This Week's Freebie from The 1937 Flood

 Here’s the latest treasure that Randy Hamilton and Danny Cox have brought to The Flood’s table, a Charlie Starr composition from Alabama that resonates powerfully in our own Appalachian hills as well.

 

 

This Week's Freebie from The 1937 Flood

 Here’s an audio snapshot of the end of last week’s rehearsal. 

We’d had a wonderful evening singing with Flood sweetheart Kathy Castner who had made one of her rare visits in from Cincinnati. 

 
At the beginning of this track you can hear folks packing up their instruments and saying their goodbyes. 

But at the same time, over in the corner, Danny Cox and his guitar have one more tune to do with Kathy. Listen as the guys realize what’s happening and join in for this sweet final moment of the night.

This Week's Freebie from The 1937 Flood

 Here’s a tune that will be on the set list tomorrow night when The Flood opens the festivities at this year’s Diamond Teeth Mary blues festival in downtown Huntington. 

 
It’s a 1913 composition by the great Shelton Brooks. And if that name sounds familiar, you might be remembering last week’s podcast when we talked about Brooks’ best-known composition, the phenomenal “Darktown Strutters’ Ball.” 

As noted last week, by the time Brooks wrote that, his songwriting chops were already firmly established with songs like this one, which was performed by everyone from Sophie Tucker and Mae West to Tampa Red, Georgia Tom and Frankie “Half Pint” Jaxon. 

Here’s The Flood’s take on “I Wonder Where My Easy Rider’s Gone.” 

Remember, the Diamond Teeth Mary Medicine Show will be rocking downtown Huntington tomorrow night in the beautiful Heritage Station, 210 11th Street. The Flood takes the stage at 6 p.m.

This Week's Freebie from The 1937 Flood

 We had our old buddy Jim Rumbaugh in the band room recently. Jim will be sitting in with us when The Flood plays at the latest Diamond Teeth Mary blues festival next week. 

Last week, after we’d worked on the blues tunes we’ll do for the show, we switched this rocking old Roaring Twenties number from Shelton Brooks. 

It all went well until I tried to tag it with a classic Chuck Romine ending. Hey, who knew there’d be spelling?!

This Week's Freebie from The 1937 Flood

 As we start thinking about what The Flood should play for its set at this year’s Diamond Teeth Mary blues festival here in Huntington, one song seems like a natural. It’s a near-century-old tune that touched the lives of two great West Virginia jazzmen. 

Big band composer Don Redmond, who hailed from the eastern part of the Mountain State, wrote the song in 1929. 

Then a dozen years later, the phenomenal saxophonist Chu Berry from Wheeling recorded it in his very last studio session. Here’s The Flood’s latest take on Redmond’s great “Gee, Baby, Ain’t I Good to You?”

 
Remember, we’ll be at the Diamond Teeth Mary festival Saturday, Aug. 22 at Heritage Station, 210 11th Street in beautiful downtown Huntington. The Flood is honored to open the festivities with its set at 6 p.m.
 

This Week's Freebie from The 1937 Flood

 Surely, no innovation in modern human history has gotten so deeply into our psyche, into our hearts and minds. Railroad imagery fills our art and music, symbolizing so many beginnings … and endings. 

 
Here’s a train tune from our folk-infused youth.

This Week's Freebie from The 1937 Flood

 The late Dave Peyton inspired Charlie Bowen to write this song. 

 
Railing against the relentless ravaging of our state, he’d say, “Sometimes I think the worst thing that ever happened to West Virginia was when somebody discovered coal.” 

And what bothered him almost as much was the paralyzing grief felt by generations of Mountain State natives, a communal sorrow for not being able to stop the rape of our home.

This Week's Freebie from The 1937 Flood

 An old friend, Jim Strother, once said, “Remember back when you’d see a fella ramblin’ along carrying a guitar case, and he’d have his coat collar turned up against the wind and a cap pulled down over his eyes. With just one look you knew everything you needed to know about that guy.”

 
And the soundtrack in your head when you saw that was always an early Bob Dylan tune, like this one.

This Week's Freebie from The 1937 Flood

 There’s nothing like a good old train song to capture the crossroads in a man or a woman’s life. Here’s one of the best in our repertoire.

"Yellow Dog Blues" was the last tune of our night with John Ace, the wonderful fiddler introduced to us by Floodster Emeritus Dave "Bub" Ball.

 

This Week's Freebie from The 1937 Flood

 We’re celebrating America’s 250th birthday with Woody Guthrie’s best-loved tune, a song that many of us think ought to be the national anthem. 

 

And we’re happy to be joined on this week’s podcast by Cap’n John Ace, who rambled into the band room from Alexandria, Va., by way of Florida with Floodster Emeritus Dave “Bub” Ball.

This Week's Freebie from The 1937 Flood

 When the room needs a respite from the band’s frequent fare of loud and raucous tunes, Randy Hamilton and Danny Cox always have just what the doctor ordered.

This Week's Freebie from The 1937 Flood

 Dave Peyton, Roger Samples and Charlie Bowen used to play this tune back in the ‘70s, but it’s only recently come back into the Floodipshere. 

Here’s the 1933 signature tune of The Delmore Brothers, featuring Danny Cox’s guitar and Jack Nuckols’ fiddle.

This Week's Freebie from The 1937 Flood

 Our Flood brother Danny Cox and his sweet wife Tami are on vacation this week, but before they hit to the road, we had to give Dan a good Flood set-off. 

 
Here’s a little traveling music, the last tune of the evening’s rehearsal.

This Week's Freebie from The 1937 Flood

 We’ve said it before. We’ll say it again. Much of the music made at our weekly rehearsals is conversations that aren’t burdened with so many words. This particular conversation is saying, “Damn, man, it’s good to see y’all again!” 

 
Here, from the opening moments of last week's rehearsal, is the latest take on "Opus One."

This Week's Freebie from The 1937 Flood

 A lot of the hokum tunes that The Flood has always loved were born far to the south of us, in place like Memphis and New Orleans. 

 
So it’s always a treat to find a song that grew a little closer to home. This tune traces back to a youngster named Bob Coleman — Kid Cole, they called him — from the west side of Cincinnati. It was 98 years ago this very month that Bob recorded it in Chicago. 

Here’s “Tear It Down.”

This Week's Freebie from The 1937 Flood

Since it’s Memorial Day weekend, we wanted to offer something appropriate in this week’s podcast. 

 
Of course, in the Floodisphere, our spiritual inclinations generally lean more to a rambunctious New Orleans jazz funeral than to a little church in the wildwood. 

So, here’s jubilant little hymn from your friends in The Flood.

This Week's Freebie from The 1937 Flood

 The Flood band room is usually a rather raucous place —rocking tunes, loud talk, lots of laughter — but often that mood can turn on a dime to something softer, even almost fragile. 

We hadn’t done this old Jackson Browne song for years, but something last week — about watching that the beautiful spring evening come falling in, seeing those long shadows rolling down over the newly green leaves outside our windows — brought this song back to mind. 

Here’s our latest take on “Jamaica Say You Will.”

This Week's Freebie from The 1937 Flood

 This great late-‘60s Lovin’ Spoonful tune is the perfect opportunity to answer listeners’ requests for another little sample from Danny Cox’s recent band room reunion with his old buddy Bobby Murnahan. 

 
Lend an ear to Dan and Bob trading choruses at the end of this take on “(Sittin’ Back) Lovin’ You.”

This Week's Freebie from The 1937 Flood

 We knew the band room was going to rock as soon as we saw our Danny Cox was bringing along his life-long buddy, guitarist Bobby Murnahan, who was visiting from Colorado. 

 
Just listen to Bobby and Danny trading choruses as we all ride this great old Texas blues at last week’s rehearsal.

This Week's Freebie from The 1937 Flood

 A half dozen years after his death at beginning of the horrid Covid pandemic, songwriter John Prine is still very much on our minds. Here’s one of The Flood’s favorite John Prine songs.

This Week's Freebie from The 1937 Flood

 Our rendering of this ancient bittersweet song of love and loss dates back more than 45 years now, but each times we play it, it seems as new and fresh as a summer evening.

This Week's Freebie from The 1937 Flood

 Last month one of our heroes — guitarist Tommy Emmanuel — released a special rendition of this song in honor of another of our heroes — Doc Watson — and hearing Tommy’s playing of it has impacted our take on the tune. Here’s our latest version of “Ready for the Times to Get Better.”

 

This Week's Freebie from The 1937 Flood

 The Flood started playing around with hokum music — those good old jug band tunes from the 1920s — about a half century ago, but it took another 20 years for us to feel confident enough to try to write one of those kind of songs ourselves. Charlie started putting this tune together back in the early 1990s, but then it took another 30 years for us to feel like we could play it. 

 
The song didn’t really start coming together until Jack Nuckols joined the band. Who knew that the spark we were waiting for was Jack’s spectacular spoon playing to finally reach that jug band junction? See what you think.

This Week's Freebie from The 1937 Flood

 Charlie wrote “The Answer Is You” while reflecting on the decades that he and Pamela have been “in each other’s care,” the lyrics say. 

 
Beyond that, it also was inspired by all those couples who have passed in and out of the Bowen House over the years, scores of folks who are part of The Flood’s loving family. 

The song actually has been in the wings for some 15 years now, patiently waiting for its Flood debut. Only recently did we realize that what it needed what Jack’s tasty rhythm and Danny’s definitive guitar stylings. They’ve certainly made it worth the wait.

This Week's Freebie from The 1937 Flood

 This old John Stewart composition came to us in the very first hours of The Flood’s origin story. And now, a half century later, darned if it hasn’t rolled back into our lives. 

 
Here’s “July, You’re a Woman.”

"This Week's Freebie from The 1937 Flood

 We do a version of this song that most people don’t sing. We got our inspiration from an old Folkways album that Rolf Cahn and Eric von Schmidt recorded back in 1961.

This Week's Freebie from The 1937 Flood

 Here’s a song that we likely wouldn’t even know about were it not for the diligence and the curiosity of a researcher who was far from an ordinary young woman of her time. 

 
Born in 1892 to a prominent family in Paducah, Ky, Mary Guthrie Wheeler was destined from the start for adventure. Rather than settling into a quiet, conventional life, she embraced the extraordinary. And her most enduring adventure took place right at home, collecting the songs and stories in the hardscrabble life of the men and women who worked along the Ohio River. 

Here’s one she found for her 1944 book, “Steamboatin’ Days.”

This Week's Freebie from The 1937 Flood

 It’s hard to believe, but it’s been 10 years now since Randy Hamilton brought us this tune. It resonated with us then and even more so today. 

 
Written by Eastern Kentucky’s own Chris Stapleton, this is an anthem to the power of resistance and redemption. 

Here’s Randy leading us on “Can You Run?”

This Week's Freebie from The 1937 Flood

 We sure wish we had started doing this song back when our buddy Dave Peyton was still alive. Oh, how Dave would have loved the goofy, gritty gospel vibe of this tune from the incomparable Mister Tom Waits.

This Week's Freebie from The 1937 Flood

 Our Randy Hamilton was just born to sing songs like this. He and Danny Cox brought us “Spooky,” this old Classics IV tune, last summer and we’ve been loving it ever since.

 

 

 

This Week's Freebie from The 1937 Flood

 The fun of playing some songs is that we just never know what we’re going to hear. This George Gershwin piece is like that, ever since Danny Cox brought better chords for last year. 

Now the song is like a shiny little red convertible parked in the garage just waiting for the next sunny day.

You and your buddies pile in, not knowing where you’re going, just enjoying the company and the sights and the sounds of each other’s laughter along the way. 

Hop in! We’re going for a joy ride!

This Week's Freebie from The 1937 Flood

 Some songs just seem to go to the heart of what connects us all.

 

This Week's Freebie from The 1937 Flood

 Sometimes the chemistry’s right — the stars align — however you want to say it… and the best song of the night is one you didn’t even plan to do. Here’s that moment from a recent rehearsal.

This Week's Freebie from The 1937 Flood

 Charlie’s Grandma Bowen had a thing about mockingbirds. 

 When he was just a little boy he remembers her winking at him and saying, “Now, Eddie, be careful what you say around mockingbirds. Those darn birds? They’ll tell your secrets every time.” 

 
That notion came back to him recently when he started writing this song.

This Week's Freebie from The 1937 Flood

 Our guitarist Danny Cox paints pictures with his sound. 

 
He has a positively uncanny capacity for discovering ways to bring out the colors and textures in all kinds of melodies and to plant stories in the minds of everyone who hears. 

Just listen to his treatment of this rich old Sonny Burke composition, finding all kinds of new magic and nuance in this poignant melody. Here — have some “Black Coffee”!

This Week's Freebie from The 1937 Flood

 This song has rattled around in the Floodisphere for decade but only recently did we decide to give it a try. Whaddaya think?