This Week's Freebie from The 1937 Flood

 Christmas songs abound right now, but how about a tune for the downtrodden holiday shopper, the weary wielder of a maxed-out debit card? 

Well, your friends in The Flood can’t pick up the tab, but we can at least give you a blues to suit your mood, brought to you from a recent gig. After a day of rushing around spending money you don’t have buying things people don’t want, just take our advice: If you lose your money, please don’t lose your mind!

 

This Week's Freebie from The 1937 Flood

 Every configuration of The Flood — from the present all the way back to 1976 in our foggy ruins of time  — has done its own variation of this happy bit of hokum. And each version, in its way, has been a loving tribute to our heroes in the original Memphis Jug Band of the 1930s. 

 
This latest rendition, recorded at a recent gig, offers wonderful solos and fills by everyone in the band. Shoot, even the grins and the winks seem to come through in this track.

This Week's Freebie from The 1937 Flood

 You can learn about how versatile a band is by listening to its handling of instrumentals. Without the poetics of the lyrics or the theatrics of the singer, it’s up to the soloists to bring drama to the song. To hear what we mean, listen to this four-minute track from a recent Flood show. 

 
Vanessa Coffman opens the action with her tasteful statement of Fats Waller’s melody, “Honeysuckle Rose.” Then about a minute in, she begins to weave and spin brilliant new threads on that old familiar frame with her tenor sax, beautiful work that then inspires her bandmate, guitarist Danny Cox, when he follows with some gorgeous strings of his own. Yes, Veezy and Danny bring the honey to this rose.

This Week's Freebie from The 1937 Flood

 Danny and Randy brought us this song just a couple of weeks ago and in no time it became a rehearsal night favorite. 

Here’s our latest take on the tune, with Randy doing the honors on the vocals and everybody taking a turn on the solos.

This Week's Freebie from The 1937 Flood

 We have a different kind of podcast this week. Recently, the band has been working on some original compositions. This particular melody is one I started writing with back in the late 1970s, but you know what? Even after 40 years, the thing still doesn’t even have a name. Figures, I guess, for a song that’s about … well, procrastination. 

 Anyway, this week’s podcast invites you to eavesdrop as The Flood starts to craft an arrangement for this quirky little tune.

This Week's Freebie from The 1937 Flood

 The weekly Flood rehearsal has always been an eclectic affair. A typical night will travel from old jazz standards of the 1930s and ‘40s with their flurry of quirky chords to little-known jug band tunes and blues. Maybe we’ll stop along the way to sample a few Flood originals that are still busy being born. And often, after all that musical wandering, we’ll end up back at some simpler folk song of our youth. 

 
Last week, for instance, the last tune of the evening was this haunting Perry County, Ky., composition that the great Jean Ritchie built on just two well-considered chords.

This Week's Freebie from The 1937 Flood

 This song has been floating around the Floodisphere for many years, but it didn’t really take flight until Vanessa came along to blend it with a soulful Old World aire, and then Randy stepped up to take the lead on the vocals. 

 
Here, with pensive soloing by Dan and Sam, is our merging of the thoroughly American “Dink’s Song” with Scotland’s lovely “Loch Lomond.”