On the Streets of Glenville
#85 / Flood Time Capsule: 1980
The third weekend of June 1980 found the three founding Floodsters — David, Roger and Charlie — in Glenville for the West Virginia State Folk Festival. By then, the boys had been “doin’ Glenville” for years.
For Roger, of course, it was always a family affair. His brother Mack, a professor at Glenville College, managed the festival, and brother Ted was a Glenville alum. To this day, The Samples Brothers Band is legendary in those parts.
But on this particular Glenville weekend — June 20-21, 1980 — it was Dave and Charlie who became something of a hippy-hold-out face of the festival. That’s because the two of them arrived in town that Friday afternoon in the ultimate old hippy conveyance: a VW microbus (which Dave had recently bought from Rog).
After Peyton parked the minibus on the main street, the guys slid open the side doors and broke out the instruments. Soon they drew the attention of roving photographers. The next morning they made Page One of The Parkersburg News. (Oh, and speaking of photos, here are a few more Glenville glamour shots from Kim Johnson and Goldenseal magazine over the years.)
That Spanish Fandango
Meanwhile, here’s another fun memory of that June 1980 afternoon: when Roger arrived and the three of them jammed on the streets and in front of The Country Store, an old man — who might or might not have been deeply in his cups (memories differ) — asked Roger, “Can you play that ‘Spanish Fandango’?”
For some reason something about that request tickled Rog’s funny bone, and forever after, in a lull between tunes, Roger — always an expert voice impersonator — might perfectly echo that same old request: “Boys, could we do a little of that ‘Spanish Fandango’?”
Postscript: Ladies Sail Away
Years later, Roger wrote a beautiful song — “Ladies Sail Away” — about those magical moonlit Glenville nights, memories of fiddlers and dancing girls.
In 2002, when appearing solo on Joe Dobbs’ Music from the Mountains show on WV Public Radio, Roger talked about how that song came to be. Click the button below to hear a clip of his reminiscence:
And in the summer of 2011, during a reunion with his old Flood comrades at the Bowen house, Roger played the song again, as seen in this video shot by Pamela that evening: