After Hours at the Afterword Café

#384 / Flood Time Capsule: 1999

In the mid-1990s, Huntington was depressed. The new retail mall in Barboursville was drawing away shoppers from downtown, and the revival that was promised by urban renewal remained unrealized.

Into this malaise rode a quartet of young optimists. The two families who opened the Renaissance Book Company & Coffee House in the heart of the troubled downtown each came up with the concept independently, according to Huntington historian James E. Casto.

The Launch

“Neurosurgeon Dr. Panos Ignatiadis and his wife, Patricia, long had been talking about the need for a bookstore in downtown Huntington,” Casto wrote in his popular “Lost Huntington” column in The Herald-Dispatch.

“So had Peter Levy and his wife, Kelly,” he added. “Initially the two couples didn’t know each other, but before long they got together, talked things over and decided to make their individual dreams a mutual reality.”

The store — which opened on June 18, 1994, in the former home of the Star Furniture Co. at 831 4th Ave. — was patterned after an 18th Century British library, with handsome shelving and room for comfortable sofas and armchairs.

Café Charisma

What quickly caught The Flood’s fancy was the store’s subterranean café, which became a venue for book signings, poetry readings and musical performances.

Soon after the reunited Flood began playing public shows, Dave Peyton, Joe Dobbs and Charlie Bowen started talking about more public gigs. Specifically, they thought the Renaissance basement space — by then called Afterword Café — looked just right for infusion of that old coffeehouse vibe.

Twenty-five years ago this week, the three of them did just that. The guys drew a nice, enthusiastic crowd, including a sweet little family: a mom, dad and wide-eyed little girl who seemed to smile in unison whenever The Flood launched into yet another John Prine song.

The Tuba

The same family returned two weeks later to party with The Flood again when the band returned to the coffeehouse for another couple of sets in early September.

Also at that second gig, the band was just setting up when in walked Dale Jones, leader of a great local jazz band, The Backyard Dixie Jazz Stompers.

Recognizing that the mid-1999 version of The Flood was a little light on the low end of its chords — the guys were still four months away from hooking up with bass man extraordinaire Doug Chaffin — Dale brought along his tuba and sat in for the two hours as the ensemble played a steady stream of jug band and jump tunes.

The Kid

This time the family’s little daughter — maybe six or seven years old — got fascinated with the sound of the tuba. She danced to one tune after another.

From that day on, Dale Jones would be a dear friend of the band. And, as reported in an earlier article here, Dale was there a year later to help The Flood on its very first “jug band breakfast” at the Coon-Sanders Nighthawks Fan Reunion Bash.

The Poster

Incidentally, the poster Charlie created to promote the Renaissance gigs was the first time the old boys used a phrase that the band would repeat often over the next couple of decades: The band, not the natural disaster.

It was accompanied by the guys’ faux Charles Darwin quote: “There ain’t nothin’ natural about these boys’ selections!”