Our First Time at Tamarack
#147 / Flood Time Capsule: 1999
The state’s glorious Tamarack artisan market near Beckley, WV, was just three years old when The Flood played its first show there 23 years ago this week.
Joe Dobbs — through promotions on his “Music from the Mountains” radio show and in his Fret ‘n Fiddle store — already was active in helping launch Tamarack, an economic development project that the West Virginia Parkways Authority created to sell homegrown crafts, fine art and books, specialty foods and recordings.
Drawing In The Flood
So, the fiddler had no trouble persuading his cohorts, Dave and Charlie, to join him in inaugurating Tamarack’s free Sunday afternoon concerts.
“The Tamarack gig went beautifully,” Charlie told his mom in an email the next day. “We went immediately to the theater and found they had a nice poster up with our pictures and name on it. And we hadn't been in the building five minutes before we heard the lady on the microphone announce that we would be playing at 2.”
The band found the spiffy new Hulett C. Smith Theater to be modern, with great acoustics, good lighting and comfortable seats.
The Only Hitch
After the soundcheck, the guys were visited backstage by Tim Pyles, the Tamarack events director, and learned the only wrinkle in the afternoon’s plans. For the show, they had prepared two 45-minute sets, but it turned out Tim had decided on a different format, preferring instead to have a single one-hour set.
“So,” Charlie reported in his email, “in the minutes before we had to go on, we quickly went through our list and prune the set down from 20 tunes to a dozen. Best laid plans...”
But the show itself went great. “We had probably a hundred folks there,” Charlie wrote, “and while Tim had told us not to be put off if people came and went during the show, they didn't. Most stayed for the whole thing, gave us a warm reception and nice ovation after each tune.”
“Oh, we had a few glitches -- we couldn't quite hear each other as well as we had during the soundcheck -- but our weekly jam sessions really paid off there, because despite that problem, we hung together nicely. Afterward, we had a lot of people come up to chat with us.”
About That Picture
By the way, the picture above — one of our favorites from the day’s show — offers a few fun facts about The Flood of 1999. For one thing, while Tamarack was advertising Joe’s fiddling fireworks (“Irish and Appalachian Fiddle Tunes,” promised the sign at the door), Joe in those days occasionally switched off to mandolin to bring some variety to the sound.
And do you notice that our tribal elder also sometimes sang?
This particular photo was snapped probably during the day’s performance of the old Hazel Dickens anthem “West Virginia, My Home.” We suspect that’s the case, anyway, because the picture shows Joe appearing to reach for that high harmony that he always liked to sing on the song’s chorus.
Recordings
We have no recordings from our Tamarack debut, but for a take on Hazel’s tune from a few years later, click the button below.
Actually, many of the songs The Flood played that day — besides “West Virginia, My Home,” the revised set list included “Rocking Chair,” “Fair and Tender Ladies,” “Sweet Georgia Brown,” “Furniture Man,” “Down by the Sally Gardens,” “Jug Band Music” — would end up on the band’s first album, recorded two years later. (By then, of course, The Flood had doubled in size, no longer a spindly trio, but a robust sextet with the addition of bassist Doug Chaffin, banjoist Chuck Romine and harmonicat Sam St. Clair.)
Oh, and speaking albums, The Flood played that venue many times over the years, often to promote the release of a new recording, and Tamarack always generously devoted shelf space in its bookstore to Flood affairs.
These days, incidentally, all The Flood’s albums can be played for free online through our new Radio Floodango music streaming service. Click here to turn us on!
