A Few Words About Brother Cleve

Brother Cleve on the right, yours truly on the left, at the opening of Lullaby, March 9, 2022 (photo by Perry Sun)

The photo above is from the last time Brother Cleve and I got together in person, back in March at the opening of his first New York City venture, Lullaby. In fact, I think it was the only time. He swore we’d hung out before — I’m sure I would have recalled every second of it, but he had a pretty prodigious memory, so I’m not ruling it out.

In fact, we had been in the same room before — with him onstage and me in the audience — in 1986 when he toured with alt-rockers the Del Fuegos, and a decade later when he hit NYC with his retro-lounge combo Combustible Edison. You see, Brother Cleve wasn’t just the founding father of Boston’s modern cocktail movement, he was also an indelible part of the city’s music scene going back to the ‘70s, when he was likely the only punk rocker in town drinking Manhattans.

I met Brother Cleve through Twitter about a decade ago — I had no idea who he was at the time, but I frequently saw him and David Wondrich bantering about music and cocktails on Twitter and started barging in to their conversations uninvited. Fortunately, they welcomed me into their orbit. I soon found out that Cleve (real name Robert Toomey, but nobody called him that) seemed to have been everywhere, done everything, and met everyone. Ask him a simple question and you could go down several rabbit holes, all of them fascinating and often hilarious. But it never seemed like he was bragging. He simply had a lot of stuff stored in his brain and wasn’t shy about sharing it.

The first time I talked with him in a professional capacity, I just wanted to get a few quick quotes for an article I was writing about tiki bars, another subject in which he was a foremost expert. We wound up having a three hour conversation which veered all over the place, but mostly into music. I’m a big fan of Esquivel, the legendary “space-age bachelor pad” bandleader of the ‘50s and ‘60s. Well, Cleve was not just one of the world’s foremost Esquivel experts, he actually knew him and had worked with him, and happily regaled me with stories for much of the evening. He did give me some great observations about tiki bars, too — far more than I could fit in the article, alas.

I last worked with him this summer, when I got him to contribute a cocktail to an article I was working on for Whisky Advocate. He texted me regularly to update me on its progress, and of course we’d wind up thumb-chatting for hours, talking about music and movies and bars and then more about music — the man really was a walking encyclopedia of musical knowledge, much of which he’d witnessed firsthand.

Cleve was a bonafide legend in Boston, but Lullaby, the bar he opened with two partners earlier this year, was his first foray into the bar scene of New York. While his presence was felt there, he wasn’t around much. He was always jetting off somewhere, to lecture at cocktail events or DJ at bars, clubs, and tiki conventions (his record collection is voluminous and potent). The man was constantly in demand. A few months after Lullaby opened, I texted him to apologize for not having been there since opening night. “That’s OK,” he said, “I haven’t been back either.” He did wind up making it to Lullaby a few times, but for various reasons he and I missed each other. I’d gotten a special bottle I wanted to share with him and a few friends, but our plans to get together kept getting pushed back due to scheduling snafus. I last heard from him a few weeks ago, apologizing for the delay. “Life, as they say, has gotten in the way,” he texted. “Cheers!” After returning from a trip to DJ in Los Angeles, he said, he was planning to hit Lullaby, and we’d drink up then.

He never made it back. While in LA, he suffered a fatal heart attack. He’d had his share of health problems, including a bout with tuberculosis that left him unable to drink for three years. (Of course he had a great story about the first night he fell off the wagon post-TB, involving about 150 cocktails bought for him by well-wishers.) But it was an unexpected and devastating loss for everyone who knew him — which constituted a whole lot of people all over the globe.

Many people knew him far better and more intimately than I did, but how could such an outsized personality not have an outsized effect on everyone with whom he came into contact? I’m no exception. Talking with him made me feel like the nerdy freshman who’d been inexplicably taken under the wing of the coolest senior in school. Till my dying day I will remember turning him on to a song he’d never heard before and wound up loving (here it is, if you’re curious), just because it seemed so improbable that there was a song he didn’t know. I loved listening to him and learning from him and I know countless others felt the same. His loss is a void that isn’t easily filled.

Here’s the recipe for what I guess is one of his last cocktail creations. It’s a whiskeyfied take on the Saturn, a delicious but not widely known tiki cocktail traditionally made with gin. Cleve’s version appeared in the summer issue of Whisky Advocate. He was very excited about it — “I may never drink this with gin again!” It really is pretty delicious, and a nice liquid tribute to one of the nicest people you’d ever want to meet.

BROTHER CLEVE’S WHISKEY SATURN

INGREDIENTS:

1.5-2 oz. Old Overholt Bottled-in-Bond Rye (Evan Williams Bottled-in-Bond bourbon works well too)
.25 oz. falernum (any brand, Cleve used Tiki Adam)
.5 oz. passion fruit syrup (any brand, Cleve used Monin)
.25 oz. orgeat (any brand, Cleve used BJ Reynolds)
.5 oz. freshly squeezed lemon juice)
Cherry and lemon peel for garnish

DIRECTIONS:

Add all ingredients to a blender with 8 oz. crushed ice until smooth. Empty contents into a rocks glass. Garnish with the cherry wrapped in citrus peel, representing the rings of Saturn.