call him Punk would be like calling the Great Pyramid a sand castle. 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. Dex was a true tortured romantic, unfairly treated and broken hearted at all times but still hopeful. He was an electrical outlet, an old soul, a vampire, a cave man in a modern age, a WWI trench soldier, a different kind of American, out of luck living on the outskirts of town, lonely even when in a room of thousands. He ate dinner with Van Gogh, loaned your friend his last ten dollars, and exuded innocent love and naivety. He stared at the moon, communicated with Gene Vincent from another plane, while reading George Gurdjieff by thrift store lamp and all out of cigarettes at 3 a.m. He was forever getting the short end of the deal but anyone who spoke with him could only want him to live in peace and love with no way to know how to truly help him get there. He was one of my favorite people I’ve ever known and one of my most cherished influences. He once finished the last chord of a song during a concert, threw his guitar down, jumped off the stage at St. Andrews Hall in Detroit, and ran straight up to me in a theater of ten people at the back of the room and immediately started talking to me. I had never met him before that. I was 18. Over time he passed on secrets I’ll never tell, and brought tears to my eyes when he told me how proud of me he was. But I was proud of him first, and always will be. He was an uncle that I would ride my bike across town to see. They don’t make them like Dex anymore, not till we get our act together as humans. I know your pain is over now Dex and you are living in true romantic bliss. You deserve it more than any of us.”
In the 2000s, Dex formed The Dex Romweber Duo with his sister, Sara Romweber, who was the original drummer in Let’s Active. Sara died in 2019.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a0aUJIxJptk&pp=ygUOZmxhdCBkdW8gamV0cyA%3D