Meeting the Brilliant Jesse Smith

#319 / Flood Time Capsule: 2011

When phenomenal guitarist Jesse Smith met fiddlin’ Joe Dobbs in the early 2000s, they both seemed to say in unison, “Where’ve you been all my life?!”

Those of us who had known Joe for about half of our lives immediately heard it, the uncanny musical affinity between these two. Despite the 15-year difference in their ages, “they just think alike,” Doug Chaffin liked to say.

Like many fiddlers, Joe was always looking for a companionable guitarist to complement and accompany his tunes. There had been many, from his brother Dennis Dobbs and fellow Floodster Rog Samples to Margaret Ray and Robin Kessinger and, of course, Doug Chaffin.

In many ways, Jesse Smith was the rich culmination of Joe’s life-long search for a musical soulmate. As soon as they met, they made up for lost time, traveling together to festivals and competitions near and far. In 2010, Jesse had just started entering guitar-picking contests, a tradition that he continues.

We grin realizing how pleased Joe would be today to know that his old partner now regularly brings home the gold. For instance, in 2019, less than four years after Joe’s death, Jesse took first place at the prestigious Wayne Henderson Festival in Wilson, Va.

Two years after, he took an even bigger prize. In Winfield, Kansas, Jess won the 2021 International Finger Style Guitar Championship at the Walnut Valley Festival, besting some 40 of the world’s top pickers.

The Rest of Us Meet Jesse

It was a decade before all that when the rest of us first met Jesse Smith, 13 years ago this week, in fact.

He was on the road from his Wadsworth, Ohio, home, near Akron, to the Cabin Fever Pickin' Party in Hampton, Va. A third of the way along that journey, with Joe at his side, Jesse stopped in to jam with us and sweeten up the evening.

Here’s a sample of the music that night, as reported in the weekly podcast:

Long into the night, we laughed shared stories. "I couldn't get them to go home!” Charlie told his cousin Kathy with a chuckle the next day. “It was midnight before Pamela and I finally got to bed!"

Getting to know Jess, we learned that he had just turned 62 and that he had started playing at age 11. He played lead guitar in his father’s band as a youngster from ages 13 to 17, then played in quite a few bands that performed many different styles of music.

Married to Cathy since they were in their 20s, Jesse had been a carpentry teacher at Wadsworth High School for more than two decades; when he retired, he started building custom guitars.

After That Night

That late-winter 2011 jam wasn’t our only evening with Jesse. Four months later, he was back at the Bowen House.

That time the whole band couldn’t be on hand — it being summer by then, about half the Family Flood had other commitments (vacations, birthday parties and so on) — but we managed to assemble a solid supporting cast for Jesse’s July 2011 visit.

Augmenting Flood Lite (Joe, Doug and Charlie) were two other players: John Preston Smith on drum and Randy Brown who brought his tenor banjo for the occasion.

Everything rocked. Tunes ranged from swing pieces (“Dinah” and “My Blue Heaven”) to folk songs (“Alberta” and “Ash Grove”) to finger-picking showcases (“Little Rock Getaway” and “Cannonball Rag.”)

The magical, eclectic evening later was even fodder for a very special episode in our 2020 “Pajama Jams” series of films, which you can view above, featuring Pamela Bowen’s videos.

On Down the Road

Living so far away (Wadsworth is 250 miles from Huntington), Jesse can’t sit in with The Flood nearly as frequently as we’d like, but whenever he’s on hand, there are memories to be made.

For example, in 2014, we started the year with a gig at Charleston’s Taylor Books. On the road again, Jesse came by with Joe to sit in and just made the night.

“Honesty, I wasn’t expecting much of a turnout,” Charlie told his cousin Kathy in an email later. “I mean, it was about 12 degrees and still icy from the previous day’s snowstorm. But the folks really came out and we had a ball! Best gig in a while.”

Fret ‘n Fiddle Reopening

And we still get to see Jesse from time to time. A couple of years ago, for instance, he and Cathy came to St. Albans, WV, to celebrate the grand re-opening of Joe’s Fret 'n Fiddle music store after a hiatus following Joe's death in 2015.

Click the Play button above for a 15-minute hunk of the good time we had that afternoon!