As a piano but steady rain- the start in more than a month- fell on his hometown, friends and house of LeRoi Moore filed into Charlottesville's biggest church to commemorate the later Dave Matthews Band saxophonist on the dawn of Wednesday, August 27.
Moore died August 19 in Los Angeles, seven weeks after sustaining serious injuries in a all-terrain vehicle accident on his farm outside town. He would have noted his 47th birthday this Sunday, September 7.
Eulogizing Moore was the Rev. Dr. William Guthrie, the old minister of Moore's family church, Trinity Episcopal. Guthrie revealed that the June 30 accident had put Moore into a coma, but that he occsionally awakened to recognize well-wishers, both in Charlottesville and in Los Angeles where he had a bit place and was to get a long rehabilitation program.
"In Los Angeles," said Guthrie, "he suffered a fatal embolism that would eventually lead his life."
Such was the end of a spirit that had touched hundreds here in Charlottesville, and millions around the world. It was a life led in a way that Matthews described in the 1996 song "Two Step": "Celebrate we will/For life is short, but sweet for certain."
The man behind the shades
LeRoi Holloway Moore was born September 7, 1961 in Durham, North Carolina, but affected to Charlottesville with his mother, Roxie, and father, Alvin, early in his childhood. Moore's musical prowess was apparent from an early age, earning the family nickname "Bop Bop" for his childhood habit of scatting jazz riffs as he walked round the house.
But he also loved football, and he chased his bed of the grid from Pop Warner through high school. But presently 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 groups Code Magenta and Secrets, the latter of which included eventual DMB drummer Carter Beauford.
It was approximately that time that Moore caught the ear of a young bartender and aspiring singer-songwriter at downtown pub Miller's.
"The present was right about the cash register," Matthews told the Staples Center crowd last Tuesday, just before the encore, "and he just leaned up on top of it, because standing was becoming something of a job at that point. He got his elbows free, and played the most beautiful interpretation of 'Somewhere Over the Rainbow' I always heard in my whole life."
Said Matthews, "That's the dark I drop in bed with him."
The passion continued on May 11, 1991, the see of the now legendary first concert by the then-unnamed band for a secret party atop the "pink warehouse" building on South Street. The 29-year-old saxophonist was already a great 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 get a brand of the Dave Matthews Band sound. It was Moore who played the instantly memorable opening riff on one of the band's first hits, "Ants Marching." He went on to co-write Top-40 singles like "Too Often" and "Stay;" and his extended live solos on saxophone, flute, and pennywhistle helped build DMB's reputation as a replacement to the Grateful Dead as one of America's most popular and enduring "jam bands."
With the good of Moore's horns floating in and out of every track, Dave Matthews Band went on to conquered the music man by almost every measure. After signing with major label RCA in 1994, the band teamed with producer Steve Lillywhite, whose credits included albums by U2, the Rolling Stones, Talking Heads, and Peter Gabriel. That collaboration resulted in Under the Table and Dreaming, an album that spawned the Top 40 singles "What Would You Say," "Ants Marching," and "Satellite," and sold over 4 million copies. But yet this could not have anticipated what happened next.
The follow-up Crash sold 7 million copies on the effectiveness of such Top 40 hits as "So Much to Say," and "Crash Into Me." That album also garnered the ring its first five of an eventual 11 Grammy nominations and first Grammy win, for Best Rock Performance by a Duo or Group with Song for "So Much to Say." The circle quickly capitalized on Crash's success with another platinum release, 1998's Before These Crowded Streets, beginning a yet-to-be-broken streak of #1 albums that's lasted more than a decade.
To date, Moore and fellowship have moved over 31 million copies of its albums in the United States alone. That's more than Jimi Hendrix, Jimmy Buffett, the Police, Nirvana, Pearl Jam, the Bee Gees, Lynyrd Skynyrd, Tom Petty, or even Frank Sinatra. Put another way, that's a little more than one Dave Matthews Band CD for every ten Americans.
Through 17 years of touring and fame, Moore remained a soft-spoken individual who preferred to let his music do the talking. But those to whom he did give up say he was a strong man, not shy about boosting the climate of his friends.
"He watched me get up, and I look like he was family," says Lessard. "He invariably took a bit out of his hectic life to reach me a bear hug and get up for a second."
"He called me the day afterwards 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 large track. I couldn't trust a musician I had grown up listening to since I was 12 years old had called me to compliment me on graduating from music school."
Though the sax solos were a longtime favorite of DMB fans, Moore had in late years begun to stride out of his bandmates' shadow. On their 2006 LP Colorblind, longtime DMB friends Robert Randolph & the House Band sought Moore's services for their song "Love Is the Only Way." Singer-songwriter John Mayer invited Moore onstage to act with him on his song "Gravity" on September 6, 2007 while sharing the charge with DMB at the "Concert for Virginia Tech" in Blacksburg. Rapper Nas enlisted Moore for his 2007 album Hip Hop Is Dead for the track "Hold Down the Block."
Even automaker Honda, when seeking to promote its new luxury pickup truck the Ridgeline, cast Moore for a commercial this year. In the 30-second spot, Moore stands on the grace of a tempest-tossed fishing boat, playing some signature tenor sax licks underneath the slogan "Rough Meets Smooth."
In the pre-fame DMB days, Moore built his report by performing every dive bar and frat house in Virginia in the early '90s with his four bandmates. Fittingly, LeRoi Moore got to turn his final show in his native Virginia, at the Nissan Pavilion near Manassas. 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 final call at the Nissan concert was a blazing cover of Sly and the Family Stone's "Thank You."
Say goodbye
The tributes came pouring in from across the world.
Former bandmate Peter Griesar told the Hook, "He was my brother, and I loved him like a brother, and it's only an incredibly sad thing."
"There is an extreme amount of sorrow in my heart," says Ambha Lessard, sister of DMB bassist Stefan Lessard. "He was an awful man, and he will forever touch our souls."
"Walking on the Mall Tuesday, a friend called from afar and said 'Roi passed,'" says guitarist and Moore protg Jay Pun. "I was speechless."
Hundreds of fans posted slideshows of their favorite LeRoi pictures on YouTube. Mayer paid tribute by opening his August 20 show in Pittsburgh by telling a few bars of the Beatles' "With a Little Help from My Friends" and then pausing to "direct this show out to [Moore]" before entry into the low song, "Bigger Than My Body." Country star Kenny Chesney covered DMB's "Where Are You Going," at his August 22 show in Raleigh to pay his respects. And on Wednesday, August 27, nearly 1,000 people turned out to First Baptist Church.
But of all the mourners, only the four men sitting in the center, together for over 17 years, knew Moore as they did; and each extremity of Dave Matthews Band coped with sorrow in a way oddly metaphorical to his on-stage role.
Drummer Carter Beauford was driving the balance 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 wear the white pallbearer's gloves was the one who voiced their common substance for their fallen brother. Though no alien to playing in stadiums for tens of thousands, the speaker who introduced himself as "Dave Matthews, a supporter of Roi's," swayed backwards and forth, appearing slightly nervous in addressing the hundreds assembled in First Baptist Church on leafy Green Street.
"Roi loved people," said Dave 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 serious soul, but he was a tortured soul."
"But he loved his home and he loved his friends," Matthews said. "He was finding himself, finding the light inside himself, and it was shining more than it had for a really long time."
Matthews credited Moore's fiance, Lisa Bean, for his newfound happiness.
"I think her unwavering love for him," Matthews said, "and her willingness to bear in presence of him, as he was loth to enjoy himself, and insisted on it, caused him to finally see the light.
"It was so bright," Matthews continued, "that we could all see it so practically all of the time, when he would put that horn in his lip and give the most astonishingly honest music that could knock you over, and it would pass right to the eye of you."
Matthews went on to spin off a multitude of anecdotes, most of which centered on Moore's propensity to drop asleep anywhere.
"I saw him fall asleep onstage," said Matthews, to much laughter. "He was standing right there, and I'm not certain if I saw him fall asleep, but I definitely saw him rouse up. He kind of caught himself, and so he thought he got out with it, but we bear a little intercom system, and I said, `Did you just heat up?'"
Moore's custom of wearing sunglasses, Matthews noted, sometimes made it difficult to tell.
"He likewise fell asleep next to me in his old blue Volkswagen station wagon driving down 64 once," recalled Matthews, "and I just realised 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 say a jest was such that "he could get done that for a living, though it may not have been as lucrative.
"He told them with an honesty the saame way he played," said Matthews. "I would assure him jokes, just so I could see him tell them after me."
According to the Rev. Guthrie, Moore didn't just write his honesty for his friends in the band.
"LeRoi would take me in animated conversation whenever I would see him at national or at church," Guthrie said. "More frequently than not, he felt that the medicine 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 help and led a trinity 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 close 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 best piece of 3 or 4 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 child to a bona fide star was attended by his gentle sax showcase "#34" from Under the Table and Dreaming.
Following the service, Jamie Dyer, whose Hogwaller Ramblers were as often a portion of the Charlottesville music scene as DMB in the early '90s, said the ceremonial was in keeping with how he remembered Moore.
"Like all great musicians, he had keen timing and a great ear," said Dyer, "and when you heard that part from his teacher, you couldn't help but think of that."
According to Secileon Lewis, a household friend of drummer Beauford's, she couldn't help but laugh at Matthews' recollections of a somnabulent Moore.
"When Dave was talk about how he always falls asleep," said Lewis, "I thought, `He did me the like way!'"
As mourners left the the new brick sanctuary, they formed an impromptu reception outside under the white-washed concrete loggia, none in a speed to leave. They were of all ages, all colors, perhaps apropos for a man who touched so many different kinds of masses with his personality in the Charlottesville area, and with his horn throughout the world. They were worn to Moore because of his power to bring in medicine and conduct a flaming passion that Matthews described by quoting a poem by Edna St. Vincent Millay:
"I cut my candle at both ends;
It leave not endure the night;
But ah, my foes, and oh, my friends-
It gives a lovely light."
LeRoi Moore would get turned 47 this Sunday, September 7.PHOTO BY WILL WALKER
Since first gracing its the face page in 2001, Dave Matthews Band has appeared on the cover Rolling Stone four times (eight if you count shots of Matthews by himself), including this 2005 shot of the circle at UVA's Davenport Field.ROLLING Stone COVER
Automaker Honda singled out Moore from his bandmates to look in an ad this year, playing sax on the grace of a fishing boat, exemplifying their slogan "Rough Meets Smooth."HOOK PHOTO
DMB fiddler Boyd Tinsley arrives at Moore's funeral, with manager Coran Capshaw (behind Tinsley's right shoulder) in tow.PHOTO BY WILL WALKER
Drummer Carter Beauford served as one of Moore's pallbearer, along with Tinsley, and bassist Stefan Lessard.PHOTO BY WILL WALKER
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