"I can't wait for the Dex vinyl. He is so great."
~ TheAmericanRuse (from a comment at Ultimate Guitar's article on Jack White)

"It is a Danelectro-made model that came with an amplifier in the case. This is just the guitar. I got it for $250. I bought it from Dexter Romweber of Flat Duo Jets. He was playing a guitar just like it last time I saw him. . . . I probably didn't get the best deal on one of those, but I got Dex's."
~ Misterhat (from GuitarZone.com 2.0 comment page)

“Dex Romweber was and is a huge influence on my music. I owned all of his records as a teenager, and was thrilled at the fact that we were able to play together recently on tour. [He is] is one of the best kept secrets of the rock n roll underground.”
~ Jack White, White Stripes


A GREAT IDEA!
Okay, so I figure most of my readers are musicians, so I thought I'd pass along this tip how to form an act out of guitar and drums just about knock your socks off.  Fars I know it hasn't been tried yet.  Check your ethics at the door!  Good rock bands borrow.  Great genius guitar gods steal!  So here goes . . .

THE FORMULA!
Step One:  Guitar
Okay, so you might want to start young for this part.  Learn your guitar, and by that I mean so good you can play an original 1963 Silvertone.  Don't be fooled by that $99 AudioWarrior Kreator LE iStrum MIDI thing (item ships free) at Musician's Friend.  You won't be using any effects, so skip the interface and get the real deal.  It may set you back a bit.  Search the attic of an aging house, you might get lucky.  Look for an odd shaped box from the Sears catalog.  Now you got the the setup!  Alls you got to do is learn to play the thing like Dick Dale, Carl Perkins, Chet Atkins, Les Paul, Duane Eddy, and Bob Bogle of the Ventures, and for added sauce learn some Kurt Weill for style, and some Middle Eastern scales you can sneak into the rock 'n' roll for a little wowy zowy.  Now learn to play rhythm and learn to play lead and most of all get that country and blues so deep in your soul you sweat rock 'n' roll on a hot day.  You are ready to learn to sing!

Step Two: Singing & Songwriting
This is the fun part!  You don't have to study opera or nothin', just wicked honest deep macho kind of Nick Cave meets Carl Perkins singing sweet honest Baxter Black poetry dripping three-chords-and-the-truth out your cowboy mouth.  Simple!  Keep it awesome simple, like Bach or Willie Dixon or Hank Williams.  Just wing it until you are a master with a soul bigger than a North Carolina sunset.  Now just sing what comes natural while playing all those styles on the guit-box clean as the chrome on a freshly restored pink Buick about to go low riding in Memphis in the Fourth of July parade.  What could be simpler?

How do you know the song is right?  Simple!  Once again, simple.  All the steps are simple, cause in the words of a great country singer from way back, "The words of the truth are always simple."  (Aeschylus, from the first album, I think)  You got your song straight, by George, when the lyrics are so unguarded and naked to the bone sweet you'd want to cry if your dumb like a fox Uncle Charlie said it at the dinner table some family Thanksgiving!  Don't even think about it!  Just fill your heart chock full of love and say it strident and sincere something like, "Once there was a kiss, a kiss made out of gold, made out of lover's gold, because the kiss was true."  You get it!  So stinkin' honest no clever man could know what he got he wrote that line.  Then pour your heart into it.  Make that verse too dumb for New York City sing out from your gut so you could disarm a skin head with a tire iron it's so sweet.  Bingo!  You got yourself a perfect Dex Duo song. 

THE HARD PART!
Okay, this is where you are totally screwed.  You gotta have a sister who plays drums world class.  She's gotta get up in the morning like Sara Romweber and just nat'ally head to the drumkit to play her wake up quiet on the skins.  Helps if her preferred form of communication is percussion, and if she thinks of that drumkit as an instrument for melodic song, lists her top influence is Bruce Lee when asked in public, and gets her rhythms from listening to classical music.  She should get one thing clear, as Sara says, "The drums should not be more complex than the guitar."  Now to fit the form, she's gotta be taken blood transfusions from Keir Dullea and Sophia Loren from birth to look young, thin, and goth punk hot for decades if you expect to pull this theft off right.  There may be but one Sara Romweber on this earth, so just hire some young model who plays the drums and hope for the best.  When she ages a little, replace her.  Sorry, campers.  I said this was the hard part.

Now it would help if this bogus Sara you picked out at Central Casting could hit that "ping" on the side of the splash cymbal in the half inch sweet spot consistently, and if she could maybe live and breathe each short song you play enough to fashion some kind of symphonic percussion arrangement to make each song an accomplishment of taste and talent.  Good luck on that one.  This may be a deal breaker, but you just might get lucky.  Hell, casting should be fun!  Just settle for the best you can get.  There's only one Sara.  You are royally screwed.  Best of luck to you on that one.

MARKETING!
Hire a great publicist, manager, press agent, booking dude, and all sorts of extra help!  Get yerself on the cover of the Rolling Stone!  You will have to be young and pretty, looking dark and Gothic or they may as well get the real Dex Duo from Steele Management.  Steal this idea fast!  It's gonna sell like hotcakes!

WHOOPS!
Just noticed my plan has been stolen years before I wrote it.  Crap!  Just my luck.  Some Stripey Whites band, Jack Stripe or some such, White Band, Jack, no . . . Google Search!  Okay, it's Jack White and the White Stripes.  Hey, looky this!  Jack broke the first rule of stealing the act and talks about the Dex Duo in those interviews he gives.  Well, ain't that neat!  Still don't make it quite as good as coming up with the idea in the first place, but Dex don't seem riled about it.  Sara sorta thanks them for that with a twinkle in her eye just about as potent as a wink and a nod.  The music business is funny business at best. 

THE DEX ROMWEBER DUO
Dex Romweber (the clairvoyant troubadour)
Sara Romweber

THE SONGS

1. LOOKOUT (featuring RICK MILLER of Southern Culture On The Skids)
2. LOVERS' GOLD
3. PICTURE OF YOU
4. LOVE LETTERS (featuring CAT POWER)
5. CIGARETTE PARTY
6. CAMILLIA'S GONE
7. LONESOME TRAIN (featuring EXENE CERVENKA)
8. PEOPLE, PLACES AND THINGS
9. STILL AROUND (featuring NEKO CASE)
10. RUINS OF BERLIN
11. OH, LOVER'S GONE
12. POLISH WORK SONG
13. GREY SKIES
14. IS IT TOO LATE?