“Youngblood” Jacob Scarr Joins Up

#48 / Flood Time Capsule: 2009

Thirteen ago today, Jacob Scarr became an official member of the band, our youngest ever. The guitarist already had been picking with us for two years, but since he was just 14 years old when he started hanging out in Floodlandia, we fully expected he would get bored with us at any time.

After all, we told each other, Jacob had to feel like he was jamming with his grandfathers. Didn’t kids of the new millennium have infamously short attention spans?

Well, not Jacob. So when he reached his 16th birthday and was still a regular at the weekly jam sessions at the Bowen house, we made it official and invited on board the talented player whom we soon dubbed "Youngblood.”

(Incidentally, we popped that question during a performance at a March 14, 2009, birthday party for long-time Flood fan Larry Kendall. It was Larry who commemorated the moment with this picture of the world’s littlest kazooist. It is visual evidence perhaps that The Flood already was hard at work corrupting the next generation….)

Meanwhile, click here to hear a Scarr solo from the week that Jacob officially became a Floodster.

The Beginning

As noted, The Flood’s association with Jacob Scarr began several years earlier. The last Flood get-together before Christmas 2006 was a standing-room-only evening, with more than 35 people crammed into the Bowen house.

“As I was weaving my way through the crowd in the living room,” band manager Pamela Bowen recalled in a letter to friends a few weeks later, “a woman I didn’t know thanked me for letting her leave her sons here while she went shopping. I looked around with some anxiety, looking for small children, but I found only two teen-agers who had helped themselves to some root beer and seemed to be awestruck by the musicians. … It was neat watching them react to what the band was playing.”

Pamela didn't know it then, of course, but the two teens she saw were Jacob and his younger brother, Daniel Scarr, who were in the Sunday school class of Flood buddy Tom Pressman.

It was Pressman who recommended that their mom, P.J. Scarr, bring the boys by to hear the band. The neighborhood already was familiar to them; The Scarr lads also knew the Bowens' next-door neighbor, Bo Sweeney, who was in the same law firm as their dad, Tom Scarr, and who was giving them drum lessons at the time.

In the weeks to come, Jacob would continue to attend the weekly jams, often driven to and from the sessions by another mutual friend, the dear Rose Marie Riter. However, it was almost year before we in the band learned that the young man was an excellent guitar player.

Here’s how Charlie tells that story. During a Flood appearance on the Lexington, Ky., Red Barn Radio show, he told host Brad Becker this chapter in Flood Lore. Click here to hear the short audio clip.

Jacob’s Big Finish

Believing in Youngblood was one of the best decisions we ever made. Jacob played lead guitar with The Flood right up until a recording session on the night before he left for college in Colorado in August 2011. He went out with a bang, staying up late with us to help record the “Wade in the Water” album before flying out of Huntington early next day. Here’s a video from that memorable session at Bud Carroll’s Trackside Studios:

By the Way, About that Hat

Jacob was always a good sport in dealing with the sometimes ribald humor of his elders. His sense of humor was perfectly demonstrated on the cover of that album:

The picture was the product of Jacob’s dad, Tom Scarr, capturing Jacob’s frolic in the Greenbrier River.

In advance of the December 2011 party that would unveil the new album, Joe, Dave and Charlie helped Michelle come up with remarks that she could use to pitch the album at the party. And here you can eavesdrop on the planning session. Click here to hear a brief clip that starts with Norman Davis posing the question on everyone’s mind: pants or no pants?

Want More from Jacob?

Today Jacob is a lawyer in Denver and doesn’t get back this way very often, but whenever he does, there is always a seat waiting for him at the table. Meanwhile, if all this has whetted your appetite for more Jacob Scarr music, we’ve gotcha covered. Just swing by the Jacob Channel on the free Radio Floodango music streaming feature and have at it!