Flood Follies on a Winter's Night

#171 / Flood Time Capsule: 2003

Twenty years ago tonight, we honestly weren’t expecting much of a crowd for our gig. After all, Jan. 17, 2003, was predicted to be the coldest night of the winter so far.

Not only that, the venue was not particularly well known. Oh, sure, everyone knew the original Huntington High School — a huge, beautiful, but drafty old building on the edge of the city’s South Side — but only recently had it been turned into an arts center and apartment complex for seniors.

It was as a fundraiser for the building’s resident Arts Resources for the Tri-State that The Flood was booked for its second appearance in a year in “The Renaissance Ballroom,” the large top-floor room that used to be the high school’s library.

Finally, none of us Floodsters was especially healthy right then. Winter was having its way with us, leaving us to head into the job with assorted sore throats, stuffy noses and red eyes from erratic sleep.

But a Job’s a Job…

So, while we weren’t exactly pumped for the evening, we soldiered on, renting a sound system from Joe’s shop and, in advance of the show, helping the show’s planners set up more than 200 chairs in a semicircle around a raised stage against the wall.

Well, as it happened, the few optimists among us won out. Just before 7 p.m., folks started filling the room, including many hard-core Flood fans.

Their arrival magically improved our collective mood. In fact, we were surprised by how much fun we had.

“Well, I say I was surprised,” Charlie told his mom in an email the next morning, “but not really. This happens all the time. We might feel tired or even be a bit sick, but once we hit the stage and the tunes start rocking, the adrenaline kicks in and we almost always have a ball.”

Assorted Ad Libs

The glorious goofiness brought on by that transformation in attitude inspired a lot of impromptu stories on stage, not to mention fun exchanges with friends in the audience.

It began in the gig’s first few minutes when we noted how honored we were that folks chose to spend their Friday night with us rather than at the city’s annual “Toughman Contest,” which was going on at the same time down at the civic center. That prompted Charlie to ad lib this:

Later, we also reflected on the busy year we had just had, that 2002 saw the most gigs we had ever done up until them. A highlight, we said, was our performance with the Huntington Symphony Orchestra down on the riverside.

That led Charlie, Dave and Chuck to ramble on about the size of the crowd, ending up with a funny exchange with long-time Flood buddy Larry Kendall, who just happened to be sitting in the front row with his trusty calendar:

Speaking of the riverfront, we looked forward to playing for visiting riverboats in the new year, always a treat for us, though we did wonder if our band name might be a worry for them:

But It’s About the Tunes

Of course, jokes and stories were just part of the evening. “It's fun to be in a band that has so many hams,” Charlie told his mom in that post-gig email, “and we were so loose last night. Everybody was trying new stuff on their solos and everything worked. Magic night.”

Push the button below to hear a quartet of tunes from that winter’s Friday night with a room full of new and old friends: