A Venue for All Seasons

#544 / Flood Time Capsule: 2015

Over the years, we have played in hundreds of different locations, but only one venue has been Floodified in literally every decade of the band’s half-century history.

That was much on our minds in December 2015 as The Flood rolled into Heritage Station in downtown Huntington to help out with a special holiday arts & crafts sales in the facility’s Red Caboose gift shop.

We set up in the gorgeous lobby of the historic, restored B&O freight station, which these days is the headquarters the Huntington Convention and Visitors Bureau. Such a classy backdrop just naturally inspires cool tunes and we had a ball.

Over the Years

We’ve played in many different sections of Heritage Station. In fact, The Flood was there are at the birth this iconic Huntington location.

As reported here, an early version of Flood Lite — Bill Hoke teaming up with Charlie Bowen and Joe Dobbs — performed a few tunes as part of the grand opening ceremonies on the afternoon of Sept. 2, 1977.

Four years later, The Flood got an even tighter connection to Heritage Station when Joe moved his beloved Fret ‘n’ Fiddle music store from West 14th Street to Heritage Station.

Joe and his daughter Diana, Fret ‘n Fiddle business manager at the time, oversaw the move to a two-floor space in the village that previously had been a country store. They planned to use the second floor for jam sessions and music lessons, while the first floor was for sales and workshops.

Birth of a Radio Show

The Station also was the birthplace of a radio show. It was while he was in FnF’s new digs that Joe began to imagine the radio show that was eventually to become West Virginia Public Radio’s much-lauded “Music from the Mountain.”

In fact, in 1982 it was those upper rooms of the village location in which The Flood recorded Joe’s demo for pitching the idea of the show.

The Years Roll On

As it turned out, Fret ‘n Fiddle didn’t stay long in Heritage Station; by 1983, Joe and new wife, Linda, moved the music store to St. Albans, WV, where Fret ‘n Fiddle found its permanent home on Pennsylvania Avenue.

But Heritage Station continued to play an important part on The Flood’s story. For instance, on a Saturday afternoon in October 2002, the original three amigos — Dave Peyton, Joe and Charlie — played at the second annual Heritage Fest sponsored by Downtown Huntington Partners Inc.

With fellow musician John Taylor and a local barbershop quartet, along with James E. Casto portraying rail magnate Collis P. Huntington, Flood Lite played to “a tiny, but enthusiastic crowd of our regulars,” Charlie told his mom in an email.

“It’s fun, sometimes,” Charlie added, “ to strip the music down to its basics and the three of us are the essence of the band. Of course, we miss the other guys when we’re down to a trio, but it’s amazing to all of us, I think, how much music we can get out of three voices and three sets of hands. And Rick Abel, the park board guy who hired us, said he was thrilled with the results.”

A few years later, when the Cabell Huntington Convention & Visitors Bureau moved its headquarters to the old depot, the band was hired for an open house.

A highlight was that our dear fiddlin’ friend Mike Smith sat in with us, as seen in the wonderful Tori Lavender photo above.

The band also often has played outside in the gazebo, from a summertime picnic in 2002 as part of what Joe liked to call “The Grand Tour” promoting The Flood’s first studio album to assorted St. Patrick’s Day bashes to sets at the annual Diamond Teeth Mary Festivals.

The Joe Dobbs Tour

A highlight of our Heritage Station memories came in the Summer of 2012 when the band’s three-day Joe Dobbs Book Tour wrapped up in one of venue’s lovely room.

As reported here earlier, the tour featured back-to-back shows in three different cities to promote the release of our 77-year-old band mate’s autobiography, A Country Fiddler. Each show featured Joe’s performance of his favorite fiddle tunes, followed by his reading of excerpts from the book.

The tour wrapped up on Saturday morning at Huntington’s Heritage Station, “the best of bunch!” Charlie emailed his cousin.

“The room we played in — carpeted, red brick walls, and all this wonderful old dark wood furniture — was simply perfect,” the email continued. “The sound was great. The crowd was great. Everybody was on.”

Back to 2015

All those memories were still fresh, so we were happy to oblige when Huntington CVB President Tyson Compton asked the band to help out on that December morning in 2015. And we had such a good time that we came back for an encore or two in the same room in the months ahead.

In fact, images from gigs in that space ended up on the cover when the band released its sixth album, The Flood Live, In Concert.