This Week's Freebie from The 1937 Flood

This week's freebie features a new tune we're experimenting.

Paul Martin is such a joyous addition to The Flood. He brings us beautiful mandolin and guitar work, wonderful vocals, a great sense of humor -- and often very interesting new tunes to try out.

For instance, a few months ago, Paul said, just in passing, "Hey, y'all ever heard this one?" and launched into a gorgeous song with a Civil War theme called "The Last Time," one that recorded some time ago by the McPeak Brothers and by The Rarely Herd. Well, the first time that we heard "The Last Time," we fell in love with the song, and we've been playing with it all summer long.

Here, from last night's rehearsal, is its latest incarnation. That's Paul on the lead vocal and everyone jumping in on the chorus. We suspect you'll be singing along too before it's done. Click to hear the tune.

This Week's Freebie from the 1937 Flood

This week's freebie features a little three-minute snippet of a summer evening in Floodville.

It's interesting where some songs come from. Taj Mahal's "Fishin' Blues" has never been on a set list for any of our shows, and we've not played in a practice session for years, but last night it just sort of washed up in our collective consciousness somehow as a perfect little warmup tune and everybody just went with it. Click to hear the tune.

This Week's Freebie from The 1937 Flood

This week's freebie features an old tune from our youth.

Jackson Browne was just 16 when he wrote "These Days," a song so rich in themes of loss and regret that you would have to believe it had to come from someone at least three times that age.

The song was recorded by so many people back in the '70s. Greg Allman has a wonderful rendition, but we always loved the lesser known version recorded by Tom Rush in 1970.

Today "These Days" is often a warm-up up tune for The Flood as we're waiting for the rest of the band to arrive for the weekly rehearsal, as it is in this simple track taken from an evening's workout a few weeks ago. Click to hear the tune.

This Week's Freebie from The 1937 Flood

This week's freebie features the re-boot of a Flood classic.

Okay, we're not saying we're getting old and forgetful or anything, but we ARE saying that sometimes we have to, uh, re-learn tunes that we recorded 14 years ago.

And too about half today's Flood wasn't even in the band a decade and a half ago so they just haven't not had the same opportunity to forget what some of us have.

Anyway, this leads to some interesting each-one-teach-one moments at the rehearsals nowadays, like this from last night's get-together. We join, in progress, "Lulu's Back in a Town," a nifty 1935 tin pan alley number that we put on our second CD -- "The 1937 Flood Plays Up a Storm" -- way back back in 2002. This track is complete with a little 30-second workshop regarding the chords right in the middle of things. Enjoy. Click to hear the tune.

This Week's Freebie from The 1937 Flood

This week's freebie features a little PRE-rehearsal jam.

We've been emphasizing our vocals a lot in the last couple of years -- that's only natural with Michelle Lewis and Randy Hamilton singing such powerful harmonies and leads in our newer tunes -- but the instrumental side of The Flood is doing some pretty interesting things too.

For instance, a couple of weeks ago, while we were waiting to get the regular rehearsal started, Doug Chaffin and Paul Martin launched into a little musical conversation that the rest of us were pleased to eavesdrop on -- and we thought you'd like to listen in too-- just a nameless blues to pass the time on a summer night. Click to hear the tune.

This Week's Freebie from The 1937 Flood

This week's freebie features our dedication to love.

We're always looking for new tunes that we can jug-i-fy, and sometimes that means digging deep into the recesses of our collective memory.

We in The Flood are long-time Bob Dylan fans and recently, while discussing the subject of love and its multitudinous ramifications and variations, we stumbled upon memories of this old Jesse "Lone Cat" Fuller tune that was the opening track of Bob Dylan's very first album, released in 1962, when Bob was not yet 20 years old and still probably learning a thing or two about love himself. Click to hear the tune.

This Week's Freebie from The 1937 Flood

This week's freebie features samples from our big project this year.

We've been hard at work on our sixth CD, and we're excited to bring it out later this summer. This is our first LIVE, IN CONCERT album, which we recorded at a show last January. It features tunes that are not on any our previous five CDs, songs like "St. Louis Blues" and "You Ain't Goin' Nowhere," "Autumn Leaves" and "Green Rolling Hills of West Virginia," "Ramblin' Boy" and "Crazy Words, Crazy Tune."

In addition, this CD is the first appearance of our newest Floodster Paul Martin, whose mandolin and guitar work and vocals have added so much to our sound. Paul also is mixing and editing the new album.

Because we're eager to share with you what we've been working on, here are some sound samples from the new disc. And if you want to know more about the new album, visit our website at www.1937flood.com, where you can also pre-order the disc if you like to reserve your copy. Enjoy! Click to hear the samples.