This Week's Freebie from The 1937 Flood

This week's freebie features "Anticipation" … uh, Flood style…

We were so pleased with a surprise visit last night by Joe Dobbs' daughter, Diane Johnson, who arrived with Margaret Ray bearing not only smiles and hugs and stories, but also some phenomenal homemade apple pie, still warm from the oven.

Happy to sing for our supper, we played for an hour -- pretty amazing self-control, we thought -- 'til finally we couldn't wait any longer.

This was the final pre-pie selection. If it seems a little faster than usual, well, you now know why. Click to hear the tune.

This Week's Freebie from The 1937 Flood

This week's freebie features a swing tune we've been playing for a couple of decades now.

If there was one of the great composers from the '20s and '30s whom we would resurrect in a heartbeat, it would have to be the incomparable Fats Waller.

We've never met a Fats Waller tune we didn't love, especially this one.

The late, great Joe Dobbs got The Flood playing "Ain't Misbehavin'" probably, oh, two decades ago now and it still shows up often at our rehearsals and our shows. Click to hear the tune.

This Week's Freebie from The 1937 Flood

This week's freebie features a jug band tune we've been loving for a long time.

For many years each spring, The Flood played one of its all-time favorite gigs, the Saturday morning breakfast session for the annual Coon-Sanders Nighthawks Bash, a gathering of traditional jazz fans in downtown Huntington. Those extraordinary players of Dixieland era music invited us to share a set of jug band tunes that come from the same happy time period.

Sadly this venerable assembly discontinued a few years back, but fans missed it so much that good old Dale Jones has set up a Dixieland jam session this week and the Flood's on the bill!

At our rehearsal earlier this week, we ran through some tunes for the set.Click to hear the tune.

This Week's Freebie from The 1937 Flood

We want to thank everybody who's been reaching out to us during this sad week.

We're looking forward to making the transition that Joe Dobbs used to talk about, the one from mourning a death to celebrating a life.

 We guess we started down the road last night when we came together to say our goodbyes to him.

Click to hear the tune.

Joe Dobbs (1934-2015), Rest in Peace, Dear Friend

We are heartbroken. Our dear friend Joe Dobbs passed away this evening just weeks after his 81st birthday.

Some of us have known Joe for much more than half our lives -- Joe was one of the three of us who founded The Flood more than 40 years -- and we are still a bit in shock, you'll understand.

As a tribute, we thought we'd share with you, our extended Flood family, some Joe Dobbs moments from over the years. Click here for the video.

Joe, we don't know where we go from here without you, except that we know that we really won't be going on without you. You'll live in our hearts and minds as long as we live. You enriched our lives, and we will miss you. Rest in peace, dear friend.

This Week's Freebie from The 1937 Flood

This week's freebie features a song that was tossed off as a throw-away. But in music, it's sometimes those "throw-away" moments that you're still thinking about the next day.

In The Flood, we've never really worked up a real arrangement of the great Hoagy Carmichael standard, "Georgia on My Mind." While we love it, it's always been just a warm-up number, a filler to play while waiting for another tune to come along.

 But from last night's rehearsal, it was still the song we were thinking of 18 hours later, and if that's not a candidate for the weekly podcast then nothing is! Click to hear the tune.

This Week's Freebie from The 1937 Flood

This week's freebie features another arrangement-in-progress.

The Flood doesn't do much commercial country music, but ever so often one of the classic country tunes seems to fall just naturally into a Flood groove.

Not long ago, our Michelle Lewis started humming this wonderful old Johnny Cash standard and before long we were working up an arrangement.

Here's where we stand on the "I Still Miss Someone" project. Click to hear the tune.