Brazenhead

#195 / Flood Time Capsule: 2002

The wonderful Brazenhead Inn — in the old community of Mingo, WV, tucked in the Potomac highlands of southern Randolph County — was just four years old when The Flood rolled into town to play in that cozy Irish pub 21 years ago this week.

Brazenhead was already special to us; the inn was one of the most devoted sponsors of Joe Dobbs’ “Music from the Mountains” radio show each Friday night on West Virginia Public Radio.

A Wintry Trip for April

“Wow, what a great weekend the band had in Snowshoe Valley,” Charlie told his mom in an email on Monday morning after he and Pamela got home from that April 6, 2002, trip.

Making the journey with Flood tenor banjoist Chuck Romine and his wife Phyllis, they found the weather “quite appropriate for a trip up into the mountains of ski country,” Charlie wrote. “It was chilly and had even snowed a little overnight.

“Nothing at all worrisome -- the roads were clear, of course -- but the trees were all coated with white,” Charlie added. “Very pretty.”

It was not an easy drive for Chuck, though, especially the last 90 minutes of the four-hour trek, since they had to climb over Point Mountain. “There's no easy way to do it,” Charlie noted. “You just have to hang on and grit your teeth, like on a bumpy airplane ride.” But it was worth it.

Meeting Will Fanning

The Brazenhead, built in 1998 by Irishman Will Fanning, was the second-largest log structure in the state. It had 20 guest rooms, each furnished with antiques, collectibles, a full service dining room and bar and a huge back porch.

The inn was named after the original Brazen Head, a pub in Merchant's Quay in Dublin, about four miles from where Will was born. Dubliners have always claimed the site has housed a tavern or an alehouse since 1198.

Eight hundred years later, Will ran his Brazenhead with his two sons, catering to the tourist crowd, all those skiers and hikers, not to mention eager musicians. Will, a good musician in his own right, had live music nearly every Saturday night, and by 2002 he had been trying for more than a year to get The Flood there.

By 4:30 on that chilly Saturday afternoon, Dave and Susie Peyton and Doug and Donna Chaffin had arrived. While they and the Bowens and Romines warmed themselves by the fire, Sam and Joan St. Clair arrived with their contingent, including 7-year-old Zoey, who would dance to Joe Dobbs’ fiddle tunes that night.

“We made dinner plans for 5:45,” Charlie wrote. “Will and his sons also fix all the food and it was great. And while we were eating Joe pulled in.”

The Show

Will had the band set up to play in the same huge log dining room, where they had a tantalizing view into the bar, and by the time the guys were to go on at 7:30, the place was packed.

“Some fans even drove in from Huntington to be there, and we rocked the place for the next hour,” Charlie wrote. “I feel like we really connected with the crowd. We took a 15-minute back after the first set, had a drink, freshened up and then returned for the second set. We played hard for another hour, not packing it up until the crowd began to thin out around 10:30.”

On the band’s set list for the show were tunes from the first album, released earlier that year, as well as songs already being honed for the second album, which would be recorded in seven months.

Joe’s Sweater

But the highlight of that first of several Brazenhead gigs over the next year was not a song, but a story:

While the guys were tuning between songs that night, David and Charlie noticed that Joe was wearing an especially snazzy sweater, and they asked him to tell about it. From that very evening, here is a rare audio of Joe’s yarn:

As you hear over the laughter at the end of the story, Joe says, "If I ever write a book, I'm gonna put that story in it!"

That's a promise he kept a decade later when he published his book, A Country Fiddler.

If you’d like to read Joe’s “The Sweater” chapter from the book, we have it on a .pdf. Click the button below:

Brazenhead’s Last Days

Will and his wife, Jill, continued to run the Brazenhead Inn for the next two decades, not wrapping up that storied run until last year.

“We are ending this chapter at the inn,” they wrote on Facebook in May 2022, “with great memories of all the people we have met and shared moments with throughout the years. It has been bittersweet stepping away, but we are ready for more times spent with our families.”

The inn continues today, though its new owners have rechristened it. Today it is The Mingo Saloon & Lodge.