This Week's Freebie from The 1937 Flood

 The Flood time machine touched down in 1961 last week to toy with a tune from our youth.

 

This Week's Freebie from The 1937 Flood

If there's such a thing as a "standard" in jug band music, this tune is certainly one of them. 

Our heroes, the Hokum Boys, recorded it back in 1935, and we've always loved it, but The Flood didn't get around to doing it until back in 2009 when Joe Dobbs recommended it. That was right after he’d received a recording of it by old buddy, Ed Light, and his DC-area band with one great name: The All New Genetically Altered Jug Band. 

We’ve been Floodifying this tune ever since.

This Week's Freebie from The 1937 Flood

It's funny how songs come in and out of our lives. 

A half century ago when The Flood was thinking about being born, Dave Peyton and Charlie Bowen would get together on weekends to pick and sing, just the two of them, and among the tunes they’d play was “Way Downtown," which they learned from an old Doc Watson record. 

The song has drifted in and out over the years, and whenever it rambles back in, it’s just as comfortable as an old shoe. 

Here's a take from a recent rehearsal, with Randy Hamilton leading the harmony on the choruses and solos by Dan Cox, Sam St. Clair, Jack Nuckols and Paul Martin.
 

This Week's Freebie from The 1937 Flood

 Whenever the guys haven’t seen each other for a couple of weeks, there’s always a special joy when we all get back together again. That was certainly the case at last week’s rehearsal. 

 
Add to that the fact that Floodster Emeritus Paul Martin dropped by to sit in. That always cranks up the energy level in the room. 

And you can just hear in this first tune of the evening. Listen to the solos from everybody on century-old anthem of the Roarin’ Twenties. Here’s a Flood date with “Dinah.”

This Week's Freebie from The 1937 Flood

 The band’s founders — Dave Peyton, Roger Samples and Charlie Bowen — all started listening to the music of Bob Dylan some 60 years ago, so it’s no wonder that his songs are so deeply woven into the fabric of The Flood. 

And whenever we’re feeling folky — as we were at this recent rehearsal a week or so ago — it’s likely that a Dylan tune will the first to come to mind.

This Week's Freebie from The 1937 Flood

 Before Floodster Emerita Vanessa Coffman left the band, she taught the guys her mom’s favorite tune, a 1948 jazz standard. 

Well, everyone fully expected that when Veezy left The Flood last year to pursue other interested that the song would go with her. 

 
But then Danny Cox took up the tune and gave it a new life in our world. Listen to Dan’s guitar brewing up some robust “Black Coffee.”

This Week's Freebie from The 1937 Flood

 It was a quarter of a century ago when Joe’s son, Dale Dobbs, first used the word “eclectic” to describe The Flood’s musical tastes. 

 
True, that. We do tap a wide variety of sources for our tunes, from blues and old-time to jazz, jug band and classic rock. 

Well, even we didn’t see this one coming, but you diehard Bee Gees knew we’d get to you sooner or later. Here’s Randy Hamilton leading us on Barry Gibb’s greatest composition.