Yesterday was
LeRoi Moore's birthday. He would have been 47. My heart is still aching in dealing with his death. While I never had the opportunity to meet Roi, I feel like I knew him...I knew him through his music.
I am eternally grateful to
LeRoi for it was in 1991 that an unknown Miller's bartender (Dave) approached him and thus was a founding member of what was to become known as
Dave Matthews Band.
LeRoi left this world August 19 after "sudden complications stemming from his ATV accident." Embolism. It was an embolism that brought an end to his life and another
brilliant light went dark. He was laid to rest August 27 in Charlottesville.
I spent some time yesterday celebrating
LeRoi's life by watching/listening to
"The Videos 1994-2001" DVD and for a short while the sadness I've been feeling was replaced with delight and a sense of peace. I've been listening to a lot of
DMB since August 20 and the music somehow sounds different. It's a sweetness blended with a touch a hollowness. Perhaps it is because I am overly cognizant that no further sound will come from
LeRoi's instruments. Just silence.
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I went in search of something that would help me to describe
LeRoi:
"The most enigmatic and shy of the
DMBers,
LeRoi constantly wears sunglasses due to his stage fright and is the least likely to grant interviews....Despite his reserve,
LeRoi can wail away on his sax, weaving smoking melodies and a sharp counterpoint to the rhythm section. With his short braids, hulking frame and dark glasses, he looks more like a bouncer at the club than a performer, but once that sax is in Moore's hands, he is off in his own world, where music is all that matters and the spotlight isn't a deterrent." - Nevin
Martell, author "Music For The People Dave Matthews Band"
Music
IS all that matters. It is my "drug" of choice. My morning coffee. My evening nightcap. My life. In listening to CD after CD - song after song, I find I enjoy the raw talent of the earlier recordings.
Remember Two Things is a must have for your CD collection. I could be way off, but in listening to
Recently - one of their first songs - about a relationship between a guy and a gal - and my ears heard something new: It was as if Boyd's violin spoke for the girl and Roi's sax spoke for the guy...a conversation or perhaps a dance between the two. And to parallel,
#36, an instrumental on
Under The Table And Dreaming has always reminded me of a lazy Saturday shared between two - again Boyd's violin and Roi's sax playing the roles of the male and female...
Just listen to the soulful beauty that is
Crush or the raspy deepness in
Bartender... all of it - every note
amazing...
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The only way I've been able to deal with and try to make sense of this is to keep telling myself "God needed him more than we did..." Maybe God was starting a jam band and needed the BEST SAX player ever.
"There's always been a good handful of songs about death and loss, but always with the idea that [death] was something that should bring us together.
There are arbitrary lines between bad and good that often don't make a lot of sense to me. I don't want to die, obviously, but really, the wonder of life is amplified by the fact that it ends. If it went on forever, it would be such a tiresome things and we'd all be so bored: 'What are we going to do today?' 'Just live again, I suppose.'" - Dave Matthews
While we'll all experience death, including our own, it's important to remember those who have left us behind. Because of his involvement and contribution to
DMB - as long as there is a
DMB fan, I know he will never be forgotten. (This statement is not at all meant to disregard his family, his wife-to-be, Dave, Carter, Boyd and Stefan. I know they
will never forget their son, brother, husband-to-be and friend and I know yesterday was an extremely difficult day for them all.)
To honor
LeRoi and his "friendship" over the past 14 years, I made a donation of $41 (cause after all, it's my favorite
DMB song) to the
LeRoi Moore Foundation, which will "support
chartities that reflect both his spirit and passion." If interested donations can be made online through
http://www.davematthewsband.com/ and click on news and click on the link...or mail to (memo LeRoi Moore Foundation):
Photo above and info below are straight from the DMB website:
