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Freebies from The 1937 Flood, West Virginia's Most Eclectic String Band! The Flood, the Original Old Boy Band, has been around since the 1970s playing their own brand of mountain music, from blues and jugband to swing and traditional folk. These podcasts feature Flood Freebies, recordings captured on the fly, as it were, at the Flood's weekly jam sessions
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Some songs in our repertoire we do only when “The Chick Singer” — Floodster emerita Michelle Hoge — is in the room. Our take on this good old Ivory Joe Hunter classic is at the top of that list. This track is from last December when Michelle had driven in from her Cincinnati area home to rehearse with us in preparation for our big “Flood at 50” New…
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You never really forget the songs of your youth. Charlie was 10 years old in the summer of ‘59 when this tune hit the radio. It was such a hoot to take it for a spin at a recent Flood rehearsal.Bởi The 1937 Flood
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We’re late to the party on this tune. Bob Dylan wrote this more than a quarter of century ago, but we just started doing it a few weeks ago. However, it’s suddenly landed solidly in the repertoire. Here’s our take on “Make You Feel My Love.”Bởi The 1937 Flood
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We’ve been doing this song for a very long time, and it’s always different, depending on who’s in the room. In this rendition from a rehearsal a few weeks ago, our man Danny Cox makes it special with his signature guitar stylings.Bởi The 1937 Flood
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The Flood has been doing versions of this song for decades. This rendition was the first song of the evening at a Flood rehearsal a few weeks ago. Riding on the infectious rhythm laid down by Randy Hamilton and Jack Nuckols and framing the solos by Danny Cox and Sam St. Clair, the number heralded a particularly fun evening at the Bowen house.…
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This song took a very long road on its journey to Floodlandia. The first time it was played in our band room was more than a dozen years ago on a mellow autumn night when our friends Randy Hamilton and Paul Martin dropped in to jam with us. Now, neither was a member of The Flood yet — Randy would join the following year and Paul a few years after t…
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“Sweet Georgia Brown” entered The Flood’s repertoire soon after the band began in the 1970s and in the ensuing decades the tune has come back into the playlist again and again, serving as a sweet showcase for dozens of Flood soloists over the years. This latest rendition, recorded at a rehearsal just last week, has Danny Cox, Randy Hamilton, Sam St…
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It was 15 years ago when Sam St. Clair brought us this tune, and it quickly became his theme song. Ever since then, “Ain’t No Free” has been a beloved standard in many a Flood show. So, of course, the song had to have a place in honor several weeks ago at our big New Year’s Eve birthday bash at Alchemy Theatre.…
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Here’s a tune with some mighty deep roots in the Floodisphere. Two decades after our heroes, The Coasters, released this song in July 1957, The Flood started fiddling with it on another summer night. After that, though, it went to sleep again for, oh, a half century or so. Then not long ago, it popped back into our minds. Right away, Randy Hamilton…
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Whenever our old friend Paul Martin is back in the room — or, better still, on the bandstand with us, as he was for our big “Flood at 50” big birthday bash — we always get him to take us on a ride on is favorite Bob Dylan tune.Bởi The 1937 Flood
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Ever since it came together decades ago, The Flood has always sought a rich diversity in its repertoire. So late last year when Danny Cox asked, “Has the band ever done the song ‘Sunny’?” he heard an invitation in the enthusiasm of the answer: “no.” So, Danny worked out the chords, Jack took up the rhythm, we turned the vocals over to Randy, and su…
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Here’s a tune we always trot out whenever we feel a party coming on. So you can bet we’ll have it on the set list this weekend for our big “Flood at 50” birthday bash on New Year’s Eve at Alchemy Theatre. That’s a night we’re so eager for that we actually started putting this song through its paces earlier this month. For instance, here’s our take …
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Okay, we have a Christmas confession to make. Honestly, we don’t really care that much for Christmas music. Oh, we’re not scrooges or anything — well, a few of us are — but it’s mainly it’s just the nature of Christmas songs themselves. The chord patterns are not especially easy to remember and since you only them for a week or two every year, you …
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When we roll in tomorrow night for our latest gig at Sal’s Speakeasy in Ashland, Ky., we’re bringing with us one of our all time favorite party tunes. The song we call “You Got Me Slippin’” is loosely based on a classic Jimmy Reed tune from 65 years ago at the dawn of rock ’n’ roll.Bởi The 1937 Flood
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Nominally, this is a traditional song about abandoned love, but back in the 1960s when she reworked it, the late Jean Ritchie wrote new lyrics that went well beyond that to the larger theme of loss in general. Because of those deeper expressions, The Flood has often thought of this tune in times of our darkest grief, and we’ve even sung it at more …
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We started doing the song in the mid-1990s, right after we heard it on a then-new Bob Dylan album. We were looking for an easy, happy little tune that we can warm up on, letting everybody just stretch out a little. Well, nowadays it just as likely to turn up as a last song of the night — as it was here at a recent rehearsal — putting a bow on a gre…
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It’s a kind of counter-love song — a great anthem to angst — and George Gershwin’s “But Not For Me” was ahead of its time. He and his brother Ira wrote the thing in 1930 for a popular stage musical called “Girl Crazy.” But it didn’t make the Billboard charts until a dozen years later — after George’s death, in fact — when Harry James and his orches…
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Charlie played this song for Dave Peyton on the first night they jammed together at a New Year’s Eve party 50 years ago. It was the one of the best tunes in their repertoire for their earliest gigs. After that, though, the song dropped out of the mix for many decade, but the one night this fall — help! — it came wandering back. On this track from a…
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We have several new tunes to bring tomorrow night for our latest gig at Sal’s Speakeasy in Ashland, Ky., including this one that the great Ray Henderson wrote almost a hundred years ago. This song was first recorded by Paul Whiteman and his orchestra in the mid-1920s, but its real claim to fame came 15 years later when it was the title tune for a b…
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