Making Thanksgiving Memories

#419 / Flood Time Capsule: 2001

Harmonicat Sam St. Clair was just four months into his new life as a Floodster when he invited his band mates to help him makes Thanksgiving memories for some international visitors to Huntington.

The venue was a house near the Marshall University campus provided for international students by Sam and his family’s firm, Huntington Realty Corp.

“The guys and I had a grand time at the party last night,” Charlie Bowen told his mom in an email the next morning.

“There were more people in the audience with accents than is usual around here,” he said. “Lots of folks from Mexico and South America, but also from France and England. Fun watching their reaction to our strange bag of tunes.”

Amazing Player

Also on hand was “a great guitarist from Brazil who played some wonderful sambas,” Charlie added. “He played between our two sets.” Neither Doug Chaffin nor Chuck Romine could make the scene, “so The Flood was just a quartet last night, but it went fine."

That wonderful samba-playing guitarist was Tasso Lugon, a judge in the supreme court of Brazil’s southeastern state of Espirito Santo. By the fall of 20001, he had been coming to the U.S. for many years through the International Partners of the Americas Program, under which Espirito Santo and West Virginia are "sister states."

Through that international work, Tasso became a good friend of Jim and Mickey St. Clair of Huntington, and he soon found a kindred spirit in their music-loving son, Sam.

That Thanksgiving, Tasso found even more of an extended West Virginia musical family in The Flood. After that evening at the international house, he started following the band's activities online and always attended jam sessions whenever he was back in the states.

Meanwhile, back home in Vitoria, Brazil, Tasso still is active in the music scene and his videos are popular on YouTube.

More Flood Lore?

If you’re curious to see how this item fits into the band’s broader story, you might enjoy browsing Flood Watch’s Flood History section, which offers quick and easy connections to posts about key moments in 50 years of Floodery.

Click here to give it a look.