Getting the Picture(s)

The Family Flood does love its photos. Whether it's snapshots at parties or jam sessions, concert action photos (as much "action" has the old boys can get these days), posed shots or decidedly much UNposed shots, The Flood and its friends collect 'em and trade 'em.

Now, in the revamping of the web site, we've set aside some cyber space just for photo albums. Click here to reach the home base for Flood Fotos. So far, we have half dozen galleries in place:

-- Joe Elbert, long-time assistant managing editor for photography at The Washington Post, took in a Flood concert at Tamarack in Beckley, WV, in October 2008 and gave us some great photos of the guys, pictures that he's allowing us to share online.

-- Larry Kendall, long-time friend of the Flood, was on hand for the band's benefit concert for the ARTS Resources organization of Huntington in December 2008. Larry, who by day works in traffic safety with the City of Huntington, has shared some of the photographs he shot that evening.

-- Ed Strelau -- Cincinnati fiddler, photographer and fine Flood friend -- was working in the Huntington area in 2005 and regularly sitting in with the boys in their Wednesday night jam sessions. Ed also climbed aboard "The Delta Bub" to drive with The Flood to a recording session in the fall of '05 at the Bunker studio at Joe Dobbs' Fret 'n Fiddle in St. Albans. Ed took these pictures, which he gave to the band as a Christmas gift that year. Then later he returned with a beautiful six-pack of classic black and whites that he produced from that very Christmas visit.

-- Pamela, having been The Flood's manager for nearly a decade now, has had many opportunities to shoot the guys -- and to photograph them as well -- and she almost always has at least a camera handy. Her collection includes pictures from a wide variety of settings, from jam sessions to gigs, from parties to recording sessions. Here are some of Pamela's favorite shots over the years. Don't miss the "hulu dancers" she caught at Joe's 70th birthday party that took place in Sam and Joan's backyard.

-- Friends of the Flood. The extended Family Flood includes all the good people who come to listen and/or pick with us, either at the weekly jam sessions, at parties or at the performances. Here is an ever-growing (thankfully!) gallery of the Friends of the Flood.

-- The Old Flood Pix. Think of it as the Flood's baby pictures. Or blackmail... Take a band that's been around for more than 35 years, you've got great opportunities for photographic extortion. And, of course, the band that extorts ITSELF.... Well, we don't know where that thought is going, but, for better or worse, here are some snapshots from the Flood's earliest days, most of them from the 1970s and 1980s, including images of great friends who are former Floodsters, like Rog Samples, Stewart Schneider, Bill Hoke and others.

Enjoy the pictures. And we invite you to contribute to any of albums, or to send us material for new ones.