From This Week's Flood Jam Session

This week's freebie from The 1937 Flood jam session features an oh-so-beautiful Roy Harvey ballad called… uh, "We've Got Moonshine in Those West Virginia Hills."

Flood buddy Rose Marie Riter, a regular at our Wednesday night jam sessions, heads up our ministry of laughter and general tomfoolery. Miz Rose brought her brother and niece to last night's jam session and, at one point in the evening she requested this number, perhaps as a kind of instruction for the uninitiated. Brother Dave Peyton was on hand and happy to do the honors. Click here for the audio.

By the way, tunes from the jam sessions make up our weekly Flood podcasts. You can subscribe for free and get the music automatically delivered to your computer each Thursday. For details on that, click here.

From This Week's Flood Jam Session

This week's freebie from The 1937 Flood jam session features a pair of tunes for the Christmas season.

First we turn it over to Dave Ball -- to us, he's known as "Bub" -- for a seasonal chuckle: a twisted Christmas parody from the great Bob Rivers. Bub even came prepared for his tune with a few visual aids he could pull from his pockets at key moments. Of course, you can't see them on an audio podcast, but you can hear our reaction, so, hey, let your imagination take over.

Later in the evening, The Flood's good buddy, Mike Smith, dropped in to favor us with a beautiful a cappella rendition of one of our all-time favorite carols of the season. Happy holidays, everybody! Click here for the audio.

By the way, tunes from the jam sessions make up our weekly Flood podcasts. You can subscribe for free and get the music automatically delivered to your computer each Thursday. For details on that, click here.

This Week from The Flood Jam Sessions

This week's freebie from The 1937 Flood jam session features a tune reborn because of Michelle Walker's new harmony part.

One of the fun things about our weekly jam sessions is that there are often surprises. For instance, for years The Flood has used a Jimmy Reed piece from 1959 -- "You Got Me Runnin'" -- as a simple little warm-up tune, without thinking much about it. However, recently, Michelle came up with an interesting harmony part for the vocals and suddenly it's like a new brand new tune for us. Click here for the audio.

By the way, tunes from the jam sessions make up our weekly Flood podcasts. You can subscribe for free and get the music automatically delivered to your computer each Thursday. For details on that, click here.

From This Week's Flood Jam Session

This week's freebie from The 1937 Flood jam session features a fiddle tune that became an international hit.

New Yorker Jay Ungar wrote "Ashokan Farewell" in 1982 and for nearly a decade, the sweet waltz, written in the style of a Scottish lament, was known mainly only to Jay's fellow fiddlers. But then in 1990s, filmmaker Ken Burns used it as the title theme of his Civil War series on PBS and suddenly the tune was known around the world.

The song's always been a late-night favorite at the Flood jam sessions, especially when, like last night, Doug Chaffin moves over to guitar to partner with Joe Dobbs' beautiful fiddle. Click here for the audio.

By the way, tunes from the jam sessions make up our weekly Flood podcasts. You can subscribe for free and get the music automatically delivered to your computer each Thursday. For details on that, click here.

From This Week's Flood Jam Session

This week's freebie from The 1937 Flood jam session features a Thanksgiving Eve kazoo free-for-all.

Twenty-seven people in one room. Pamela comes in with a baggie of kazoos. Orchestrated chaos ensues.

That was last night at the jam session. It being the night before Thanksgiving, the crowd included friends coming from as far away as New York and Washington and as near as across town and from down around the block. Good friends… always something to be thankful for. Click here for the audio.

By the way, tunes from the jam sessions make up our weekly Flood podcasts. You can subscribe for free and get the music automatically delivered to your computer each Thursday. For details on that, click here.

From This Week's Flood Jam Session

This week's freebie from The 1937 Flood jam session features Michelle Walker on a Erroll Garner standard.

Flood co-founder Dave Peyton is bit under the weather right now and has not been able to attend the weekly jam sessions lately, and last night the guys were especially missing him.

So, knowing how Dave's always been such a fan the great Johnny Mathis, Michelle Walker led us on a special musical get-well card for our old spiritual leader and kazoo guru. Hurry back, Brother Dave -- without you we get all, uh, misty... Click here for the audio.

By the way, tunes from the jam sessions make up our weekly Flood podcasts. You can subscribe for free and get the music automatically delivered to your computer each Thursday. For details on that, click here.

From This Week's Flood Jam Session

This week's freebie from The 1937 Flood jam session features a great old Hoagy Carmichael tune.

The Flood has an abiding love for Carmichael's work. Sometimes nothing fits the mood better than one of Hoagy's ballads, and last night was such a night.

At a lull in the usual rowdy jugband action, Joe Dobbs eased into "Georgia on My Mind." On the break, we turned it over to Jacob Scarr for a couple of sweet choruses on the guitar before handing it back to Joe's fiddle, and in the process, made a memory.Click here for the audio.

By the way, tunes from the jam sessions make up our weekly Flood podcasts. You can subscribe for free and get the music automatically delivered to your computer each Thursday. For details on that, click here.

This Week from The Flood Jam Sessions

This week's freebie from The 1937 Flood jam sessions features a re-polarized jugband tune from the '30s.

Our hero, Hudson Woodbridge -- known to millions as Tampa Red -- recorded his tune called "No Matter How She Done" in Chicago in 1932.

Sixty or 70 years, The Flood picked it up and flipped the polarity on the old number, doing it as "Any Way She Done," but, hey, that don't matter. Any way you do it, it's still Tampa Red's baby! Click here for the audio.

By the way, tunes from the jam sessions make up our weekly Flood podcasts. You can subscribe for free and get the music automatically delivered to your computer each Thursday. For details on that, click here.

This Week from The Flood Jam Sessions

This week's freebie from The 1937 Flood jam sessions features a tune from our visit last summer with our Missouri buddies, Dave Para and Cathy Barton.

Because of travel and then, more recently, illness, we've not had a jam session for a couple of weeks. So this is a chance to reach back in the archives for a tune from an earlier session.

This was last August when Dave and Cathy dropped in and, at the end of the evening, they took a ride on "Got the Kansas City Blues," the first number ever recorded by the great Delmore Brothers in 1931. Click here for the audio.

By the way, tunes from the jam sessions make up our weekly Flood podcasts. You can subscribe for free and get the music automatically delivered to your computer each Thursday. For details on that, click here.

This Week from The Flood Jam Sessions

This week's freebie from The 1937 Flood jam session features our revisiting of a Leadbelly tune.

Our weekly jam sessions often let us get reacquainted with old friends. And sometimes the old friends are old tunes. We hadn't played that great old Leadbelly standard "Midnight Special" for five or six years, but one autumn evening recently it just sort of felt like the right song for the right night. Oh, it took us a minute or two to remember how we used to do it, but after a chorus or two, it drop right back into the groove. Click here for the audio.

By the way, tunes from the jam sessions make up our weekly Flood podcasts. You can subscribe for free and get the music automatically delivered to your computer each Thursday. For details on that, click here.

From This Week's Flood Jam Session

This week's freebie from The 1937 Flood jam session features a special guest, classic bluegrass fiddler Ron Eldridge on two tunes, in two different styles.

It's always interesting when dye-in-the-wool bluegrassers wander into one of our jam sessions. There's usually one of two possible reactions when they get a whiff of The Flood's thick jumbo of blues, swing and jugband music. They either about-face and head back to the door or they grin and grab a seat at the table. (The good ones even bring their own spoon.)

You'd be hard-pressed to find a better bluegrass player today than Ron Eldridge. Ronnie grew in our area, started playing his daddy's fiddle in the late 1960s and by the mid-'70s was playing with the locally legendary Sweeney Brothers band. In the 1980s, Eldridge struck out for Nashville and has been there ever since, a solid citizen in that famed music scene and a frequent performer on The Grand Ole Opry.

But last night it was The Flood's turn and Ron showed us he could put the BLUE(S) in bluegrass. Ron was such a good sport to sample our music and in the end gave us a treat. Flying back into more familiar territory, he capped the evening with a few choruses of Bob Wills' classic, "Maiden's Prayer." Thanks, Ronnie! Click here for the audio.

By the way, tunes from the jam sessions make up our weekly Flood podcasts. You can subscribe for free and get the music automatically delivered to your computer each Thursday. For details on that, click here.

From This Week's Flood Jam Session

This week's freebie from The 1937 Flood jam session features Joe Dobbs and a gorgeous Welch melody.

Last weekend, Joe and Charlie traveled to Cincinnati to play in the wedding of Charlie's cousin, Andy Dronberger. Andy and his new bride, Melissa, wanted something different than the usual wedding music fare for their big day, so for the bride's entrance at the ceremony, we played a traditional melody, "The Ash Grove."

That haunting, beautiful old tune was still very much on our minds at last night's regular Flood jam session, when Joe shared it with the guys. Click here for the audio.

By the way, tunes from the jam sessions make up our weekly Flood podcasts. You can subscribe for free and get the music automatically delivered to your computer each Thursday. For details on that, click here.

This Week from The Flood Jam Session

This week's freebie from The 1937 Flood jam session features a classic from the annals of kazoory.

The first time we ever heard the kazoo played on the radio was in the mid-'60s when Peter, Paul and Mary took a kazoo break on "San Francisco Bay Blues." And it turns out the kazoo is generally associated with this great old tune. One-man band Jesse Fuller, who wrote the song, took a kazoo solo on his original 1962 recording of it. And then, 30 years later, super-cool Eric Clapton even took a kazoo break when he recorded it.

Of course, in The Flood, it's Brother Dave Peyton who's our hoodoo kazoo guru, and last night he spun a little of that old kazoo magic on the tune when it popped up at the jam session. Click here for the audio.

By the way, tunes from the jam sessions make up our weekly Flood podcasts. You can subscribe for free and get the music automatically delivered to your computer each Thursday. For details on that, click here.

This Week from The Flood Jam Session

This week's freebie from The 1937 Flood jam session features a rollicking rendition of a great old tune from the 1930s.

Our good friend Richard Cobb says our weekly jam session reminds him of an old-fashioned "happening." Every week, the music that happens is solely determined by who walks through the door that night.

And last night was a good example. About a third of The Flood couldn't make the session, but those of us who did were joined by buddies who came just to sit in for the evening, good folks like Jim Rumbaugh on harmonica and Randy Brown on guitar. All that music got stirred up and the next thing you know, we were whipping up a new batch of "Somebody Stole My Girl." Click here for the audio.

By the way, tunes from the jam sessions make up our weekly Flood podcasts. You can subscribe for free and get the music automatically delivered to your computer each Thursday. For details on that, click here.

This Week from The Flood Jam Session

This week's freebie from The 1937 Flood jam session features a great old riverboating tune by our fine Missouri friends Cathy Barton and Dave Para.

It was on the good old steamboat Delta Queen that we first met Dave and Cathy. Most recently, they shared the stage with us at a concert in Fairmont, W.Va. (In case you missed it, we recently posted a pair of videos from that show -- check here for that).

Anyway, a couple of weeks later, on the way home to Boonville, Mo., from Virginia, Cathy and Dave stopped to spend the evening with us and shared a few tunes at the Wednesday night jam session. The two know a passel of riverboat songs. Here's a sweet one called "The Bayou Sara" from Mary Wheeler's 1944 collection of roustabout songs, "Steamboatin' Days."Click here for the audio.

By the way, tunes from the jam sessions make up our weekly Flood podcasts. You can subscribe for free and get the music automatically delivered to your computer each Thursday. For details on that, click here.