Sweet Times with Cathy and Dave

#240 / Flood Time Capsule: 2010

By the summer of 2010, The Flood had made many road trips to Fairmont, WV, to play at the fine amphitheater at Prickett's Fort State Park, but this was the first time the guys brought guest artists with them. And what guests they were!

Cathy Barton and Dave Para had been Flood friends for nearly a decade by then, having first met Pamela and Charlie Bowen and later the rest of the band on board the good old Delta Queen steamboat.

The Bowens even shot a photo that the renowned folk duo used on the back cover of their 2000 album, Living on the River. The picture was taken on the stern of The Delta Queen, overlooking that iconic red paddle wheel.

All the Floodsters were in awe of Cathy and Dave and their music. They created something that the legendary Ed Trickett best described.

Cathy and Dave, the late singer/songwriter said, “as much as any folk musicians I know, carry on the sense of importance of folk music, the value of digging for old musical gold, of traveling far and wide to collect old songs and tunes, and of being friends with, rather than exploiters of the old-timers who have provided such wonderful musical foundations for us all.”

In 2005 The Flood joined Barton and Para as the featured entertainers for one of Phyllis Dale’s wonderful reunion cruises on the Delta Queen.

From then on, whenever the couple was in the area — they regularly travel east from their Boonville, Mo., home for gigs in Kentucky, West Virginia, Virginia, Pennsylvania and Maryland — they sometimes spent a night or two at the Bowen House in Huntington.

Doing Fairmont

In August 2010, when we figured out that one of those trips would be near the date of The Flood’s next Prickett Fort show, we talked Cathy and Dave into joining us.

They spent the night at Charlie and Pamela’s house, then came along for the 200-mile drive from Huntington to Fairmont for the show. Dave even helped run the sound system that evening.

Pamela captured a bit of video from the Barton-Para set. In the video below, you’ll see them wowing the crowd with their rendition of The Delmore Brothers' "Happy on the Mississippi Shore."

At Home with The Flood

A week or so later, after a gig in Virginia, Cathy and Dave passed through again, this time on their way back home to Missouri. After settling down in the Bowens’ guest room, they sat in at the weekly Flood gathering, making a wonderful night of music and stories.

Of course, we had to share some of the fun with our podcast audience. Here’s an especially sweet river tune that Dave and Cathy found in Mary Wheeler's classic 1944 collection of roustabout songs called Steamboatin' Days. Click the button below to hear their take on “The Bayou Sara”:

A decade later, that memorable evening was central to this special hour-long episode in our “Pajama Jams” film series, which we produced in spring 2020:

Rest In Peace, Dear Cathy

In April 2019, we were grief-stricken to learn of Cathy’s death from a rare and aggressive form of melanoma. Her passing came just short of her 64th birthday and of her and Dave’s 40th wedding anniversary.

Cathy played her music right up until the end. In fact, less than a year earlier we last saw her when we visited The American Queen riverboat on which she and Dave were performing.

A lifelong musician, Cathy grew up singing in elementary school in Hawaii, and after moving to Missouri she took up the guitar and banjo. She eventually developed a champion old-time banjo style and went on to perform at the Grand Ole Opry in Nashville and on the 1970s TV show, “Hee Haw.”

She expanded her musical range too. For instance, after hearing a record by Bill Spence on community radio, Cathy became one of the first hammered dulcimer players in her region.

(Incidentally, the hammer dulcimer made for another Flood connection. We later learned that, long before getting to know the rest of the band, Cathy already had met Joe and Dennis Dobbs years earlier, because she and the Dobbses’ old traveling partner Mary Faith Rhodes performed at many of the same hammer dulcimer events in the 1970s.)

We miss you, Cathy. We will always remember your smile and the jingle jangle of your magical laughter.