The Two-Year Party

#324 / Flood Time Capsule: 2010-2012

The band that was born at parties a half century ago returned to its good-time roots 40 years later, launching what became a two-year party at the Bowen House in the Southside of Huntington.

From the spring of 2010 to Spring 2012, The Flood's weekly gatherings steadily evolved from simple rehearsals into full-fledged jam sessions, with more and more visitors coming in, some to play, even more just to listen and sometimes to sing along.

How We Got There

Looking back on it, it is clear that the party period was part of a natural progression. After all, by then, as noted earlier, the band was bigger, so there were more people at the table who could invite in friends and family to be part of the fun.

Also, word of The Flood’s weekly session was spreading beyond the immediate kinship circles, because of the band’s then-new podcast. Each week the podcast blasted out a fresh batch of Floodishness.

Even before that, journalist Tim Irr had famously visited a jam session for a four-minute feature on WSAZ-TV. Tim’s much-viewed report had made it clear that neighbors and friends were welcome to come join in.

Finally, the Bowens had put out the news. The doors were open, they had said. Don’t knock — nobody will hear you over the music — just come on in.

The Happening Vibe

Our good friend Richard Cobb once said these weekly jam sessions reminded him of an old-fashioned "happening."

Every week, he noted, the music that happened was solely determined by whoever walked through the door that night.

So each week was different. Sometimes it was cool and quiet, maybe a half dozen pickers and an equal number of die-hard fans. Other times … well, picture this:

It’s the eve of Thanksgiving 2010. Twenty-seven people are in the room, including friends coming from as far away as New York and Washington and as near as across town and from down around the block. Pamela comes in with a baggie of kazoos. Click the button below to hear the result, as reported in that week’s podcast:

Worldly

Sometimes the weekly party took on an international flavor. One night in July 2010, for instance, Veronica Smith, mother of Flood buddy Mike Smith, was visiting from England and taking in her first Flood jam session. That same night, old friends Rod and Judy Jones were visiting from their home in Australia. Here’s a bit of video from the evening, featuring Rod and Judy’s solidly old-time take on “Heaven’s Radio”:

A few minutes later, Mike brought down the house with his wonderful bit of reduced Shakespeare, borrowed from the madly unbuttoned mind of Scottish folksinger Adam McNaughtan:

At other times the evening had moments that felt like a church service, especially when our buddy Rob McNurlin was in the room:

Reunions

It was on the good old steamboat Delta Queen that we first met Missouri folksingers Cathy Barton and Dave Para. Sometimes when they were passing through on their way home to Boonville, Mo., they would join The Flood partying. Here’s a tune for one of those memorable visits:

Other times the parties were opportunities for Floodster emerita to reconnect. One summer evening, two former Floodsters from the 1970s — Bill Hoke of Abingdon, Va., and Stewart Schneider of Ashland, Ky. — dropped in on the same night.

We got ‘em playing on this great old Jean Ritchie composition called -- appropriately enough -- "My Dear Companion.”

Harmonicats

The blues often were front and center at these bashes, as when the late, great Mark Keen came in from the cold one November night:

Speaking of harmonicats, it’s always a special night when our dear friend Jim Rumbaugh drops in:

Meanwhile, Sallie Sublette doesn't get back to us very often. It's all day in airports -- it takes three flights to get back to her native West Virginia from her home in Pocatello, Idaho -- but occasionally for Flood affairs, Sallie dropped in and gave us another taste of that sweet western wind.

Click the button below to hear her do a couple of great tunes!

Classy and Sassy

We always loved when Wendell Dobbs came by and classed up the joint!

Just as Tom Norman did. Tom played in rock 'n' roll bands around here for decades, occasionally dipping into rockabilly. When Tom finally made it to a Flood jam session, we got him singing one of his originals:

And we still talk about the night that Douglas Imbrogno and his old friend Albert Perrone were in the room for this memorable duet:

And nothing ever said “party” quite like Dave Peyton and Wallace the Washboard, especially they teamed up with Chuck Romine:

So, Why Did It End?

The three- and four-hour jam sessions filled the Bowen house with raucous, happy, talented friends nearly every week, and we never regretted a moment of it. However, by the spring of 2012, it was time for another change.

“One night I looked around,” Charlie recalled in a later email to his cousin Kathy Castner, “and there were 17 guitar pickers in the room, and, except for Pamela and me, no members of The Flood had shown up. In other words, the party was starting to eat the band!”

Determined to restore the Family Flood’s sense of ownership of those weekly gatherings, the Bowens decided to ring the bell for closing time on the weekly festivities.

Charlie emailed the party regulars in March 2012. They were always more than welcome, he wrote, to come and listen, to visit and socialize, kibitz — even share whatever snacks might be on the table — “but we got to get back to making this a Flood rehearsal night.”

And it worked. Evidence for that is the fact that nowadays well over half the repertoire the band plays has been learned since that fateful email.

The Party Films

So the endless party ended a dozen years ago, but the memories continue. Indeed, music and images of those magical two years of joy and hijinks have been the subject of two separate Flood film projects.

Back in 2018, the band produced its first “legacy film,” called Flood and Friends. This 75-minute celebration is built around Pamela's original videos of two dozen friends performing. The film can be viewed below:

Then a few years later, during the horrible Covid-19 pandemic when The Flood ended its regular weekly rehearsals for a long period, we revisited many of those party moments for a series of stay-at-home concerts on film called “The Pajama Jams.”

The series consisted mostly of never-before-released audio and video recorded at assorted Flood jams. Throughout Spring 2020, a new PJ Jam video was released each Saturday morning. In all, it amounted to some 15 hours of free music and stories. Click here to read all about it!