Flood on The Timeline
Chronologically Speaking, here's The Flood Story.
Many come to Flood Watch for the bits and pieces of history and lore from the band’s half century story. This index provides a quick and easy connections to posts about key moments in The Flood’s half century history…
FIRST WAVE
1971
In the Beginning, It was Dave and Roger
Inspiration for what would become The 1937 Flood can be traced 51 years ago this week to a joyous evening of music in Ashland, Ky., with David Peyton and Roger Samples in the middle of it all. Our Story Unfolds … By late February 1971, Pamela and Charlie Bowen had been back in the Huntington area for about two months, having moved home from Lexington, Ky.…
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1972
Birth of the Parties that Birthed the Band
On the last weekend before Labor Day 1972, Pamela and Charlie Bowen hosted a music party in their new apartment in Huntington’s South Side. Everyone had such a good time that they wanted an encore the next spring, and another after that, and …
1973
How It All Began
When we gather this Sunday night to celebrate The Flood’s golden anniversary, we’ll be looking back on a 1973 New Year’s Eve party that Susan and David Peyton hosted in their Mount Union Road home on the edge of town.
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1974
At The Elephant Walk, Dave and Charlie's First Gig
Forty-nine years ago this week at a club in downtown Huntington, the duet that was to evolve into The 1937 Flood performed its first gig. Four months earlier, David Peyton and Charlie Bowen had started jamming together at a memorable New Year’s Eve party at the Peytons’ place on Mount Union Road.
Memorial Day Memories
On Memorial Day weekend 50 years ago — three weeks after appearing at the historic Hotel Frederick in downtown Huntington for their very first gig together — Dave Peyton and Charlie Bowen were ready to take their show on the road. On a hot, humid Saturday afternoon, the pair charged into holiday traffic to trek to Carter County, Ky., and play an afterno…
... And Roger Makes Three
By the fall of 1974, David Peyton and Charlie Bowen had been playing music together for less than a year. They didn’t yet even have name for their ensemble, but by spring the third crucial element of what would become The 1937 Flood was in place. Enter guitarist/singer Roger Samples.
Our Back Pages
Two years ago this month, we published details of some of The Flood’s earliest history — and, well, its PRE-history as well — in the form of eight feature-length movies released through YouTube. Called “The Flood Legacy Films,” the series — put together during the seemingly endless months of quarantine and isolation in 2020, the first year of the COVID-1…
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1975
Joe Dobbs Comes On Board
Under a circus tent down by the river where the city held the annual Dogwood Arts and Crafts Festival in the years before the civic arena was built, Joe Dobbs came into our lives. It was 47 years ago this week that Joe met David Peyton and Charlie Bowen, the duet that had been regularly jamming together for only a little over a year by then.
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1976
How the Hokum Happened
On a reel-to-reel recorder that we lugged into Dave and Susie Peyton’s house 46 years ago this week, we taped our very first jug band tunes, adding perhaps the most important ingredient in the witchy brew that would become The Flood’s music. Up until that spring, The Flood (then just two years old) had been playing what most hippy-born string bands in A…
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1977
When Joe Dobbs' Dream Came True
After working quietly in the background for three or four months, Joe Dobbs and his baby brother Dennis finally were ready in the spring of 1977 to invite the public into their new home. In a cozy little space on Huntington’s West 14th Street, Fret ’n Fiddle
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1978-79
Once Upon a Summer's Night
Forty-five years ago tonight, a ragtag bunch of folk music lovers — players wielding guitars, banjos and fiddles, listeners toting lawn chairs, blankets and baskets and coolers — rolled up the hill to take over Huntington’s classiest stage.
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1980
Dogwood Days & Wondrous Wallace the Washboard
Huntington’s Dogwood Arts & Craft Festival was always a sentimental favorite for The Flood. Back in the early 1970s, David Peyton and Charlie Bowen performed at the first few shows. In fact, the crafts fair was among their first public performances as an antediluvian duo.
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1981
The Last Bash
Forty-one years ago this week, the band played together in public for one of the last times before a near-decade-long drought in Floodishness (a dry spell that finally relented in the 1990s). The occasion was the concluding installment in almost 10 years worth of the semi-annual music parties that friends had dubbed
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1984
First Voices on Joe’s Dobbs’ Radio Show
Joe Dobbs’ beloved “Music from the Mountains” radio show was not yet a year old when he started getting tired of only spinning records on the air. As noted in an earlier report here, Joe’s original pitch to West Virginia Public Broadcasting was to create a
SECOND WAVE
1991
A Bash Reunion
Ten years after the last of those semiannual Bowen Bashes — those tasty weekend-long music parties at which The Flood was born and nurtured in the 1970s and ‘80s — we were hungry for another helping. A sweet reunion was hosted 32 ago this week by Susie and David Peyton at their lovely Cabell County home.
1995
Our Dennis Dobbs Days
Dennis Dobbs, fiddlin’ Joe’s baby brother, was a witness — and best of all, sometimes a participant — in The Flood’s earliest days in the 1970s. Then 28 years ago this week, Dennis returned to the scene of all those good times to play a brief, but vital role in the band’s re-awakening after almost a decade of near hibernation.
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1996
The Party that Rebirthed the Band
Our band was born at parties in the 1970s and then was RE-born at another party 20 years later. The venue for this 1996 re-stirring of Floodishness was the lovely Ironton, Ohio, home of Cathie and Bob Toothman on a chilly winter’s night when fiddlin' Joe Dobbs sat down again with his old band mates Charlie Bowen and Dave Peyton.
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1997
When March Meant Martha and Marina
For a half dozen years at the turn of the 21st Century, The Flood’s original three amigos — David, Joe and Charlie — had a weird, wonderful way to celebrate the coming of spring.
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1998
How Bill Hoke Saved the Day
Twenty-four years ago this week, The Flood played the first of what would be a number of years of annual appearances at the then-new Spring Festival at Huntington’s Heritage Farm Museum & Village, but for Charlie Bowen it was an inauspicious debut because of an unexpected accompanist: sciatica.
1999
First Paying Gigs for the Reborn Flood
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.
Our First Time at Tamarack
The state’s glorious Tamarack artisan market near Beckley, WV, was just three years old when The Flood played its first show there 23 years ago this week.
How Doug Chaffin Came to The Flood
The news 22 years ago this week was full of “Y2K,” shorthand for "the year 2000.” Doomsayers were predicting a dreaded “Millennium Bug” would devastate our new year by causing widespread computer glitches as the yearly counter clicked from 1999 to 2000. Be afraid, they said. Be very afraid. Fill your basement with canned good and drinking water and get …
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2000
Birth of the Jug Band Breakfast
The Flood played its first “Jug Band Breakfast” 22 years ago this week for Huntington’s wonderful Coon-Sanders Nighthawks Fan Reunion Bash, a gathering of traditional jazz fans from all over the country.
Playing the Prelude for Pullman Square
Twenty-two years ago today, The Flood was invited by Huntington Mayor Jean Dean to come downtown and entertain folks who gathered in a vacant storefront in the 900 block of 3rd Avenue to hear the latest dream for developing the city’s long-delayed “Superblock.” It was the project that ultimately became the town’s much-loved Pullman Square of today.
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2001
The Night Dr. Jazz Brought His Banjo
It was 21 years ago this week that Chuck Romine opened up a whole new chapter in The Flood Story by bringing his well-tempered tenor banjo to jam for us for the first time. Now, we had known the convivial Chuck Romine for a long time. Not only had he been one of Cabell County's representatives in the state legislature, but he also had famously fronted a …
The Flood’s First Trip to a Recording Studio
Twenty-two years ago this month, The Flood began recording its first studio album, gathering in the Charleston studios of Joe Dobbs’ “Music from the Mountains” radio show, which he hosted weekly on West Virginia Public Radio.
Harmonicat Sam St. Clair Wades In
Twenty-one years ago tonight, Sam St. Clair joined the band as its consummate hamonicat. Charlie had met Sam earlier that month following a meeting of the Rotary Club where Bowen had been invited to speak about his fledgling web design business.
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2002
Pamela Bowen Brings Much Needed Female Supervision
The Flood finally got the female supervision it had long needed when Pamela Bowen, Charlie’s wife, agreed 22 years ago this week to be the band’s manager. It is a position she still holds today. Pamela’s appointment represented a major shift in thinking for the original old-boy band. Up until her involvement, for instance, the guys all tended to let peop…
The Night We Had the Governor Dancing to Our Tune
Twenty years ago this week, The Flood partied on stage with Gov. Bob Wise and his friends — and his foes — in the West Virginia Legislature and the state capital press corps.
Magical Weekend
Twenty years ago tonight, The Flood began the best weekend of an extraordinary year. In Flood Lore, as noted earlier, 2002 would always be known as the year of “The Grand Tour,” a time when we traveled to gigs in towns up and down the Ohio River Valley and deep into the mountains of West Virginia and Kentucky to promote our first album.
Joe Dobbs' Theme Song
Twenty years ago this week, The Flood headed into the studio to record a very special tune: An original number that we wrote to be the new theme song for Joe Dobbs’ beloved weekly “Music from the Mountains” show on West Virginia Public Radio. The idea for a theme song came from Joe’s producer, the late great George Walker.
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2003
Michelle, The Chick Singer, Lands Amongst Us
The idea came from George Walker, who in 2003 was the newly appointed producer of Joe Dobbs’ long-running weekly “Music from the Mountains” show on West Virginia Public Radio. “Man!” George told Joe one evening, “you gotta hear my wife sing. She loves these swing tunes you all do!”
A Hot Time in the Old Tent…
Nineteen years ago this week, The Flood played its hottest-ever gig … and the notes and rhythm we brought to the stage had only a little to do with it. “That was as too-hot as I’ve ever been!” recalls banjoist Chuck Romine. What Doctor Jazz is looking back on was our day-long performance at the West Virginia State Fair in Fairlea, near Lewisburg. It was …
Dave Ball Becomes “Bub”
Nineteen years ago this week, retired city firefighter Dave Ball became the newest Floodster, but not before getting an alias. As we noted at the time in the weekly FloodStage electronic newsletter, “Sharp-eyed regulars in the crowd have begun to notice a new face in the back row of the Flood ensemble. Who's that on bass? Why, it's Bub! And there by ha…
Living Our Riverboat Dreams
Nineteen years ago this week, a dream came true. By 2003, Pamela and Charlie Bowen had been passengers on the historic riverboat Delta Queen a half dozen times as it steamed the Mississippi and Ohio rivers. Often during those happy voyages, Charlie sat in the paddlewheeler's lovely Texas Lounge listening to tunes by Connie Jones or Phyllis Dale and wishi…
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2004
Lights! Camera! Music!
Flood harmonicat Sam St. Clair was one of the movers and shakers 18 years ago this week in Huntington’s then-brand new Appalachian Film Festival, so it was only natural that he wanted to get his band involved in the festival’s inauguration too.
Remembering Santa Joe & his Jolly Elves
Seventeen years ago this week, the band played a Christmas party at Our Lady of Fatima church. "We let them feed us," Charlie told his mom in an email later. "It was a big cover-dish spread, with plenty to eat. Good stuff!" Then at 7:45," the email continued, "we launched into a hour of music that the group had paid for. We mixed in a couple of Christmas…
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2005
Best Delta Queen Memory Ever
One of the wonderful byproducts of The Flood’s regularly serenading riverboats whenever they visited the Huntington area was getting to know so many musicians who worked and played on those boats.
The Flood Lite Story
On an autumn Friday night in Huntington’s southern hills 18 years ago this week, a trio of Floodsters played eating-drinking-schmoozing music for a joyful party. Honestly, with the temperature heading toward freezing overnight, early November wasn’t exactly a great time for outdoor picking, but our hosts — Staige and Sharon Davis of Ridgewood Road — roll…
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2006
FOOTMAD Memories
In the winter of 2006, Michelle Hoge was not yet a full-fledged member of The Flood. For three years by then, she had performed with us as a featured artist, the guest vocalist or, as fiddler Joe Dobbs lovingly dubbed her, “Da Chick Singer.”
Our DIY Bootleg Album
Everybody's mother always said it (usually with a pretty heavy sigh): If you want something done right, Do It Yourself. In our case, the truth is that after decades of making music, we just got tired of waiting for someone else to produce a sassy little 1937 Flood bootleg album. So (with a pretty heavy sigh of our own), we decided that if it was going t…
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2007
Down by the Riverside
Fourteen years ago this autumn, The Flood headed down to Huntington Harris Riverfront Park to entertain folks boarding a boat for a fundraising Hospice House river cruise. It was the first of what would be an annual autumn gig from the guys for a couple of years. For this inaugural outing, Floodster Emeritus Chuck Romine brought his tenor banjo to sit i…
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2008
Supersizing Ourselves
It was just one our wisecrack. It must have been a bit of spring madness that prompted us to tell a reporter that The Flood lately had so many members the outfit might be outgrowing its status as a mere “band.” The next morning — with the straightest of journalistic faces —
How the Podcast Came to Be
The idea for our weekly podcast — which has been a fixture in the Floodisphere for 15 years now — began with an off-hand remark by harmonicat Sam St. Clair. Noting that prices of good digital audio recorders had dropped dramatically, Sam casually suggested we buy one and have it running during our weekly rehearsals, just in case somebody happened to … …
The Flood's First YouTube
YouTube was only three years old when The Flood brought its first homemade video to that online platform 14 years ago this week. It came about because in the late summer of 2008, band manager Pamela Bowen bought a little digital camera called a FlipVideo, which could produce quick film clips that could be easily uploaded to the Internet.
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2009
The Night TV Came Calling
For most of The Flood’s long life, there has been, of course, no video. Even until relatively recently, aside from snippets of news film at events we played and occasional video shot by friends, the media record of the band’s comings and goings was pretty much limited to audio files and still photographs.
“Youngblood” Jacob Scarr Joins Up
Thirteen ago today, Jacob Scarr became an official member of the band, our youngest ever. The guitarist already had been picking with us for two years, but since he was just 14 years old when he started hanging out in Floodlandia, we fully expected he would get bored with us at any time.
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2010
The Two-Year Party
The band that was born at parties a half century ago returned to its good-time roots 40 years later, launching what became a two-year party at the Bowen House in the Southside of Huntington. From the spring of 2010 to Spring 2012, The Flood's weekly gatherings steadily evolved from simple rehearsals into full-fledged jam sessions, with more and more visi…
A Guyandotte Fourth of July
The Guyandotte section of Huntington always has been dear to Flood hearts. “I was virtually born in the Guyandotte Methodist Church,” the late Dave Peyton, band co-founder, once wrote in his newspaper column in The Herald-Dispatch. Dave and his parents, Creath and Genevieve, traced their East Huntington roots back several generations.
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2011
Roger Samples' Last Big Blowout
Roger Samples began 2011 in a nightmare that he never woke from. Cancer had been detected — at first in his left lung, later in his trachea — and it would dominate his world for the remaining five years of his life. An email a day or so after Christmas was how Roger — who had helped create The Flood 40 years earlier, when he was fresh out of Marshall Uni…
Youngblood's Send-off
Eleven years ago tonight, Flood fledgling Jacob Scarr — our youngest-ever bandmate — was fixin’ to leave the nest, heading off to Colorado for college. On this night before Jacob’s red-eye flight to Denver, the Family Flood gave the friend we lovingly called “Youngblood” a memorable sendoff; the group gathered in Bud Carroll’s Live at Trackside studio i…
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THIRD WAVE
2012
Cheering Randy Hamilton's Arrival
Ten years ago today, Randy Hamilton joined The Flood, heralding a new wave in our long story. Week in and week out, while his bass lays down what the late Joe Dobbs liked to call the steady “heartbeat of the band,” Randy’s vocals — leads as well as harmonies — bring such richness to our repertoire. To celebrate his 10th anniversary, here is a pair of Ra…
The Joe Dobbs Book Tour
Ten years ago today, The Flood launched a three-day “Joe Dobbs Book Tour,” with back-to-back shows in three different cities to promote the release of our 77-year-old bandmate’s autobiography, A Country Fiddler. Each show featured Joe’s performance of his favorite fiddle tunes, followed by his reading of excerpts from the book, which Joe had started wor…
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2013
Joe Dobbs' Last Album
The Flood walked into Bud Carroll’s Live at Trackside Studios 10 years ago this week to begin recording its fifth commercial album, which also turned out to be the last for one of the band’s founders. Joe Dobbs — who joined with Dave Peyton, Charlie Bowen and Roger Samples to form the group in 1975
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2014
Ken Hechler's 100th Birthday
Eight years ago today, The Flood appeared at Marshall University as the house band for a very special occasion: beloved West Virginia statesman Ken Hechler’s 100th birthday. The former U.S. congressman and West Virginia secretary of state was more than an hour late to his party, but “his friends didn't seem to mind,” reporter
One of Joe Dobbs' Last Wishes
Seven years ago this autumn, The Flood was part of Marshall University’s wonderful stage production of “The Adventures of Tom Sawyer,” performing a 30-minute pre-show set each evening of the run in the beautiful Joan C. Edwards Theater. Tapped to direct the opening show for the university’s 2014-15 theater season, Nicole Perrone got the idea to add some …
2015
Paul Martin's First Flood Gig
Eight years ago this week, freshly minted Floodster Paul Martin played his first public show with his new band mates, sharing tunes at a remarkable venue: the new and already legendary V Club in downtown Huntington. Paul — bringing mandolin, guitar and vocals — officially joined the band six weeks earlier. The operative word is "officially," because Paul…
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2016
Our First "Live" Album
Seven years ago this week on a wonderful winter's evening at Woodlands, we gathered for a concert that would result in the band’s first ever “live in concert” album. It wasn't our first attempt at such a project — oh, we had tried a number of times over the years to make a "live" album — but this was the first time the magic actually worked.
Dave Peyton's Last Jam
Six years ago tonight, David Peyton played for the last time with the band that he and Charlie Bowen created more than 40 years earlier. Of course, none of us could have known that such sadness was in the offing, that just two weeks after that happy late summer jam session, Dave would take a bad fall at his Mount Union Road home.
Roger's Passing
This week in 2016, our dear friend Roger Samples — co-founder of The Flood four decades earlier — lost his five-year battle with cancer. When Rog was diagnosed in 2011, his doctors’ dire prediction was that he might have as little as six months to live. However, a battery of very aggressive treatments extended his life.
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2017
Those Route 60 Saturday Nights
Five years ago this week, The Flood became the house band for a new wonderful (if short-lived) monthly music variety show called “Route 60 Saturday Night.”
2018
Joyous St. Patrick's Days!
St. Patrick’s Day has always been special to us, so it was particularly sweet six years ago tonight when the opening show for the 2018 season of “Route 60 Saturday Night” — the monthly musical variety bash for which The Flood was the house band — fell on March 17.
2019
Speechlessly Returning to the Studio
Five years ago this week, The Flood returned to the studio to begin recording a new album. This one had a mission and a format not present in any of its half dozen predecessors.
FOURTH WAVE
2020
Pajama Jams: Parties for the Pandemic
Two years ago this week, as the devastating COVID-19 pandemic began sweeping the world and shutting down activities at schools and businesses, churches and entertainment venues, The Flood ended its regular weekly rehearsals for the next six months.
In Memoriam: Dave Peyton, The First Floodster
When at 76 David Peyton died four years ago today, we lost our most important, most beloved Floodster.
2021
Radio Free Flood
A year ago this week, we rolled out the most ambitious project we’ve ever tackled. Radio Floodango, our free music streaming service, lets you listen to a continuous, randomly generated playlist of Flood tunes. Where’s That Music Coming From? We’re fishing in a pretty big pond here. Some 650 episodes of our weekly podcasts — about 44
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2022
Welcome Dan Cox to Our Family!
We’re pleased to announced that guitarist Danny Cox is joining us as the newest member of The Flood. Ask our bass player Randy Hamilton to name his best friends on the planet and Dan will be among those at the very top of the list. The two have known each other since high school.
Bill Hoke, We'll Miss You, Dear Friend
News has come from Abingdon, Virginia, that Floodster Emeritus Bill Hoke has died. He suffered from a respiratory condition called idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis, which lately led to congestive heart failure. He was 74. It’s going to take a while to get used to a world without Bill in it. The years he played in The Flood actually were few — he brought tha…
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2023
Chuck Romine, Rest In Peace, Old Friend
We’ve lost another legend, our beloved “Doctor Jazz.” Chuck Romine died shorrly before sunset on Sunday at age 87. His passing comes just 19 days after the death of Phyllis, his wife of 66 years. The Romines will be so deeply missed by everyone in The Flood’s circle of friends.
Welcome Jack Nuckols to the Family Flood!
Jack Nuckols, who for a month has been jamming with us on assorted percussion instruments — from bongos and spoons to cool brushes on snare and hi-hat — has become the latest member of The Flood, and we are thrilled. Playing his first gig with the band just last weekend, he wowed the folks
Beloved Floodster Doug Chaffin Passes Away
Doug Chaffin — who joined our musical family nearly a quarter of a century ago — died this morning at age 82 in Ashland, Ky., with his family and Donna, his wife of more than 60 years, at his side. We grieve. It is hard to summarize in mere sentences all that Doug contributed to our lives in the past two decades.
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2024
Flooding the TV!
The Flood is thrilled to be featured in the latest installment of Armstrong Neighborhood Channel’s Press Room Recordings series of award-winning music videos. Douglas K. Morris and Shane Finster came by the Bowen House on June 27 to take in one of the band’s weekly rehearsals and to chat with Charlie Bowen about the group’s
Wow, awesome history and progression of the band. We’ve loved every regeneration of The Flood. It seems as if, when you take another turn… you all always land on solid ground with good folks to make music with. Much love here for The 1937 Flood. 💖🎶🎶💙
Keep on keeping on!!! 🤠🤠