This Week's Freebie from The 1937 Flood

This week's freebie features a tune we often give a special assignment to.

When we’re preparing a show — and we’re getting ready for a good one on Saturday, March 9, at Taylor Books in Charleston — we’re always on the lookout for tunes that would be especially good to open or close a set with.

What we want here is a lively song that can get an audience clapping and singing along, either eager for the show to start or sorry to see it end. The song should feature everybody who’s on stage, highlighted by vocals and solos. In a word, it’s an ensemble piece.

For the past half dozen years or so, a particular good one for an ensemble is this Jimmy Reed number, which you may recognize as the opening tune on our most recent CD, our “Live, In Concert” album.

So, here, from a recent rehearsal, is the 2019 version of “You Got Me Slippin’.” Click to hear the tune.

This Week's Freebie from The 1937 Flood

This week's freebie features a tune we revived a few years ago.

As we prepare for a busy spring season of shows, we’re working on new material, but also revisiting some of our older tunes. This is a useful exercise for us, because it helps us avoid losing some songs.

A case in point is this great old Ivory Joe Hunter composition.Two years ago, we were singing it all the time, and then, for some reason, it just slipped off the radar, until last night, when Michelle and Randy started talking about it.

Here’s our last rendition of “I Almost Lost My Mind,” with tasty solos by Doug, Paul and Sam. Click to hear the tune.

This Week's Freebie from The 1937 Flood

This week's freebie features a tune we revived a few years ago.

The Flood is fixin’ to awaken from its long winter’s nap soon — we’ve got a busy set of Saturdays scheduled next month — and we’ll kick everything off by returning to our favorite capitol city venue, Charleston’s Taylor Books on Saturday, March 9. Please, mark your calendar. We’re going to have a ball there, as always!

At last night’s rehearsal, we began thinking about the tunes we’ll want to play in that show, and at the top of list was this one. We’ve been doing W.C. Handy’s “St. Louis Blues” for decades, but the number never really took  off until we turned it over to our amazing Michelle Lewis. Click to hear the tune.

This Week's Freebie from The 1937 Flood

This week's freebie features a tune we’re working on for a new CD..

Our next album, which we’ve begun recording this winter in the mountain hide-away studio at the home of Floodster Paul Martin, will be a new idea for us: an all-instrumental CD, especially featuring some of the tunes that Doug Chaffin has brought us over the years.

As long-time Flood fans know, Doug has played many instruments with the band in these, his first 20 years with us, from upright bass and mandolin to fiddle and guitar.

Here, from last night’s rehearsal, is one of the numbers we’re considering for the new album, which will be out later this year.

This is Doug’s rendition of “Waltz Around the World.” Click to hear the tune.