Our Tamarack Tape
#268 / Flood Time Capsule: 2008
Over the years, The Flood has played many time at Tamarack, West Virginia’s beautiful state-run arts and crafts center in Beckley. The first time the band ever got a video of a show there came 15 years ago this week.
In those days, Tamarack each week still offered a free Sunday afternoon concert, an event to which a lot of locals came for dinner (provided by the Greenbrier resort) and a show.
The Flood played many of those Sunday shows starting in the late 1990s, just a few years after Tamarack opened.
Enter Joe Elbert
The 2008 show was special for The Flood because of the good work of our friend Joe Elbert, who to be there drove from Washington DC to Beckley and back (five hours each way).
Joe is an award-winning photographer. At the time of the Tamarack gig, he had just retired as assistant managing editor for photography at The Washington Post.
Spending decades as a photojournalist, Joe knocked down top prizes, including recognition as one of the top 10 newspaper photographers in America. Working with his staff during 20 years at The Post, Elbert set a new award-winning record that included four Pulitzer Prizes.
Joe’s Video
For The Flood’s Oct. 19, 2008, Tamarack show, Joe filmed numbers for a music video that he later gave to the guys. Setting up three cameras around the Hulett C. Smith Theater, he controlled them remotely and used a fourth handheld camera.
“Very exciting,” Charlie told his mom in an email later. “Can't wait to see what he comes up with! We went on stage at 2 and had quite a nice turnout in the hall -- good, friendly audience -- and the show went well.”
After the show, the band treated Joe to dinner with the guys and their spouses, a sweet afternoon of laughs and stories.
Here’s a sample of the video Joe shot that day, featuring two songs: Charlie Poole’s “Didn't He Ramble?” and the perennial David Peyton special, “Moonshine in Those West Virginia Hills.”
Thanks for the memories, Joe!
Meanwhile, On YouTube
By the way, Elbert’s memorable work at Tamarack came just a week or so after The Flood brought its first video to YouTube, from a gig on Huntington’s riverfront, as reported earlier in this article in Flood Watch:
