This Week's Freebei from The 1937 Flood

 Around here, the best night of the week is whatever night we’re all getting together to pick. Everyone always comes in the room ready to rock. But some nights? Well, those night swing even more than usual. 

Last week, for instance, Danny Cox seemed to have a whole barrel of new riffs to try out on his guitar, and Jack Nuckols was absolutely cooking on his snare and high-hat. 

 
And, man, it seemed like Randy Hamilton was rocking before he even got his bass out of the case. Just listen to how Randy’s walking bass lines puts a strut and a glide in this great old Shelton Brooks tunes from the Roarin’ Twenties. 

Shoot, you can probably hear Charlie Bowen grinning while he's singing.

This Week's Freebie from the 1937 Flood

 Charlie first heard this centuries-old fiddle tune 50 years ago when an old friend Jim Strother played it with our favorite local string band, the good old Kentucky Foothill Ramblers. 

He couldn’t imagined The Flood ever playing it. However, a year or so ago, when he started studying the five-string banjo, the same old tune came rolling back in his brain. 

 
About the same time, Jack was dusting off his fiddle, and they worked it up together and then they taught it to Danny and Randy and Sam, who added their own sweet touches, and now the tune is a cool change of pace at our weekly rehearsals.

This Week's Freebie from The 1937 Flood

 We learned this great West Virginia tribute song in the 1970s, just a few years after Bruce Phillips wrote it. That’s because some of our local heroes — H. David Holbrook’s late great Kentucky Foothill Ramblers — started singing it at those parties where The Flood was born.

 
Nowadays, "Green Rolling Hills of West Virginia" is always on the playlist whenever Floodster Emerita Michelle Hoge is in the room, as she was one night last month.