Best Gig / Worst Gig, Back to Back

#233 / Flood Time Capsule: 2002

In an irony well known to many bands, The Flood had one of its best gigs and one of its worst gigs back to back during a 400-mile round-trip journey to the northern part of the state 21 years ago this week.

Mountain Moon

The good gig was on a July Saturday night at the wonderful Mountain Moon Coffeehouse in Wheeling, where an old friend — singer/songwriter Bob Heyer, an event coordinator for the venue — arranged our visit.

The gig was the northernmost trek in the series of shows that the band smilingly called its 2002 “grand tour” to promote its first studio album.

The famed Wheeling coffeehouse is located in the gorgeous Stifel Fine Arts Center, which looks like a Southern mansion. The building was a private residence until the late 1970s, when it was given to the Oglebay Institute.

Before the show, the Floodsters toured the beautiful gardens in the back and then the extraordinary house itself, which the institute used for events and art exhibits. The huge living room is the coffeehouse, with lots of little tables.

We were very honored to be asked to play there, and The Flood’s show was sold out weeks ahead of time, Bob told us.

It was, incidentally, a busy weekend in the region. In fact, after the show, we had to spend the night 30 miles away in Washington, Pa. Closer facilities were unavailable because this was the weekend of Festival of the Hills, a huge outdoor country music festival.

Pop Quiz: In Floodspeak, What’s "a Steubenville”?

This fine memory-making evening at Mountain Moon was followed the next day by a terrible gig. It was a Sunday afternoon performance for which the band was hired at Jefferson Community College in Steubenville, Ohio.

The whole thing was, frankly, fairly miserable.

For starters, the do was held outside, even though it was deucedly hot. Accommodations were sparse; members of the audience had to bring their own chairs. Eye contact with the listeners also wasn’t possible, because they set their chairs up more than 100 feet away from the stage, on a hill under a few trees that provided the only precious shade.

And then, oh…. there was the sound system.

The college hired a professional sound company, but the company let a kid run the board. Sadly, the young man apparently was overwhelmed by the assignment. During the show, for instance, he thought he should turn up the knob every time a different instrument had a solo. Waves of audio chaos ensued.

At intermission, Joe and Charlie finally convinced the kid to just leave the freaking knobs alone and let the band work the mikes as needed. The second set sounded a bit better, but by then the damage was done, since the frustrated audience was melting away.

Memory of that job was so sour that it entered Flood lore. To this day (with apologies for “The City of Murals”) any bad gig is “a Steubenville.” Here’s a brief 2016 audio clip of Doug, Chuck and Charlie remembering:

Meanwhile, In Other (Better) News….

On a much happier note, speaking of gigs, an especially good one was this month’s two-week Flood stint as the house band for Alchemy Theater’s wonderful production of Bright Star including the band’s nightly pre-show.

Out-of-town friends — sad that they couldn’t make any of those sold-out performances in Huntington — asked what the pre-shows were like. Thanks to video Pamela and Danny’s wife, Tami, shot on the last night of the show, we can give you this 10-minute taste of how we started many of our July 2023 nights: