The Party that Rebirthed the Band
#173 / Flood Time Capsule: 1996
Our band was born at parties in the 1970s and then was RE-born at another party 20 years later.
The venue for this 1996 re-stirring of Floodishness was the lovely Ironton, Ohio, home of Cathie and Bob Toothman on a chilly winter’s night when fiddlin' Joe Dobbs sat down again with his old band mates Charlie Bowen and Dave Peyton.
And it all happened because of Joe's chance meeting with another former Floodster, the late Bill Hoke, who just happened to be on his way to the same great party from his Abingdon, Va., home 200 miles away.
Drifting
Of course, Joe had been on hand two decades earlier when Dave and Charlie along with Roger Samples started the band in the early 1970s, and Joe had played with The Flood all along.
But by the mid-1980s, life started interfering. That’s when band members began drifting off in different directions, pursuing the interests of family and new jobs.
Joe moved his Fret 'n Fiddle music store from Huntington to St. Albans; Rog left West Virginia, moving with Tammy and the kids to Mount Sterling, Ky.; Dave and Charlie put music on hold for a while to busy themselves writing freelance books together for Bantam Books; Bill got married and moved to Virginia.
As a result, for eight or 10 years or so, The Flood became just a sometimes-kind-of jam session/reunion thing.
The Impetus
But then came Jan. 27, 1996.
Early that day, party-bound Bill was passing through and stopped at Joe's Fret ‘n Fiddle for a little visit and to check out instruments. While there, Bill said to Joe, "Hey, you ARE going to the Toothmans' party tonight, aren't you?"
Honestly, Joe hadn't planned to. The fiddler still didn’t feel up to snuff because of a car wreck he suffered the previous summer in which he had badly boogered up his shoulder. However, as Joe told us later, "Bill Hoke kind of shamed me into it. I mean, I figured if Bill could drive all the way from Virginia for a party, I sure as hell ought to go too."
A Special Night
And we were all glad he did. Jamming at the Toothmans' happy, rollicking get-together that night, Charlie and Dave launched into some of the old tunes they had played decades earlier, and Joe jumped right in.
The next morning, Charlie told Joe in an email, "As Pamela said, 'You could have 100 fiddlers in the next room and pick out Joe's beautiful sound without even peeking!' You've spoiled us all over again, man."
To this, Joe wrote right back, "It is most flattering to have all of you to enjoy my playing, which sounded like a struggle to me.
“You being a musician,” he added, “you understand what I mean by my hands not producing what is passing through my mind, just trying to play tunes that you have played for so many years. I felt so good to be playing last night, and if just for the physical exercise, it was very good for me."
After that night, Dobbs was ready for more. By the following summer, Joe had resumed weekly sessions at the Bowen House, and he would play with the band for the rest of his life.
Remembering Bob and Cathie
About our wonderful host for the evening, we are still thinking of Bob and Cathie Toothman, even two decades now after they both passed away, Cathie in 2002, Bob in 2007.
Click the button below for a shout-out to Bob in a March 2017 Flood podcast that starts with a snippet of Toothman’s own singing and picking at a Spring 1980 party in Huntington’s South Side: