My Friend, Leroi

Leroi Moore, woodwind extraordinaire, died suddenly and tragically one month ago tomorrow, and only now am i able to really even consider writing about it with any kind of clarity or perspective, and thus it is now that i have decided to offer up a few words in his honor.  Forgive me if it seems a bit belated or maudlin doing this now instead of shortly after the fact.  This has been a difficult thing for me to fully come to terms with.

If the name doesn’t sound familiar to you, allow me to explain why this was a man worth remembering.  Leroi was one of the founding members of that uniquely wonderful musical collaboration known as The Dave Matthews Band.  He played all manner of saxophone.  He played the flute.  He played the penny whistle.  He played the soul.  He was an exceptionally talented musician, and, by all accounts, he was an exceptionally kind human being as well.

Here are a couple of particularly personal and touching remembrances by two people that knew him well, a young artist who had recently been working with Roi, and her mother.  These were originally brought to my attention on the fan site Antsmarching.org shortly after his passing; the original source and how they ended up on that site is beyond the scope of my knowledge, but i hope with all of my heart that the authors are not offended at their inclusion in this memorial . . my intentions are nothing but honorable:

Friends….i’m trying to hold myself together but it is very, very, very hard right now.

My friend and my mentor, LeRoi Moore, died today. You may also know him as the brilliant and amazing saxophone player in the Dave Matthews Band.

I can barely type, i want to curl up in a corner and drink myself into oblivion, but i know he wouldn’t approve of that… all that i know is that i need to tell anyone who will listen about how amazing this man was, and how tragic it is that one of the brightest lights in the world has unexpectedly and suddenly gone out.

First, let me say that I have loved the Dave Matthews Band since I can remember. Also, being a young beginner sax player when i was 8th and 9th grade, I listened to them non-stop and tried to copy (terribly unsuccessfully) Roi’s solo’s. I didn’t know much then, (still don’t) but even I could tell that this dude was happening. Brilliant. The ONLY sax player in pop music that ever crossed my radar and was just damn cool….to say that i looked up to him would be a gross understatement. I LOVED HIM!!!

Fast forward a few years later, and through inexplicable twists of fate, he hears my music. For 2.5 years i’ve been hustling in LA trying to “make it” in the business, quit my day job, live free and make the music that is inside of me. Doors slam in my face. Countless shows spent waiting for flaky A & R dudes to show up who never come, sleazy wannabe producers promising the world, VP’s of this or that saying you have a good voice, but you are a little too pop, a little too folk, a little too pale, a little too weird and/ or left of center…..Then Roi heard me.

Roi got me. Immediately. No if’s and’s or buts. Just as I was, who I was plain and simple. I cried with joy then, to finally be validated and to be understood…to be validated by one of the purest and most talented cats in the game, founding member of a band i IDOLIZED……is this my life?!But it got better!!!

Not only was he an incredible player, he was the fucking coolest dude i’ve ever met!!! He loved sci-fi! He too had SETI on his PC at one time (true dorks will know what that means!) He was the most generous, and kind and sweet and hilarious person i’ve ever met! He had this terrible twinkle in his eye at all times…as in, Roi was always up to no good….he didn’t take himself or anyone that seriously and never made false promises or pretended to be what he was not. He liked good wine and good company and good music, and had lots of high tech star trek looking gadgets in his house that he loved to show off. He believed in me the way my parents believe in me. That doesn’t happen often. to anyone. He changed my life.

I quit that day job. I moved across the country and thanks to his complete and utter belief in my ability, he let me record my little heart out. “Just do you Saaaaaam” (he had this musical lilt in his voice)….you hear horror stories in the music industry about people wanting to change you and your sound, etc etc etc…but my experience was the exact opposite. All that he wanted was for me to be myself…..and he loved my music….When we would record something that came out face-meltingly awesome, he would keep a poker a face and say, “yeah, that was good…but I bet Stevie Wonder could do that when he was like 5 years old.” hahahhahaa ahhhhh…..He once asked if I needed anything at the studio, to which I said, “roi, we are so fine…but i dunno,i guess we could eat some candy?” The man brought like 15 POUNDS of jellybelly beans. That was Roi. He would make you smile, and make you laugh, welcome you in his home, put you in your place, and also tell you how much he appreciated you. I’m doing him no justice by this i’m sure, but it’s making me feel better…..i ca’nt fucking believe this…

This is so unexpected. He was getting better. He’d already miraculously survived his ATV accident from july and the subsequent complications. I just talked to him last week. We were planning for my album, which he was to produce (his first ever job as a producer)in November. He was looking forward to kicking ass in recovery and join DMB in Brazil. He was so full of life, and music and passion….and music. He was, he IS a true musician, the caliber and likes of which I am blessed I had a chance to know. He was an incredible man, and mentor, who was rock solid in his belief of me as a musician and person. He was my friend. He was a dear friend. But his music and his life made so many people happy, and so many lives lighter and more beautiful. His love lives on. In the end, all of the stupid bullshit doesnt’ mean a damn thing. It’s how you live your life and how you love people. Love lives on. And so does everyone who’s hearts are breaking at the sudden loss of Roi. But his music, and my music will go on, and I will try to live up to the person and musician that he thought me to be.

Anyway…that is my poor attempt at talking about a brilliant and loved person who has changed my life. I’m going to go have a drink. One for me, one for you. Then, I’m going to go outside and lay in front yard, and thank god for being alive, and for feeling cold and wet grass on my back and for smelling sweet summer night air, and for have being blessed to know you. If i see a shooting star or two, I’ll know it’s you. Boldly go where no one else has gone. I miss you terribly.

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And this, from the artist’s mother, is equally touching:

Well, if I have to start anywhere it is here:

1. He had one of the purest hearts I have ever encountered in all of my life. Don’t however take that to mean that he was not also simultaneously one of those don’t fuck with Chuck types because Roi was not a man that anyone with one grain of sense would have crossed. He was tough, worldly, street wise, and a brilliant genius who could hold his own with any of the great minds that have ever been, and with any of those with great once in a lifetime musical talent, but most of all he had one of the purest hearts I have ever encountered.

2. He was sort of shy just like my girl whom he took under his wing and believed in so fiercely, understood what she was about so clearly that as a parent, I was happy. They were two Virgo peas in a pod, liking science fiction, comfortable silences, spending an hour listening quietly together to Odetta sing.

3. He had a wicked sense of humor, and when he arranged for her to go to New York, and he sitting down to dinner with her and people that she was in awe of, he kept egging her on about being able to handle the eight courses of sushi he had arranged for the meal. “How you doing, Sam?’ she said he would say with a sly grin. He had done something similar in the studio, telling the three young bloods who were Samantha’s musical crew to just try the potato chips in the pantry, just try them, they were hot ones, yep, but they could handle them. We laughed so hard as those three lost their voices, determined not to show one sign of mouths on fire, show me the extinguisher in front of the likes of the Great Leroi Moore.

4. He called me Lulu, a nickname I gave myself as an alter ego, and supposedly private until my daughter called me that in front of him, and that became all that he called me. We talked quantum physics, and Roi said: “You know Lulu, until I met you, once I started talking quantum physics, to anyone else, the conversation shut down, but you….”

5. He somehow convinced my child to quit her job in Los Angeles and move cross country to Virginia, which she did without a thought having discovered for herself a kindred spirit, an old soul friend who called her Sam in such a musical way because Roi was a music man. I flew out to help her drive from LA to Charlottesville and on the way, with me driving, and her thinking, she wrote many songs. Roi said in the studio one day, “Sam, I am going to put you in a car and send you back to drive through Oklahoma again if that is where this song came to you.” (Fade Away) and we weren’t entirely certain that he wasn’t one hundred percent serious.

6. Roi kept you on your toes for he was a hard person to read, and it took awhile sometimes to figure out that he was mostly just pulling your leg, so when he dead panned one night to Samantha, “Sam, I think you should change this word to that in this song, we at first thought he was serious until he started laughing and said: “you don’t even have to split fifty fifty with me, just 70-30 will be good enough.” He appreciated what she did, and was so secure in what he did that he never tried to make her feel less than.

7. We arrived at night in Virginia and we were to stay at his place, and it was dark, and the roads unknown to us, and so I got more and more concerned the further up that old road we traveled. When I saw the house, just the way that Roi kept beautiful little white Christmas lights around the trees outside, I knew perhaps this person I had yet to meet might also be an old friend.

8. One day after I was back home, and watching on Youtube, a performance by the Dave Matthews band I found myself as I listend to the music moving through that house that had been a project for Roi, and understanding that he had in his uncommon genius sort of a way found a way to encode the band’s music into the very design of the house which he had gutted and rebuilt from the inside out. It is a living testimony to the mind on fire that was Leroi Moore.

9. One of the first things I noticed as I walked for the first time through that exquisite house, almost hugging the beautiful wood everywhere was that there was a huge bowl of cat eye marbles in the den. the big ones.. I played marbles as a chld and drooled over the ones he had assembled there. When I noticed also that the marbles were used in various places as tile, as musical notes, as all manner of interesting and unique decor elements in the house, I mentioned it to Roi and he said: “Yup, I bought 10,000 marbles on E-bay, and that is what happens when you have too much time on your hands.” We laughed.

10. He loved the band, said they were family, and when they had attitude problems because touring was hard, he said they rarely had to say anything to one another, being able to read each other’s minds as well as settle scores with their music. He said one night, they would get on stage and somebody who was a bit pissed about something would play a piece in a certain way, and he said it was as though that brother had said that thing that everyone else knew was the one thing that person shouldn’t have said, and he said somebody would do a version with their instruments, vocals, whatever of a “oh no I know you didn’t go there” and come back with an in your face dueling musical answer, and he was laughing the whole time.

11. He told Samantha that the entire time she and her group of musicians had been in the studio, and he was there every day all day except for one day, that he had kept waiting for them to get up, go out smoke some crack, do some dope, drink something, pull some drama, be demanding and none of it had happened.

12. He was very impressed with the fact that Samantha and all of her band mates were college educated, disciplined, not given to excess in anything, and certainly no druggies. Polite, respectful, punctual, and throughly enjoying what they were doing without the least bit of drama. Roi liked things like that, and they were a welcomed surprise for him.

13. We spent 4th of July at a barbeque at Roi’s farm with his family. He wanted me to meet those who had attended the same college as I had, and to also meet his mom who was like me an AKA, as were most of the other women in his family, and all of us sorors spent a lot of time skee-weeing one another as we laughed.

What impressed me as I went to the studio every day was how everyone associated with that organization known as the Dave Matthews Band loved being a part of it. No one could resist, Samantha, Keith, Kyle, or Cameron daring to touch Carter’s drum kit (and each of them took a picture sitting in front of that kit that Henry set up,) and Henry said it was that kind of group, that you never wanted to leave. I heard that repeatedly as various members of the behind the scenes staff got to know us, and came I think to like us, and therefore were willing to talk with us. They loved what they did, and they appreciated the type of organization DMB was. We had a lot of fun.

I think of them, too as I know how Carter whom Roi said was a friend from childhood, laughing as he told us how he and Carter would play in hotels around C-ville, not having any vocals and therefore yelling Dance that they passed off as vocals, as I think of all of the other members of the band he loved and admired so much and how they must feel, but in my thoughts and prayers also are the behind the scenes people and their families, how everyone associated with that organization is grieving and remembering now. I think of his childhood friend Dave who I had the honor of meeting one day as I looked out of the kitchen window and saw a man walking outside who told me that “Roi was one of the best human beings in the world, and a buddy forever.” I think of Rob, and Jeff, and Jerry, and G, Larry, the gardeners, and Ty and their families, and I feel blessed that for a little while, I had the pleasure of his company.

On August 15th, my granddaughter came to tell me that Fed-EX was ouside delivering a big box. I had no idea who had sent it for it was much too big to be what my daughter was suppose to be sending, and it said all over the outside, flowers. I said, oh Nai just packed it in an old flower box, but as my husband and granddaughter opened it, lo and behold we saw they were flowers.
2 dozen white roses to be exact that still sit in my kitchen, and since the box had been addressed to me, I opened the card. Samantha was at the gym, and as I read, I started to cry.

The note was from Roi and Ty, and the card thanked Sam and me for all of the love, the compassion and kindness we had offered to Roi during his accident and subsequent recovery. I wrote to Ty immediately saying thanks of course, but also forewarning him and asking him to relay it to Roi that the next time I saw the both of them I was definitely going upside both of their heads for reducing me to tears. Damn, Roi, I was soooo looking forward to that. I know Roi walked off with God, ready to play that sax somewhere else.
My family has had to deal with a lot of grief and sorrow. You never get over the loss, after awhile the intervals between the pain become a bit longer, but life is never quite the same again. Cherish the day, the minute, nothing is promised.

Roi said that all he ever knew was that he was not a 9-5 sort and all he ever wanted to do was make music. He said he hadn’t cared if he made a lot of money, he just knew he wanted to make music. He had Ty tell Sam that since he couldn’t do much else while he was recovering he was mentally writing music, working out parts for her, for him, and that is the way I will remember a man who had one of the purest hearts I have ever encountered which is not the same as having had a need to be a saint. Roll on, Roi.

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So Leroi Moore was more than just a jazz musician from Virginia who made it very very big.  He was also a friend, and a mentor, and a lover, and a son, and an inspiration, and a prankster, and so many other things as well.  And, really, what else could be expected?  Don’t we all make an impression on the people in our lives, shallow or deep, for better or for worse?  Yet, how many of us are ever afforded the opportunity to make such an enormous impression on so many lives.  The Dave Matthews Band has performed over 1,600 shows since their inception in 1991, and sold over 31,000,000 albums in the United States alone.  How many lives have been touched in those 17 years, and how deeply?  And let us not forget that Roi had been a prominent member of the Charlottesville music scene for years before Dave ever worked up the courage to strike up a friendship with the man (a move that ultimately led to the creation of DMB)!  How many people were moved by his personality and his music before fame ever entered the picture?  These are questions without answers, but i think the point is clear.

The day that Roi left us i was numb.  I had gotten very little sleep the night before, and it had already been a rollercoaster morning and afternoon before the news of his death began to leak out to those of us in the active DMB online community (of which i am a peripheral member, at best).  A few hours after i had been convinced that the news wasn’t fake, i wrote this to one of my closest friends, a fellow DMB fan and music lover, as we were attempting to console each other and grasp the new reality that was staring us in the face:

You know, one of the first things that went through my head this afternoon was, “And Leroi was a huge reason why i got into the band in the first place!  Especially considering that i was a sax player at the time.”  He made that odd, eclectic, unique music, the like of which i’d never heard before, so immediately accessible to me as a 15 year-old jazz saxophonist.  I remember playing along with the records in my living room on the tenor and the baritone.  Or trying to anyways     : )

Oh the debt i owe that man.

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Most of the rest of the day was spent in solemn labor or quiet tears, and later on in the evening i spent a few hours playing a little guitar in Roi’s honor (a practice i continued throughout the week).  I may not be that good of a musician, but it felt right; it felt like a strengthening of the connection between my spirit and his, and it was remarkably effective as a release for me.

Yes, i had known about the accident and the reported complications, and so no, his death wasn’t a complete surprise.  In fact, I had talked with my brother and little sister more than once in the previous weeks about that very possibility, and how that would affect the band, etc.  But there is a difference between surprise and shock, and there is no doubt that even now, nearly a month later, i’m still gripped by a certain amount of shock.  The man who i had been jamming to for so long, the man who had been such a role model to me musically, the man who stood on stage, a fixture in his trademark black glasses, emanating the very essence of cool for all those years: gone, suddenly, at the age of 46.  No amount of prior speculation had prepared me for that loss, that hole in my world (and the worlds of so many others as well) that would never again be properly filled.  Perhaps this seems like gross hyperbole to some, but i couldn’t help but think, on that day, of how people must have felt when Jimi died, or Janis, or Duane Allman, or Charlie Parker, or Stevie Ray Vaughn, or Keith Moon, or John Coltrane, or John Bonham, or even John Winston Ono Lennon.  True, Leroi’s shadow was and is, in many ways, not nearly as large as that of those immeasurably historic figures i just mentioned.  I mean, i came to love The Beatles relatively late in my life (not until college, really), and even then, even though i was only a year and three months old when John was shot, i still mourn him; i still occasionally weep for him.  So, no, in terms of macrocosmic scope and influence and suddenness, and even in terms of the circumstances surrounding the death, Leroi and John are not in the same ballpark.  But for me, in my heart, the loss is quite comparable.  It was on that day, and it will continue to be for the rest of my days.  That is how much Leroi’s music meant, and continues to mean, to me.

Back in Charlottesville, the birthplace of the band, the local music rag was trying to cope and report the best they could as well.  This is what they had to say a few days later:

http://www.readthehook.com/blog/index.php/2008/08/26/sax-silenced-dmbs-moore-remembered-as-enthusiastic-friend/

Silenced sax: DMB’s Moore remembered as enthusiastic friend

by Lindsay Barnes

LeRoi Moore: 1961-2008

One song into his band’s set at the Los Angeles Staples Center on Tuesday, August 19, Dave Matthews managed to silence the nearly 20,000 fans.

“We got some bad news today,” he told the crowd. “LeRoi gave up his ghost.”

Hours before Matthews had uttered the words, Dave Matthews Band saxophonist and founding member LeRoi Moore passed away in a hospital bed at Hollywood Presbyterian Medical Center, just six miles from the Staples Center, from complications from an accident. In June, Moore suffered broken ribs and a collapsed lung in an all-terrain vehicle accident on his farm outside Charlottesville. He was 46 years old.

The news hit his native Charlottesville hard, especially those who knew Moore well.

“It’s been an incredibly difficult couple of days,” says Peter Griesar, keyboardist and original bandmate of Moore’s in DMB. “He was my brother, and I loved him like a brother, and it’s just an incredibly sad thing.”

“There is an extreme amount of sadness in my heart,” says Ambha Lessard, sister of DMB bassist Stefan Lessard. “He was an amazing man, and he will forever touch our souls.”

“I’m still in shock,” says longtime friend Olivia Branch, who said it was too soon after Moore’s death for her to comment further.

“Walking on the Mall Tuesday, a friend called from afar and said ‘Roi passed,’” says guitarist and Moore protégé Jay Pun. “I was speechless.”

LeRoi Holloway Moore was born September 7, 1961 in Durham, North Carolina, but moved to Charlottesville with his mother, Roxie, and father, Alvin, early in his childhood. Moore’s musical prowess was evident from an early age, earning the family nickname “Bop Bop” for his childhood habit of scatting jazz riffs as he walked around the house.

He grew up a Dallas Cowboys fan and pursued his love of the gridiron as an offensive lineman for the Charlottesville High School Black Knights football team. But soon it became clear that Moore’s calling was on the stage, and he soon parlayed his musical gifts into a career, sitting in with local jazz stalwart trumpeter John D’earth in the fusion group Code Magenta, where he performed with DMB drummer Carter Beauford.

It was around that time that Moore caught the ear of a young bartender and aspiring singer-songwriter at downtown pub Miller’s.

“The stage was right near the cash register,” Matthews told the Staples Center crowd last Tuesday, just before the encore, “and he just leapt up on top of it, because standing was becoming something of a chore at that point. He got his elbows free, and played the most beautiful version of ‘Somewhere Over the Rainbow’ I ever heard in my whole life.”

Said Matthews, “That’s the night I fell in love with him.”

Moore was on hand to play for a private party atop the “pink warehouse” building on South Street on May 11, 1991, the now legendary first concert by the then-unnamed band. The 29-year-old saxophonist was already a heavy hitter in the local jazz community and far better known than the 24-year-old front man.

Along with Boyd Tinsley’s fiddle and Matthews’ unconventional vocal delivery, Moore’s sax would become a trademark of the Dave Matthews Band sound.

It was Moore who played the instantly memorable riff on one of the band’s first hits, “Ants Marching.” He went on to co-write Top-40 singles like “Too Much” and “Stay;” and his extended live solos on saxophone, flute, and pennywhistle helped build DMB’s reputation as a successor to the Grateful Dead as one of America’s greatest and most popular “jam bands.”

Through the years of fame and touring, Moore remained a soft-spoken individual who preferred to let his music do the talking. But those to whom he did open up say he was a warm man, not shy about boosting the mood of his friends.

“He watched me grow up, and I feel like he was family,” says Lessard. “He always took a minute out of his hectic life to give me a bear hug and catch up for a second.”

“He called me the day after I graduated from Berklee College of Music,” says Jay Pun, referring to the prestigious Boston conservatory. “He kept saying ‘congratulations, congratulations, congratulations,’ without letting me interrupt him. He kept saying to me that I did something that he only dreamed of and that I was on a great track. I couldn’t believe a musician I had grown up listening to since I was 12 years old had called me to congratulate me on graduating from music school.”

While the exact circumstances around Moore’s accident are unclear (neither Moore’s family nor representatives for the band returned the Hook’s calls for comment), band management did report that on June 30, taking a break from the band’s North American tour, Moore was injured while riding an all-terrain vehicle on his farm.

According to Karl Woerner, a salesman with Virginia Tractor who has both owned and sold ATVs, accidents involving the four-wheelers can be broken down into a few categories.

“If you’re going 60 mph and you go into a sharp turn, you could lose control and go into a tree,” he says. “If you accelerate too quickly, these things have such good traction that they’ll do a wheelie and come over on top of you. If you’re going downhill too fast and try to stop, you could go over the handle bars. If you’re going up a hill and you turn too quickly, it could roll over on you.”

What Moore’s death means for Dave Matthews Band’s future remains to be seen. Jeff Coffin of Bela Fleck and the Flecktones has filled in for Moore since the band’s July 1 show in Charlotte, North Carolina, and Coffin’s slated to continue playing with the remaining four members through November.

While the band did postpone two shows this week to attend Moore’s funeral, they played three shows before pausing to mourn their fallen brother. There is precedent for a band of DMB’s stature to take more immediate breaks to mourn the death of a band member.

On June 27, 2002, John Entwistle, bassist for The Who, died the night before his mates were to begin a long North American tour. The band postponed the tour opener in Las Vegas, but took the stage four nights later in Los Angeles and went on with the rest of the tour as scheduled.

More recently, Danny Federici, longtime keyboard player in Bruce Springsteen’s E Street Band, passed away from skin cancer on April 17. While Federici had not been on tour at the time, Springsteen postponed two shows in Florida and then made them up the next week, five days after Federici’s death.

Still, Matthews told fans in Los Angeles that he would rather not stop touring at this difficult time.

“There’s nowhere I’d rather be than with my family onstage,” he said.

Moore’s final appearance in the band took place not far from Charlottesville, at Nissan Pavilion near Manassas. It was the last time Ambha Lessard saw Moore, who says they shared a common bond.

“We talked about both being engaged and getting married,” says Lessard, and Moore’s obituary cites Lisa Bean as his fiancée.

Though there was no way of knowing it was the end of an era for Dave Matthews Band, in a way Moore did get to say goodbye to his fans. The last song at the Nissan concert was a blazing cover of Sly and the Family Stone’s “Thank You.”

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Here’s that video of Dave’s announcement that night in Los Angeles, in case you don’t like following hyperlinks.  Warning, it’s a little loud, and i believe that there were many in the crowd that did not fully understand what was going on (Dave is a notorious mumbler, and it can be very difficult to hear what he’s saying in between songs when you’re at the show):

Then a couple of days after that, following the memorial service, that same Charlottesville paper, The Hook, had this to report:

http://www.readthehook.com/blog/index.php/2008/08/28/tortured-shining-moore-remembered-by-dave/

‘Tortured,’ ’shining’ Moore remembered by Dave

by Lindsay Barnes

Bandmate Carter Beauford arrives at the church on Park Street.
PHOTO BY WILL WALKER

As a soft but steady rain– the first in more than a month– fell on his hometown yesterday morning, friends and family of LeRoi Moore filed into Charlottesville’s biggest church to remember the late Dave Matthews Band saxophonist, who died August 19 from injuries suffered June 30 in an all-terrain vehicle accident on his farm outside town.

Eulogizing Moore was the Rev. Dr. William Guthrie, the former rector of Moore’s family church, Trinity Episcopal. Guthrie revealed that the accident had put Moore into a coma, but that he occsionally awakened to greet well-wishers, both in Charlottesville and in Los Angeles where he had a second home and was to begin a long rehabilitation program.

“In Los Angeles,” said Guthrie, “he suffered a fatal embolism that would eventually take his life.”

Though nearly 1,000 people turned out to say goodbye to Moore, only the four men seated in the center, together for over 17 years, knew him as they did; and each member of Dave Matthews Band coped with grief in a way oddly metaphorical to his on-stage role.

Drummer Carter Beauford was driving the rest of the band forward with ready smiles and handshakes. Bassist Stefan Lessard was steadily, stoically keeping from succumbing to his emotions. Violinist Boyd Tinsley, whose athleticism and on-stage exuberance have become legendary, was freely expressive, holding onto friends in long embraces.

The only bandmate not wearing the white pallbearer’s gloves was the one who voiced their common message for their fallen brother.

“Roi loved people,” said Matthews, “but he had the hardest time loving himself, and that was the most difficult thing about being his friend for me, watching him torture himself.”

Matthews said the 46-year-old Moore was “a good soul, but he was a tortured soul. But he loved his family and he loved his friends. He was finding himself, finding the light inside himself, and it was shining more than it had for a very long time.”

Matthews credited Moore’s fiance, Lisa Bean, for his newfound happiness.

“I believe her unwavering love for him,” Matthews said, “and her willingness to stand in front of him, as he was reluctant to love himself, and insisted on it, caused him to eventually see the light.

“It was so bright,” Matthews continued, “that we could all see it so much all of the time, when he would put that horn in his mouth and make the most astonishingly honest music that could knock you over, and it would sink right to the middle of you.”

Matthews– no stranger to performing in stadiums for tens of thousands– appeared slightly nervous addressing the hundreds assembled in First Baptist Church on leafy Park Street. Swaying back and forth, he introduced himself as “Dave Matthews, a friend of Roi’s” and reeled off a pack of anecdotes, most of which centered on Moore’s propensity to fall asleep anywhere.

“I saw him fall asleep onstage,” said Matthews, to much laughter. “He was standing right there, and I’m not sure if I saw him fall asleep, but I definitely saw him wake up. He sort of caught himself, and then he thought he got away with it, but we have a little intercom system, and I said, ‘Did you just wake up?’”

Moore’s custom of wearing sunglasses, Matthews noted, sometimes made it hard hard to tell.

“He also fell asleep next to me in his old blue Volkswagen station wagon driving down 64 once,” recalled Matthews, “and I only realized it when he started snoring.”

However, not all of Moore’s humor was unintentional. While he was soft-spoken publicly, Matthews said, Moore’s ability to tell a joke was such that “he could have done that for a living, though it may not have been as lucrative.

“He told them with an honesty the same way he played,” said Matthews. “I would tell him jokes, just so I could hear him tell them after me.”

According to the Rev. Guthrie, Moore didn’t just save his honesty for his friends in the band.

“LeRoi would engage me in animated conversation whenever I would encounter him at home or at church,” Guthrie said. “More often than not, he felt that the music in the Episcopal Church left a lot to be desired.”

Some of the men who most informed Moore’s early musical sensibilities were on hand to pay tribute with their instruments. Trumpeter and early mentor John D’earth performed along with the Trinity Episcopal choir throughout the service and led a trio in “Goodbye, Sweet King.”

Moore’s jazz theory teacher Roland Wiggins played a stirring, improvised piano rendition of the spiritual “Keep Me From Sinking Down.” Before playing, Wiggins shared his last encounter with Moore in the hospital.

“I stood up to leave, and he said, ‘Hang on a sec,’” said Wiggins. “He was in his wheelchair, and he took the better part of three or four minutes to get his wheels locked, and he wouldn’t let me leave until he stood up. He stood up and said, ‘Thanks for coming.’”

In a way, Moore got to say that to everyone assembled. Following Matthews’ remarks, a slide show chronicling Moore’s life from a baby to a bona fide star was accompanied by his gentle sax showcase “#34″ from DMB’s major label debut Under the Table and Dreaming.

Following the service, Jamie Dyer, whose Hogwaller Ramblers were as much a part of the Charlottesville music scene as DMB in the early ’90s, said the ceremony was in keeping with how he remembered Moore.

“Like all great musicians, he had great timing and a great ear,” said Dyer, “and when you heard that piece from his teacher, you couldn’t help but think of that.”

According to Secileon Lewis, a family friend of drummer Beauford’s, she couldn’t help but laugh at Matthews’ recollections of a somnabulent Moore.

“When Dave was talking about how he always falls asleep,” said Lewis, “I thought, ‘He did me the same way!’”

As mourners left the the modern brick sanctuary, they formed an impromptu reception outside under the white-washed concrete loggia, none in a hurry to leave. They were of all ages, all colors, perhaps apropos for a man who touched so many different kinds of people with his personality in the Charlottesville area, and with his horn throughout the world. They were drawn to Moore because of his ability to convey in music and demeanor a fiery passion that Matthews described by quoting a poem by Edna St. Vincent Millay:

“I burn my candle at both ends;
It will not last the night;
But ah, my foes, and oh, my friends—
It gives a lovely light.”

#

Many thanks to Miss. Barnes, who’s capable journalism helped us all get a little more insight into the whole affair from a hometown perspective, as well as to The Hook.

So.  Now you know who Leroi was and what he meant to so many of us, or at least you have some idea.  Myself, i feel the same as i did a month ago and a month before that (and a decade before that), in the sense that for a very long time i have considered Roi to be a rather sizable part of my life.  I never met him.  I may have been lucky enough to see him perform a number of times (11 in total), but i never got to speak to him, or shake his hand, or trade laughs with him, or tell him how much his music meant to me.  Yet i felt that he was a friend.  Maybe not a “Can i borrow that DVD from you” friend, or a “Do you want to play some hoops tomorrow” friend, but a friend nonetheless.  Is that wrong of me?  Is that warped or twisted or overly possessive?  Was i fooling myself all those years by steeping my emotions in such an illusory relationship?  I think not.

After having this last month to contemplate and absorb all of this, i have decided that i was absolutely right.  Roi and i were friends.  He didn’t know my name or my face, and my screams of support on those 11 blissful occasions (dating from 1995 to 2007) were no doubt swallowed up in the crowds of thousands, just like my grief is being swallowed up by this sea of words that you’re treading along with me.  But we WERE friends.  Roi was a friend to me every time i listened, and i think, in a way, he knew it.  Not a day goes by that the members of that band aren’t told “Thank You” by some fan or random or passerby for the meaningful and touching nature of their music, and I would imagine that after someone has heard that a few thousand times, the message starts to sink in (and that’s not even taking into account all the encouragement and support that they must take from the incredible record sales, or the sea of fans at every show).

On the other side of that coin, i was a friend to him every summer evening that i went out there and screamed and yelled in joy at the music he and his partners were making.  I don’t know what it’s like to stand on a stage in front of 75,000 people, let alone to stand in front of such a crowd and have to pour your heart into every note, and then to hear that effort come right back at you in praise.  The biggest room i ever played was a sparsely-filled Lawlor Events Center at the University of Nevada Reno, and even then it was nothing but parents and peers in the crowd, and i had more than a dozen brilliant musicians playing beside me at the time to help spread the focus and the pressure and the applause.  Hardly comparable.  But even though i don’t know what it was like for Roi to go out there and play show after show, year after year, to thousands upon thousands of rabid fans, i do know that it was a hell of a lot easier to pull off in a packed venue as opposed to a half-empty one, with ecstatic exclamations bombarding the stage and propelling the band to new heights every night instead of scattered applause and a smattering of laughter.  Anyone who doesn’t think that performers feed off of the crowd at a show is either cynical beyond repair, or has never been to a good concert.  Even if my support was made minuscule and indistinguishable by the millions of fellow fans that were shouting right along with me all those years, that doesn’t make it inconsequential or nonexistent.  It mattered, if even on the smallest of levels.  It mattered.  And in that way i was there for Leroi, just as he was there (in a much more substantial fashion) for me.  He was my friend, and i miss him terribly.

Noted industry blogger (and former exec) Bob Lefsetz has this to say shortly after that horrible day.  He offers quite a unique, heartfelt, first hand, and well-written perspective on the events of that day and that evening.  I’ll end this entry with his words, a picture or two, and few videos.  I hope that Bob won’t begrudge my reprinting this here.

Thank you Leroi.  Wherever you are, thank you so very much.

http://lefsetz.com/wordpress/index.php/archives/2008/08/22/leroi/

LeRoi

Friday, August 22, 2008 12:05 PM
“Bob Lefsetz” <bob@lefsetz.com>

I saw the Dave Matthews Band open for Phish at the Santa Monica Civic.

I do what Chip tells me.  He’d told me I had to come see Phish at the Variety Arts Center and I’d watched them blow up.  The DMB was his new band.

I didn’t know that the Santa Monica Civic had a false floor, that it was suspended in such a way that when they started playing “Ants Marching” and the college-aged audience dressed in the same exact clothing as the band members themselves erupted and started moving up and down that the floor would too.  I’d never heard the number before, I haven’t forgotten it since.

During the break, before the headliner took the stage, I went with Chip to a side room, just east of the auditorium itself, that resembled nothing so much as an elementary school classroom, to hang out.  It was there that I met Boyd, Carter and LeRoi.  Maybe LeRoi, I can’t remember exactly, it was fifteen years ago…

This was before Dave became not only a TV star, but a cultural icon, before his humor became widely known.  They were just another band.  Who kept getting bigger and bigger, whose fanbase kept growing.  I followed them to the Palladium, all the way to Staples and the Hollywood Bowl. And got to know their manager, Coran Capshaw, along the way.  Not incredibly well.  Which is probably why he wanted to have lunch on Tuesday.  To talk in an environment different from backstage.

On the way to the Peninsula, I heard “Where Are You Going” on No Shoes Radio, Kenny Chesney testified not only about Dave, but the band’s drummer.  I told Coran and Chip this when we sat down.  Coran told me Kenny had a place on St. John too.  They were buddies.

It was that kind of conversation.  Catching up, filling in the little details.  Telling me about the status of the band.  How they’d mixed it up, how they were playing better than ever before, with Tim Reynolds on the road with them and two replacements for LeRoi.

LeRoi had been in an ATV accident.  This I knew.  But Coran told me the details.  The four-wheeled vehicle flipped over backwards upon him.  He broke ribs, had a collapsed lung, his shoulder was hurt, they had him in an induced coma for a week.  And three days after he came to, LeRoi checked himself out.  Against the will of the doctors.

And after being home, he got an infection.  The nurse taking care of him had LeRoi readmitted to the hospital.  Where he was on both heart and lung machines.  But he pulled through.

The story was told with seriousness, but no drama.  There was no question, LeRoi was coming back.  Certainly by the first of the year. We started talking about other things.  The challenges of maintaining a superstar act in these confusing times, ticketing, Music Today.  And an hour later, the phone rang.

Coran carries both a BlackBerry and a Razr.  He picked up the Razr.  He was listening rather than talking.  And after two minutes or so, he flipped the phone closed and became wistful, let us in on his mental soliloquy.  That was LeRoi’s assistant.  They’d called 911.  LeRoi’s lips had turned blue.  They were taking him to the hospital.  He had a blood clot.

Coran traced it back to the infection that had put LeRoi back in the hospital weeks before.  He’d had a hard time fighting back.  And he hadn’t gone into the process in the greatest shape, he had diabetes, other health problems.

LeRoi had flown to L.A. for rehab, he was staying at his house here, just miles away.  Suddenly the story took on a different feel. Somewhere in the landscape visible from the Peninsula deck, this story was playing out.

Then ten minutes later, the phone rang again. But this time, the call was longer.  Chip and I engaged in conversation.  For the better part of ten minutes.  And when Coran flipped the phone closed again, he said: “He died.”

A jolt just went through my body, writing this.  I’ve never been in a situation like this before.  I might have met this guy, but in a perfunctory way, I don’t know him.  But he’s part of the lifeblood of Coran and Chip’s world.  And he’s a human being, like the rest of us. And he’s now gone.

Chip put his head in his hands.  Coran stared into space.  I was in shock.  Trying to decide the best thing to do.  Feeling that I needed to excuse myself, that they didn’t need an intruder, I was just about to stand when Coran got up, said “I’ve got to deal.”, and walked off.

Chip asked, WHAT NOW?

I realized that I needed to stay.  As long as Chip needed to. I figured this was L.A.  LeRoi had probably gone to Cedars.  The news would be on the wire, on the Internet, in a matter of minutes.  I told Chip that Coran was probably trying to beat the press to the punch, in addition to alerting the rest of the band.

DO THEY PLAY?

I didn’t know.  It could go either way.  Maybe they were too fucked up to play.  Or maybe they’d say this is what LeRoi would do. Chip called Dan, founder of the agency.  Told him and asked him the question too.  The gig scheduled for that night, in Staples Center, only hours away, did it happen?  Dan said what I did.  Maybe, maybe not.

And then it became that moment in “Almost Famous”.  The plane crash scene.  When suddenly truth passes between human beings.  Chip and I have a deep, honest relationship, but we touched on subjects we’d never delved into before.

Then, after about forty minutes, we left.

In the car to Felice’s house, the shock truly set in.  I realized why you needed the living around you when someone passed.  If you were alone, you drifted away.

Felice was on her exercise bike, watching “Oprah”.  I could barely speak.  She realized something was wrong.  I ultimately got the story out.  It barely registered.  How could it?  You go to lunch and a band member dies, DURING LUNCH?  News like that bounces right off of you, it doesn’t stick.

And it seemed that only Coran, Chip and I knew.  I kept going online. The band’s Website had not changed, there was nothing in the Google News.  I was in the loop, but no one else was.  This never happens in 2008, where everything is instant, where everybody knows everything all the time.

I spoke with my mother.  But I basically listened.  I called Chip two hours later, as we’d agreed.  He still didn’t know whether the band would play.  He said he’d call me back.  A little after six, he told me to come on down.

By time we got to Staples, the news had just broken.  Maybe by going to Hollywood Presbyterian, the vultures had missed the story.  Ambrosia had written a press release, the news was now out, Chip’s BlackBerry was going berserk.

The halls were almost empty.  Dave was talking to a gray-haired gentleman.  There were no festivities, there was no buzz, but in less than an hour, the band would take the stage in front of thousands.

Coran’s number two said the band had had a meeting, uttered “Back to the van.”, their mantra, to remember where they’d come from, their brotherhood.

We went to catering.  Coran nodded his head, but stayed glued to his phone.  It was positively bizarre.

And twenty minutes after the time on the sheet, the Dave Matthews Band took the stage.

I don’t know how you play under those circumstances.

And being in L.A., the roar of the crowd was muted to a degree.  L.A.’s jaded, everybody plays L.A., a concert here isn’t just enough of an event!

But the band is firing on all cylinders.  Coran’s checking the set list as we stand behind the lighting board, he tells me they’re going to play my favorite, “The Dreaming Tree”.

The ten minute number calmed my nerves.  Music is a magic carpet loaded with oils and other soothing potions, it’s just what you need when you don’t know what you need, when you’ve got more questions than answers.

And they played “Ants Marching”, with even more ferocity than they had fifteen years before.  Their cover of “Sledgehammer” had more power than Peter Gabriel’s.  But the highlight of the evening was unexpected, a rendition of Talking Heads’ “Burning Down The House”.

Only played for the first time live two weeks before, the number is unmistakable.  It starts with an ethereal guitar, the drum pounds and then…

“Watch out.
You might get what you’re after”

Whatever the audience expected, this exceeded it.  I’d say the band was a freight train, but it was more like a 747, that had DRIVEN all the way from Charlottesville to Los Angeles and was burning rubber at the airport before finally coming to a rest…  THE TIRES WERE SMOKING!

And just like a modern jet, EVERYTHING was working.  It has to in order to move.  And boy was the band moving.  Musically.  There were no dance steps, everybody was almost rigid in his place.  But Carter’s arms were churning, Dave was spitting into the mic like he was seventeen, and he needed to show the bullies, who he was, where he was coming from.

“I’m an ordinary guy
Burning down the house”

This was not the hair band eighties.  The members of the DMB were wearing the same clothes that had covered them backstage.  They were not stars, they were MUSICIANS!

There was nothing on tape, no loops, no hard drives.  This night they’d had to conjure the fire from scratch.  They’d had to reach down deep and do it one more time, knowing that their brother was not only gone, but was never coming back.

EVERYDAY

“Pick me up, love, from the bottom
Up on to the top, love, everyday
Pay no mind to taunts or advances
I’m gonna take my chances on everyday”

The video of the hugger played on the hi-def screens.  The audience sang along, knowing every word.  That’s just what we’ve got, every day. Until we don’t.

I don’t know what happens when people die.  Is this really the end? LeRoi had called his business manager just that morning, left a voice mail before the crisis, did he know this was going to be his last day on this mortal coil?  And the recipient of this message, he didn’t receive it until after LeRoi expired.

The audience was cascading in a virtual wave, going up and down in place, not the artificial arena exercise, but something inspired by the music.  We were in unison.

“Jump in the mud, mud
Get your hands filthy, love
Give it up, love
Everyday”

Get up from that couch!  Go out into the bright sunshine.  Dial your crush and ask her for a date.  It may be messy, but maybe not.  Don’t be somnambulant, get out of your own way, don’t only embrace life, but eat it up.  Everyday.

#

This is the footage i was able to capture of the tribute that the band had made to Roi which was shown during the encore break of the concert at The Greek Theatre in Berkeley on Sunday the 7th.  That day would have been Roi’s 47th birthday.  A recounting of that weekend’s concerts will be forthcoming.  This is more-than-likely the very same video montage mentioned in the account of the memorial service, and it was also played during the encore break of all three nights of the 29th, 30th, and 31st of August at The Gorge Amphitheater in Washington.

A fan made tribute video featuring the track #34 from their major-label-debut album, Under The Table And Dreaming (1994).  Credit and thanks to Youtube user TheLastStop07 for making this and sharing it with us all.

One last fan video.  An excellent compilation featuring a few musical highlights, and some bits of Roi speaking and being spoken about.  Credit and many thanks to Youtube user BWDinc.