When Peyton Preached 'The Gospel'

#467 / Flood Time Capsule: 1980 (Video Extra)

A few years after Floyd County, Ky., native Charlie Gearheart’s Goose Creek Symphony released their 1972 Words of Earnest album, Dave Peyton gobbled up one of its signature tunes and taught it to fellow Flood founders Charlie Bowen and Roger Samples.

Forty-five years ago this month, “The Gospel” — which featured ironic lyrics reminiscent of John Prine (How can life be so cold? / Where did all the water go / That my boat was floating on yesterday…) — was among the tunes the guys played at a show at the Dogwood Arts and Crafts Festival at Huntington’s then-new civic center. Click the Play button below to listen that day’s performance:

About Goose Creek Symphony

Growing up in Kentucky’s P Country (Prestonsburg, Paintsville, Pikeville), Charlie Gearheart carried his Appalachian instincts across the country when his family relocated to Phoenix for the health of Charlie’s asthmatic mother.

Gearheart was not yet 30 in 1968 when he joined a batch of musicians moonlighting after hours in a Phoenix recording studio in jam sessions that spawned The Goose Creek Symphony.

Recording its first album that year at Audio Recorders, the new band was subsequently signed to Capitol Records in 1970. The band continued recording until 1976, when it quietly dispersed, engaging in what Gearheart later characterized as a “14-year fishing trip.”

In 1990, inspired by a visit back to his Floyd County home and by interest from Appalshop in Whitesburg, Ky., Gearheart’s Goose Creek came to life again and continues today.

Gearheart, who died last year at age 84, once told Walter Tunis of The Musical Box newsletter that Kentucky was always “the basic roots of our music,” adding, “When I’m first writing a tune, when the situation is just me and my guitar, I’m reminded a lot of the Appalachians. My roots are really there.”

Our Take on the Tune

We don’t know how much of this story Dave Peyton knew when he started noodling with Goose Creek songs, but Dave’s sharply tuned Appalachian radar did seem to recognize a kindred spirit.

Within a year or two of The Flood’s birth, “The Gospel” was already a regular in the band’s set list and was usually among the tunes the guys played at each edition of the Bowen Bash music parties where the band grew up.

Dave, Rog and Charlie had already worked out their arrangement when Joe Dobbs joined the bunch in 1975. Five years later, the guys were booked to perform at Huntington’s Dogwood Arts and Crafts Festival, and “Gospel” was a natural tune to share. For more about that show, which also featured the debut of Peyton’s new creation “Wallace the Washboard,” click the link below:

The Post-Roger Flood

Alas, Rog Samples ended his regular Floodifying in the early 1980s when he and the family moved away to the green fields of Mount Sterling, Ky., and with him went a number of songs that relied so heavily on his gorgeous guitar work and vocal leads and harmonies.

However, “Gospel” still made occasional appearances over the years. As reported earlier, Dave’s last Flood performance of the tune came on a summer night in 2009 at the home of Shirley and Norman Davis.

At one point during that evening, one of the Flood neophytes commented that they could have an old-fashioned tent revival right there in that living room. This remark inspired Peyton and Bowen to reach back for some rollicking religious tunes they used to do in the earliest days of The Flood in the 1970s. Click the button below for three of those back-to-back songs:

More From the Gospel Column?

As noted in an earlier Flood Watch article, The Flood’s eclectic repertoire includes a respectable set of religious songs, as you can hear in the “Gospel Hour” show in the free Radio Floodango music streaming service. Click the link below to give it a spin: