To Dear Friends Rod & Judy Jones

#525 / Flood Time Capsule: 1979

For many years, autumn in our Appalachian hills also meant the latest visit with two good, long-time friends from Australia.

“The Aussies are coming! The Aussie are coming!” Joe Dobbs often emailed to alert as us all as soon as he got word that Rod and Judy Jones were again on their way from Sydney.

Back in 1979 when we first met the Joneses, The Flood and friends were literally on stage. The occasion was the third public edition of the “Bowen Bashes.”

Two years earlier, our wonderfully crazy three-day music parties had taken on a public face when the folks at at the Huntington Galleries (now called the Huntington Museum of Art) invited us to stage a free public mini-version of the party at the museum in the style of the old 1960s hootenannies. The event went over so well, that for the next few years it became an annual late summer/early autumn event there.

The autumn of 1979 was Rod and Judy’s first visit to the U.S. In his book, A Country Fiddler, Joe describes meeting them at Fret ‘n Fiddle, his and brother Dennis’ shop in West Huntington:

“I returned to the store after eating lunch,” Joe wrote. “As I walked in, there was a couple playing and singing. The man looked to be in his 30s, wearing a yellow ball cap with ‘CAT’ written in black on the front and playing a guitar. The woman looked to be in her late 20s and was playing an old fiddle tune on the banjo.

“I stood there and listened. They played quite well. As they finished, Dennis said, ‘Where do you think these musicians are from?’ ‘By the style they play, I would guess North Carolina,’ I replied.

“But I was wrong. They were from Sydney, Australia. This was the first time I met Rod and Judy Jones. They were fans of Molly O’Day. Judy explained that it was their first visit to the U.S. and they had driven to Huntington especially to see her. Molly told them to visit the Dobbs brothers at the Fret ‘n Fiddle before they left town. We had repaired several instruments for Molly and her husband, Lynn Davis.

“This was the beginning of a great friendship with the Joneses that resulted in two visits to Australia some 20 years later.”

Rod and Judy were still in town that Saturday night when the “Gallery Bash,” as we called it, was scheduled, so Joe brought them along as surprise guest performers. Here’s a track from their set that night, “Red-Haired Boy” (aka “Little Beggarman”):

In the above, you’ll hear Judy on banjo, Rod and Joe on fiddles, Bill Hoke on bass and Margaret Ray on guitar.)

Those public bashes — including Rod and Judy’s debut — are celebrated in this special episode of The Flood Legacy Films which we published on YouTube a few years ago:

Over the Years with Rod and Judy

That autumn weekend 46 years ago was the beginning of a beautiful friendship between Appalachian and the Joneses. From then on, the Australian couple spent many of the their Septembers and Octobers playing old-time music in our hills. Usually those trips included a stay at Joe’s house.

And that means Rod and Judy were on hand for many events in Flood history.

The photo above, for instance, was taken almost exactly 20 years after the 1979 Bowen Bash. This time the picking was in the living room of Susie and Dave Peyton’s house on Mount Union Road. It was an eclectic evening, for sure. For one thing, that’s Dale Jones who brought a tuba to the jam. And that’s Joe on Charlie Bowen’s guitar, which he grabbed so that Charlie could snap the picture.

Meanwhile, 20 years after this — during those lonely days of quarantine in the Covid-19 pandemic — The Flood had an opportunity to remember brighter, happier times of jams at the Bowen House when Charlie and Pamela put together their series of “Pajama Jam” videos.

A highlight of all those PJ sessions is the one above, which features nearly an hour of Rod and Judy tunes from over the years.

Memento

These days, it has been a number of years since we’ve been with the Joneses — we’ve not seen them since Joe’s death — but Rod and Judy are still very much a presence in The Flood band room each week.

That’s because the pair often came to the States with a stock of little koalo bear dolls that they could leave as mementos of their visit. About a dozen years ago, during their last jam at the Bowen House, they quietly tucked this little fella into the strings of an old guitar that hangs near the doorway.

When Floodsters discovered it a few days later, Joe and Charlie agreed on a name. To this day, the little “Ozzie” still mans his post as an official greeter to The Flood’s cozy home.