On a balmy evening 24 years ago this week, The Flood went on the road, piling into cars and driving 20 miles upriver to a beautiful A-frame house in Crown City, Ohio. Overlooking the Ohio River, this was a newly acquired second home of legendary local potter Bill Meadows and his wife, Nancy.
The band had planned a quiet Wednesday practice out on the back deck overlooking the water. However, Nancy had other ideas. When Charlie Bowen suggested she invite “a few” neighbors, she gamely invited no fewer than 40 folks to sit in the beautiful meadow that surrounded what the Meadowses would dub The River House.
In an instant, the rehearsal transformed into a starlit riverside concert, complete with grilled hot dogs, baked beans, potato salad and a table overflowing with desserts.
It was not only a sweet, defining night, but also just a single snapshot of a decades-long friendship, a beautiful anchor of the band’s history.
Treasured Friends
The Meadows family was already deeply woven into the very fabric of The Flood. Bill and Nancy were fixtures at the weekly rehearsals at Charlie and Pamela Bowen’s house, which today is packed to the gills with Bill’s pottery.
Beloved in the arts community, Bill, who also was a teacher in public schools and university classes, oversaw the ceramics program at Huntington Museum of Art for close to three decades and was a Walter Gropius Master Artist there in July 2000. The Flood often celebrated with the Meadowses. For instance, on March 3, 2004, the band moved the weekly jam session directly to the Meadows’ Huntington home.
Nestled among high pines on Norway Avenue in the southern hills, the house showcased Bill’s paintings and a basement pottery workshop.
After Nancy treated the hungry musicians to a buffet of baked spaghetti, salad and homemade pound cake, the band officially welcomed their hosts into the inner circle. They presented Bill and Nancy with signature blue kazoos and framed certificates officially inducting them as “ornery members of The 1937 Flood.”
Expanding the Circle
Nancy’s artistic connections also helped expand the band’s extended family further. For example, while working with Rose Marie Riter at the museum’s gift shop, Nancy famously shamed Rose — who was too shy to attend on her own — into coming to her first Flood jam in February 2006, welcoming the band’s beloved future “den mother” into the fold.
Over the years, the family milestones kept coming. On Oct. 1, 2006, the band returned to the Crown City deck to play background music for the engagement party of Bill and Nancy’s daughter, Mariana. The emotional highlight occurred when the band slipped inside the living room to play a private, intimate set of 1930s standards exclusively for Nancy’s 90-year-old, wheelchair-bound mother.
Perhaps nothing demonstrated the depth of this friendship more than when Bill underwent heart bypass surgery in February 2007. Knowing Bill would deeply miss the music while recuperating, the band packed up their instruments and moved their entire weekly Wednesday rehearsal directly into the Meadows’ living room, filling the house with songs, laughter and healing energy.
Friendship with the Meadowses continued for decades more, as The Flood marvels at the never-ending displays of love between these two. And the guys mourned with the family’s losses. Bill lost his wife of 53 years when Nancy died at age 74 in January 2018. Bill died four years later, at 83, on July 22, 2024.
Set Your Time Machine for 2002
So that lovely deck in Crown City on a September Thursday night in 2002 was more than just a beautiful stage; it was the gathering place of a family. For The Flood, the Meadows family proved that the listeners who feed, cheer and play kazoos along with the band are just as vital to a beautiful West Virginia melody as the musicians themselves.
Alas, we have no recording on the music the guys played that night, butyou can sample The Flood’s 2002 sounds. Just visit the free Radio Floodango music streaming service, and in the “Hear by Year” section, click the 2002 button. Or just click below for the express lane to your time machine.
And remember, we’ve now got ways to mobilize the ol’ Floodanago. Click here to find out how to put the Flood radio on your computer desktop and on an iPhone to make your Flood fix always just a click away.
Meanwhile, for more about what was happening in the Floodisphere in 2002, click here to visit those pages of the band’s online scrapbook.
And to read more of the doings in the Floodiverse in 2002, click here to browse those pages in the band’s online scrapbook.