Licensing the Devil Kazoo?
#501 / Flood Time Capsule: 2014 (flashing back to 2000...)
The Flood regularly renews its city business license. (Well, y’never know when the guys might get the urge to take it to the streets, right?)
It is not beastly expensive (20 bucks or so), but when the renewal came up in the summer of '14, the old boys had to wonder if the city finance department was sending them a coded message:
When the guys shared online that the band was now Licensee Number 666, the fan base hopped up to pile on the commentary.
"Well, ain't that the devil!" said Connie Crowther, to which Tom Norman added, "There'll be hell to pay!"
Supposition about causes and effects quickly followed, capped off by the ever-deductive Graham Rankin, who theorized, "They must have heard Dave playing kazoo."
The Kazoo Connection
Ironically, Graham came to his kazoo connection on an auspicious anniversary. It was exactly 14 years earlier during a July 2000 evening’s picking session at Susie and Dave Peyton's place that the kazoo suddenly buzzing back into the Floodisphere for the first time in 20 years.
Here's how it happened, according to an email Charlie Bowen wrote to his mom the next morning.
"We had launched gently into a few warmup tunes,” Charlie said, “and by the time the Peytons' company — Susie's brother Bill and sister-in-law Kiran, from California — returned from visiting other locals, we were rocking.”
Everybody was having a good night, especially Dave and the band’s newest member, Doug Chaffin, who was making first visit to Dave and Susan Peyton’s home.
“Well, Kiran brought Dave a brand new kazoo,” Charlie wrote. “Now, Joe Dobbs and I have been urging Dave to start playing kazoo again in the jug band stuff, like he did back in the '80s, but we just couldn't get him motivated.”
Doug had never even heard Dave play it, but he made his kazoo re-debut last night, and it rocked."
And From There…
From the night forward, Peyton became The Flood’s official kazoo papa, leading rollicking hum-alongs with audiences across four states. Click the link below for the rest of the story:
