Matt Deveney, 35, musician in Grateful Dead cover bands
25th Century Quaker
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Matt Deveney ran his family's monument business.
By Bryan Marquard, Globe Staff | June 9, 2007
http://www.boston.com/news/globe/obituaries/articles/2007/06/09/matt_deveney_35_musician_in_grateful_dead_cover_bands/
Shy and laid back, Matt Deveney was a quiet presence on stage as a
keyboardist and occasional vocalist with Grateful Dead cover bands,
peering out from beneath the brim of a baseball cap.
"He always played with his eyes closed," said his youngest sister,
Grace. "He just enjoyed it so much. He'd be bopping around. He just
bounced in his seat. It was kind of cute. The whole band would stop,
and he would have a solo, and the band and everyone else would be
looking at him."
Despite his unobtrusive personality, people listened to Mr. Deveney,
whether they were audience members or customers at his family's
monument company in Dorchester. He died Tuesday in his South Boston
home of a rare sarcoma of the digestive system. Mr. Deveney was 35 and
was diagnosed in January.
"He's the most mellow guy you'll ever meet, ridiculously mellow," said
his sister, who lives in New York City. "He was always just the best
big brother."
Gerard Matthew Deveney shared his first and last names with his
father, but was always known as Matt. He grew up in Cohasset, where he
was 7 when his mother signed him up for piano lessons.
"He loved it from when he first started," his sister said. "He stopped
taking lessons when he was 15 or 16 and started playing by ear. He
played all the time."
Over the years while traveling the country with different Grateful
Dead cover bands, Mr. Deveney accumulated about 10 keyboards, each
worth thousands of dollars. Most recently he was a member of Playin'
Dead, which performed at venues in Massachusetts and elsewhere in New
England.
"With everything else in his life, he could take it or leave it; he
was always late to work," his sister said. "But with the band, it was
like, 'I've got rehearsal.' He never wanted to disappoint his band."
He was just as devoted to his role as the oldest sibling in the family
and the only boy.
"He was so funny about his sisters," Grace Deveney said. "He was so
proud of us. He always had to introduce us to his bands, a man who was
always surrounded by women."
For the past decade, Mr. Deveney ran his family's monument business in
Dorchester, which was founded in 1946 by his great-grandfather and
grandfather. In a history posted on the Deveney & White Monument Co.
website, Mr. Deveney traces his family's roots in the granite industry
back to the Quincy quarries in 1898.
"I am proud to be the fourth generation of Deveneys to design these
beautifully handcrafted memorials," he wrote.
He was as laid-back as a businessman as he was on stage, and he
dressed much the same, which turned out to be a successful approach,
his sister said.
"My mom's always trying to get him dressed appropriately, and he was
always wearing his T-shirt, jeans, and baseball cap," she said. "But
he could sell anything. You could tell he wasn't try ing to swindle
anyone. He had such a sweet personality everybody liked him. And he
was so kind to everyone who was coming in at a hard time. He was a
good listener."
Mr. Deveney's sister Elizabeth had been living in New York City during
the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, Grace Deveney said, and "it
had a profound effect on her." Elizabeth Deveney , who now lives in
Boston, made some changes, including traveling to see more of the world.
She and another sister, Sara Norris of Scituate, decided to embark on
el Camino de Santiago. The pilgrimage from St. Jean Pied de Port on
the French side of the Pyrenees to Santiago, Spain, is known as The
Way of St. James.
After they had completed the journey, Grace Deveney and Mr. Deveney
were at a bar "and I said: 'Well Matt, I'm going to do the Camino. Do
you want to go? We've got to complete the circle with all four of us
doing it.' "
At the outset, Mr. Deveney was a bit out of shape, "and I'm chatting
beside him, and he said, 'Are you going to talk the whole way?' But in
the end he was way faster than I was," she said.
They completed the trek of 500 miles in 30 days. As they walked into
Santiago, "he was singing songs," she said. "It was one of his
proudest accomplishments. He told every Spanish person when we got
there, 'I just walked 500 miles.' "
In January, Mr. Deveney was diagnosed with gastrointestinal stromal
tumors. The family pulled together to care for him, along with his
fiancee, Keleigh Quinn of Boston.
"He was just amazingly brave through the whole thing," Grace Deveney
said. "He knew he wasn't going to get better. The first thing he said
was, 'I'm really going to miss you guys.' But he never, ever complained."
About a month ago, the members of his band came to pay a final visit
and Mr. Deveney suited up with his ever-present baseball cap to greet
them at the door. In the past couple of weeks, he was too ill to get
out of bed without assistance.
"One day he put out his hand and I said, 'Do you want to get up?'
because he couldn't get up on his own," Grace Deveney said. "And he
said, 'No, I just want to say thank you.' "
In addition to his sisters Sara, Elizabeth, and Grace, and his
fiancee, Mr. Deveney leaves his parents, Gerard and Margaret of Cohasset.
A memorial service will be held at 4 p.m. today in South Shore Baptist
Church in Hingham. Burial will be private
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