As the Family Flood rolled back into Charleston’s Taylor Books nine years ago this month, the goal for the show was an ambitious one: to do two hours of all new music, stuff the band had never before done at a public show.
“And the highlight of the evening,” Charlie Bowen later told his cousin Kathy Castner in an email, “was a performance of perhaps the most beautiful song ever written about a state, called ‘West Virginia Chose Me’ by an old friend, Colleen Anderson.”
For many years, Pamela Bowen had been urging Charlie to augment the band’s repertoire with that song, which the two of them had first heard more than a decade earlier while the band was on tour in the Randolph County.
By then “West Virginia Chose Me” already was well known among the state’s folk literati, since Colleen had released it herself in 1991 on her self-published cassette tape called Fabulous Realities.
A half dozen years later, the Appalachian folk group Mountain Thyme recorded a beloved rendition.
After that, Julie Adams regularly performed it on NPR’s Mountain Stage, a particular favorite of the composer who recently commented on Facebook, “Whenever Julie covers a song of mine, I learn how to sing it better myself. Thank you, Julie!”
The Flood’s Version
Despite Pamela’s campaigning for the song to be Floodified, Charlie had found it difficult, for a simple reason: Colleen’s lyrics so moved him that he couldn’t sing it without choking up.
Finally, Charlie asked Michelle Hoge if she could sing it and they started working on it, with some lovely harmony.
Taylor Books was the public debut of the song’s Flood rendition, and the Floodsters were thrilled — and a bit intimidated — since Colleen herself was in the audience, as you’ll hear in Bowen’s introduction to the song in the audio below:
As a result, Michelle couldn’t get through it perfectly either, her voice audibly cracking on a particularly poignant verse.
“Colleen got a kick out of that,” reported Pamela, who was seated beside the composer at the show.
Colleen’s Route 6o Saturday Night
A month after The Flood’s Taylor Books gig that summer night, the band joined the good folks at Route 60 Music Co. to launch the monthly “Route 60 Saturday Night” music variety show.
And a year after that launch, Colleen and her old friend the late George Castelle were the guests. Pamela’s video above featured their performance of “West Virginia Chose Me,” with Michelle providing sweet background vocals.
About the Song
“West Virginia Chose Me” is an autobiographical statement for its composer.
Originally from Michigan, Colleen came to the Mountain State as a VISTA volunteer in the 1960s. She helped found Cabin Creek Quilts, a very successful cooperative that allowed financially strapped mountain women to make money by selling their handiwork.
Colleen finished college in West Virginia and stayed, making a living as a writer, essayist, graphic designer, writing workshop conductor and more. She is a regular essayist on public radio, which is where she became friends with Michelle, who in those days was in charge of fund-raising for WV Public Broadcasting.
Fire Up Your Time Machine!
For more about what was happening in the Floodisphere in 2017, click here to visit those pages of the band’s online scrapbook. And if you like a taste of what The Flood was sounding in those days, swing over to the free Radio Floodango music streaming service and click the 2017 button in the “Hear by Year” section.
Meanwhile, want more tunes from The Chick Singer? Turn on the Michelle Channel.
There you can sit back and enjoy a randomized playlist of dozens of tunes featuring Michelle over the years.
Finally, remember that we’ve now got ways to mobilize the ol’ Floodanago. Click here to find out how to put the Flood radio on your computer desktop and on an iPhone to make your Flood fix always just a click away.