In his defense, the mule had no idea what was coming.
It was a September Saturday afternoon 23 years ago this week, and the band was booked to play a couple jolly sets at a farm in Greenbottom. The event was the Scottish Rite of Freemasonary Foundation’s second annual fund-raiser and pig roast at Ostie Mathison’s farm on W.Va. 2.
It was for a good cause. Proceeds from the do went to the rite’s childhood language clinic at Marshall University, which at the time had 70 children in the free-of-charge language program. Treatment includes needs such as articulation, language, fluency, voice, feeding-swallowing, auditory processing and other related disorders.
The Gig
The plan was for a fun outdoor public concert. Unfortunately, the weather was was in the mood — rain all day long — so we had to move the show undercover, in this case, into Ostie’s nicely appointed horse stable, where everybody had a good time.
Everybody, that is, except the barn’s resident mule, who thought the late David Peyton’s lusty kazoo sounded unsettlingly like a huge horse fly! Click the video below to hear to Dave relating that story:
Like any good yarn, this story has legs. Nearly a decade after the original event, memories of the mule-kazoo duet were revived during a Flood show in Barboursville. Click the button to hear it retold in 2012:
Remembering Dave’s Kazoory
The above video is a snippet from a 12-minute mini-film called “Voodoo Guru of Kazoo” about the late Dave Peyton’s championing of this humble instrument. Click here to check out the full film.
More from 2003?
Alas, we have no recordings of what the band played that afternoon in Ostie Mathison’s barn, but if you’d like to sample the general Flood sound circa 2003, check into Radio Floodango.
And remember, we’ve now got ways to mobilize the ol’ Floodanago. Click here to find out how to put the Flood’s radio activity on your computer desktop and on an iPhone to make your Flood fix always just a click away.
And if you’re interested in what else was happening in Floodlandia that year, click here to read the 2003 pages in the band’s online scrapbook.