One of Joe Dobbs' Last Wishes

#7 / Flood Time Capsule: 2014

Seven years ago this autumn, The Flood was part of Marshall University’s wonderful stage production of “The Adventures of Tom Sawyer,” performing a 30-minute pre-show set each evening of the run in the beautiful Joan C. Edwards Theater.

Tapped to direct the opening show for the university’s 2014-15 theater season, Nicole Perrone got the idea to add some Floodishness to the production after seeing a staging of the Irish romantic musical “Once,” in which live music is an integral part. During the summer,Nicole sounded us out on the idea and we jumped at it. She actually had two requests: that entire band be on stage to warm up the crowd each night with some acoustic folk sounds before the play started and then that fiddler Joe Dobbs hang around and play background fiddle throughout the show each night. They even outfitted Joe with his own costume, since he would be playing on-stage as well as behind the scenes.

Work began in earnest in September as the band honed its pre-show set and Joe worked with the young cast to weave his fiddle tunes into the play’s action. It was a ball.

Now, honestly, we were all a little concerned that we were over-working Joe — and “Tom Sawyer” turned out to be The Flood’s last public performance with our venerable co-founder, who in less than a year was dead at 82 — but Joe loved it.

In fact, sitting alone with Charlie in the green room on Saturday night before the show's last of five performances, Joe confided, “I wish we were going on for another couple of weeks! I’ve always wanted to see what it would be like to do a nightly show like this. It’s something else off my bucket list!”

Here’s Joe rocking it on “Golden Slippers,” a tune we played as the house opened and the audience began streaming in for the show: