Memorial Day Memories
#356 / Flood Time Capsule: 1974
On Memorial Day weekend 50 years ago — three weeks after appearing at the historic Hotel Frederick in downtown Huntington for their very first gig together — Dave Peyton and Charlie Bowen were ready to take their show on the road.
On a hot, humid Saturday afternoon, the pair charged into holiday traffic to trek to Carter County, Ky., and play an afternoon set at the 5th annual Mountain Heritage Folk Festival.
The Bowens and Peytons were big fans of the Mountain Heritage festival, which already had played an important role in The Flood story.
In fact, the first entry in the band’s scrapbook these days is a memory of Charlie and Pamela hearing Peyton and their Flood-buddy-to-be Roger Samples playing at Ashland Community College in the winter of 1971 at a fundraiser for that very festival.
Since then, both couples had been regulars at Mountain Heritage gatherings, which first were held at the Greenup, Ky., Fairgrounds before moving to a better venue, the amphitheater at Carter Caves State Park in nearby Olive Hill.
The Gig
Today we still have vivid memories of some of the tunes the guys worked up for the May 25, 1974, gig.
For instance, we remember getting an especially warm reception for a take on the John Stewart composition, “July You’re a Woman.”
Alas, no recordings of the show have been found. However, Dave and Charlie reprised the performance nine months later when they returned to Kentucky, this time to play at the Catacombs Coffeehouse on a Friday night in Ashland. Click the button below to hear Charlie’s introduction on that chilly February 1975 evening and then his and Dave’s duet on the tune:
The Drenched Damsel
But back to Memorial Day ‘74, another Carter Caves memory was the rain.
Now, the Peyton-Bowen combination didn’t have a name yet. Isn’t it kind of prophetic, then, that two guys who were fixing to form a band called The Flood would see their inaugural out-of-town set cut short by a sudden downpour?
Years later, Charlie and Dave were still telling this particular story of high times at that first big gig:
How This Fits The Flood Story
If you’d like to see more chapters in the half-century Flood history, check out our “Flood on The Timeline” section, which collects stories about milestones in Floodishness.
