First Paying Gigs for the Reborn Flood

#231 / Flood Time Capsule: 1999

Twenty-four years ago this month, it was Joe Dobbs who got The Flood back out in public after a decade-long hiatus. A pair of memorable out-of-town gigs did the trick.

By the summer of 1999, Joe, Dave and Charlie had been jamming regularly again for several years.

However, except for occasional freebies (like picking at the early incarnations of the spring festival at Heritage Farm Museum and Village or like making March pilgrimages to Tams Mountain to entertain visiting Marquette students), the guys stayed pretty close to home.

Their weekly picking sessions were either at the Bowens’ house or the Peytons’ place, Joe driving in from Hurricane to do the fiddling. Occasionally friends sat in with them for the evening.

About this time, though, Joe was getting antsy, wanting the group to get a little more exposure. So, that summer he just went ahead and booked two out-of-town paying jobs, figuring he could persuade Dave and Charlie to join him for the road trips.

Gig #1

The first (July 10) was a Saturday evening performance at Fort New Salem, a reconstructed frontier settlement of 19th century log structures about three hours to the northeast of Huntington in the wilds of Harrison County, WV.

The show — performed on an outdoors log stage with the audience in folding chairs and on the ground in front of the pickers — featured fiddle tunes and traditional Appalachian ballads and dance songs.

A particularly sweet moment came when one of the ladies came up to the guys after the show. With tears in her eyes, she took Joe's hand and whispered, “That was my father's favorite song; I've not heard it since his funeral.”

On the three’s drive back to Huntington later that night, Joe was still thinking about the encounter.

“That's why we do this,” he said quietly.

Gig #2

The second gig came two weeks later several hours to the southeast in Fayetteville, WV. The venue was the town’s wonderfully restored old theater. There the band found great acoustics, a balcony and plush seats.

“We’re not accustomed to much we were served,” Charlie told his mom in an email the next day. That included a sound man working the board, a spotlight illuminating them on stage and a dressing room awaiting them to retire to. Shoot, people even paid good money to get in and see the show.

“We had a very good time,” Charlie wrote. “The music went well, the audience was warm and responsive.“

The band played two 45-minute sets, with a 10-minute intermission, during which the trio chatted to some of the several hundred people in the audience. Following the second set, the audience rewarded them with calls for two encores. It was a pretty magic evening.

Four or five years later, Joe was still chuckling about his role in getting The Flood fixated on those bright lights.

Click the button below to hear how he told the story when he appeared on Buddy Griffin’s “Mountain Air” radio show at Glenville State University:

Oh, And By the Way….

This Just In: Speaking of Joe, the good folks in St. Albans, WV, where the fiddler moved his Fret ‘n Fiddle music store in the early 1980s, have christened a section of its Olde Main Plaza as “Joe Dobbs Square.” Good for them!