Breaking the Buckeye Curse
#339 / Flood Time Capsule: 2013
Eleven years ago this week, The Flood finally broke its Buckeye Curse!
While Floodsters by nature are no more superstitious than other folks, the guys were beginning to wonder if the state of Ohio had it out for them. After all, in more than a decade these West Virginia lads had yet to have a good gig in their grand neighboring state.
How the Hex Began
The Ohio hex started in the summer of 2002 after a disastrous gig in Steubenville, Ohio. As reported here earlier, that job was soooo bad, in fact, that from then on in FloodSpeak, any bad gig was routinely called “a Steubenville,” as in “Wow, what a steubenville THAT was!”
That was just the beginning. For instance, after the original steubenville, the band had back-to-back stinker gigs at Ironton’s annual “Festival of the Hills,” because each time, the skies opened up and drenched the band.
(Well, okay, maybe we brought on ourselves; as Joe Dobbs used to say, an outfit with a name like ours ought to invest in slickers, boots and flood insurance….)
But even in droughts it didn’t seem to work out whenever crossed over the bridge.
We remember a terrible show, for example, on a hot and dusty night at a private party out behind Proctorville. Drunks throughout the evening called ever-more insistently for “Rocky Top,” even though we explained (ever-less patiently) that we weren’t a bluegrass band.
Apprehension
So, all that is to say that in the spring of 2013 our expectations were low when we forded the Ohio River again. This time we were heading for a Saturday night benefit concert for a good local charity.
We had reasons for pessimism. For one thing, tickets for the show — to be held at the Ohio University Southern Campus in Ironton — were a bit expensive, so we didn’t expect “our crowd” to turn out. (After all, they could hear us for free every week when we rehearsed at the Bowen House.)
Moreover, we worried about the venue’s acoustics. The do was scheduled in a place called "the Rotunda Room," which sounded boomy to us, conjuring up images of stone walls and floor and a three-mile-high ceiling.
Imagine our surprise and joy, then, in finding OU’s Rotunda Room to be wonderful — carpeted floor, acoustic tiles on the walls and ceiling — and with not a discernible dead spot in the whole space.
It was a great evening, with a crowd that was warm and happy to be with us.
In fact, coming off the stage at the end of the night, Doug Chaffin gave it high praise indeed. Doug pronounced it the best Flood gig yet since he joined the band a dozen years earlier.
More Tales from The Flood Files
If you’d like to see how yarns like this fit into the larger Flood lore, you’re welcome to browse our Flood Stories archives.
This is a collection of the bits and pieces of history from the band’s half century.
Zeroing in on 2013
Meanwhile, if you want to sample a soundtrack from Flood Year 2013, the free Radio Floodango music streaming service has a handy time machine feature that can zero in on the music of any year from present back to 2008.
