Jack White reveres him. Chan "Cat Power" Marshall, Neko Case and Exene Cervenka guest on his new album, "Ghosts Along the Texas Coast." He's been on the road for 25 years, solo and with the Flat Duo Jets. So is this the year Dexter Romweber finally breaks through?

"Sometimes when I listen to modern music, I think there's no way I could be in it in that way. It's so just over the top," he says.

Early videos of the Flat Duo Jets show a Chapel Hill kid with Robert Smith's bush of hair ripping out primal Eddie Cochran riffs over the stomping beat of drummer Chris "Crow" Smith. "I loved that obscure '50s music -- we weren't doing Elvis covers. But that's not the best business move, you know? But I was drawn in unconsciously."

Now, for his 15th album, Romweber pulls in more lost sounds. "'Polish Work Song' sounds very gypsy-like," he says. Other touchstones? Late-era Johnny Cash. Leonard Cohen, early '50s jazz, torch songs. "And some is big band music, with saxophones and bongos, upright bass and pianos. This record jumps all over the place."

Together with his sister, Sara -- a seasoned drummer for bands like Let's Active and Snatches of Pink -- the Dexter Romweber duo has clocked about a half-century of road time.

"Being on the road is like arriving at a very surreal party," he says. Any given show might produce the crazy cousin, the long-lost friend, the itinerant pal who appears unannounced. "And it's hilarious. I'm like: 'How did I ever end up here with these kooky characters?' It's almost like a David Lynch movie."

Yet, "Do I really want to do this?" he wonders. "That's the damndest thing about music: It's really the most beautiful thing that the planet has, this heavenly, ethereal thing that hits people's emotions. And I've been in it since I was 14. So you do the work, but you're the last one to get paid. It's a very strange dance."

--Bob Massey, Express (Oct. 2008)