New, Upcoming artist reflects on her work with Roi...

[greppson]

I am making this its own thread because it is very touching. Roi was a pretty private guy when it came to his life outside of DMB, I think this gives us all a little insight into the kind-hearted man outside of being the sax player for DMB.

This is from an new, upcoming artist that recently worked with Roi.

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.

And from this young artist's mother...

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.

[ineeddave]

WOW

Such a tremendous loss for alot of people whos hearts he has touched.

[number4ty1]

Shivers...

[kydmb99]

[smartyarty420]

wow. my eyes just welled up there at the end. amazing guy. it's great to hear things about how roi was in his everyday life. thanks for posting.

[Rockhound18]

That was an amazing read. Thanks.

[egallo]

Wow. What an amazing guy.

I can barely see the screen right now

[Red_41]

Thank you Jason.

[adrian_u_no]

wow..

[Exodus]

Wow, those letters really hit me. They really delve into what an incredible human being Roi was. It is nice to hear these personal stories. I did not know the man personally, but he was family. Hearing these stories really touched me.

I knew he was a jokester, but not that much. RIP ROI, you will always be remembered for your music and the amazing person you were.

[Character Zer0]

What a story, really shows what kind of guy LeRoi really was.

[drumdawgone]

thanks for this. "roll on, Roi"

[bigsho]

wow...such a touching story

[JGriffinJS]

thank you so much for posting this. amazing to read.

[JimiThng80]

simply put, WOW. i think i teared up.... that needs to get to the band somehow, they would so appreciate that.

[hbktonyb]

Damn...

Thank you

[dadledog]

After reading just a few sentences I feel like I have done NOTHING with my life up to this point. What an inspiration he is!

[jjkim1028]

I thought I cried enough yesterday...
I guess I was wrong..
thank you so much for sharing...
thank you...

Wonderful story. I Teared up.

[cpxc.]

amazing story,thanks for sharing

[TheGorge]

Wow. Thank you for posting that. LeRoi was a beautiful soul.

You know, this helps explain why an established musician like LeRoi was willing to work with some unknown guy named Dave Matthews who had been his bartender.

Someday, when the story of the Dave Matthews Band is fully told, I imagine we'll learn a lot more about how crucial LeRoi was to the development of Dave and the creation of the Dave Matthews Band. He is frequently referred to a "founding memeber" of the band. After hearing how is nurturing this young artist, I imagine it goes well beyond that.

[myersk27]

this whole thing f-ing sucks.....so sad

[jarguitar86]

Originally Posted by JimiThng80

simply put, WOW. i think i teared up.... that needs to get to the band somehow, they would so appreciate that.

I agree! How can one not tear up (as I write this)? One part from that that really stands out is how Roi was planning and wanted to rejoin the band in Brazil. Roi really was an incredible human being. Thanks to the poster so much for sharing that; best Roi thread yet!

[Oh, word?]

In the last two days I have felt nothing but numb. Now the tears have arrived.

Thank you for posting.

[PantalaNagaMan]

Why are the pure-hearted amazing people taken, before most people can even get a chance to realize.

R.I.P. Roi.

[NCAA1981]

An outstanding read. Hearing these stories makes me sadder that such a soul has left us, but at the same I'm reminded of how wonderfully Roi spent his life, and how happy he must've been living the life he loved.

[DJGeneral]

wow...how sad

[scajfk926]

It's unbelievable how much more we're learning about Roi these last couple days, and how all of it makes him such a great human being....

[burnitup420]

im teary eyed and speechless, wouldn't even know what to type to respond to such a great letter, i cant get over it

[nddavefan]

Anybody know who the artist is? I'd like to take a listen.