The late Dave Peyton inspired Charlie Bowen to write this song.
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.
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.”
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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!”
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.
Since it’s Memorial Day weekend, we wanted to offer something appropriate in this week’s podcast.
So, here’s jubilant little hymn from your friends in The 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.”
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.
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.
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 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.
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.
