Keeping Promises
#505 / Flood Time Capsule: 1996
A promise that Joe Dobbs kept in the late summer of 1996 changed his life — and the lives of everyone else in the Family Flood — for the next 20 years.
At the time, Joe had been out of touch with his old Flood brothers for a while, busy building his business at the Fret ’n Fiddle music store in St. Albans. That’s why earlier that year Dave Peyton and Pamela and Charlie Bowen had been so pleased and surprised when Joe showed up unexpectedly at a rocking music party.
As reported earlier, the party was at Cathie and Bob Toothman’s beautiful home in Ironton, Ohio, and at it, Joe had picked right up on the old tunes that he had first worked out with Dave and Charlie decades earlier.
Following Up
In the months following that January evening, Charlie regularly exchanged emails with Joe. Bowen’s intentions were not subtle. He was actively campaigning for Joe to keep that buzz going by coming by to jam. There were would be joy in the music, of course, Charlie said, but it also might be good therapy, helping heal the shoulder that Joe had hurt the previous year in a bad car wreck.
“I have had a very hard time with my slow recovery from the shoulder injury,” Joe acknowledged in an email to Charlie the day after that seminal Jan. 27 Toothman party. “I have been trying for six months to play at home. It has been most uncomfortable.
“The main thing I am wanting to do now,” Joe said, “is to regain my playing skills to the point it is comfortable and exciting again. … I just want to get back to playing.” In fact, he added, getting back into the music had been a goal ever since the 1980s when The Flood had gone into its hiatus.
“I have lived my life in reverse of most people,” Joe said with a chuckle. “I had the family at a young age, and now I’m ready to retire and be a footloose and fancy-free 25 year old!” With that, Dobbs made a winter day’s promise to come and pick with his old buddies.
Making It Happen
Good intentions, but for lots of reasons — bad weather, good business, a relentlessly aching shoulder — it took another seven months for Joe to follow up on that vow.
That brings us to that hot August evening in 1996. Joe rode his motorcycle from St. Albans to Huntington to meet Charlie and fellow Flood veteran Stew Schneider at Bob Evans for dinner, then come back to the Bowen House for three hours of old music and new music.
Rocking
“Joe continues to be the best fiddler I have ever heard,” Charlie told his mom in an email the next day, “and last night was such a good time.”
For the past four years or so, Charlie and Stew had been working out a few tunes, “but suddenly they were new with Joe in there,” Charlie wrote.
“He seemed to have a good time, but who knows?” Charlie added in the email. “He may come 'round more often … or we might not see him again for four years. That'd be like Joe too! Anyway, it was wonderful.”
Promise Kept
Joe did come back the next week for more, again roaring into town on his bike.
“Joe is looking good these days,” Charlie said in another email. “Here he is 62 this month and he's having the time of his life. … He's traveling around the country on his motorcycle to music festivals. Last week he was in Galax, Va., Elkins, WV, and Pittsburgh, all in the same week. And when he's not at festivals, he's on the road to Iowa to see a new girlfriend. GRIN.”
From then on, Joe was a regular at the weekly Bowen house jams. Eventually, they reeled Dave Peyton back in to the fun too. And with that, Joe was back with his Family Flood for the remaining two decades of his life, making memories all along the way.