This Week's Freebie from The 1937 Flood

This week's freebie features a reunion with an old friend, one with music and rhyme.

Sometimes a song comes back into our lives like an old friend. We had that moment last night with a classic Eddie Arnold number, a tune we hadn't played in more than a year.

Listen to this, as Michelle re-introduces us to "You Don't Know Me" in the sweetest three minutes of the whole evening. Click to hear the tune.

This Week's Freebie from The 1937 Flood

This week's freebie features two songs from a special reunion.

Musically speaking, Sallie Sublette is part of the family. Sallie met Joe Dobbs in 1976, just a year after the late fiddler came into our lives, and she and Joe had many memorable adventures together over the years.

Sallie also had long and loving history with The Flood's mother superior and guiding spirit, the eternal Nancy McClellan. She was long time buddy of Rog Samples and his brothers Mack and Ted. The list of our connections is great indeed.

So whenever Sallie comes back east from her home in Idaho, we look forward to at least one evening with her. Last night, when she and her sister Linda joined us, it was a time of laughs and tears, stories and, of course, songs. Here are two. Click to hear the tunes.

This Week's Freebie from The 1937 Flood

This week's freebie features a blues for Mr. Got Rocks.

We try to keep politics out of the rehearsal room, but this week's news -- that one of the presidential candidates lost nearly a billion dollars and so may not have paid income tax for 18 years -- seeped even down to the Flood bunker, where, you know, we're nothing if not sympathetic to downtrodden billionaires.

Chin up, Mr. Got Rocks. If you lose your money, please don't lose your mind. Click to hear the tune.

This Week's Freebie from The 1937 Flood

This week's freebie features medicine and candy.

Being in a band means knowing that the best minutes of the week will be those spent sitting in a circle making music with your friends, each note coming with a chuckle and smile. It's medicine and candy all in one.

Here's a little sample of the joy from last night's circle. Click to hear the tune.

This Week's Freebie from The 1937 Flood

This week's freebie features a song to an old companion.

There was a somber moment at last night's rehearsal, thinking about our bandmate and running buddy Joe Dobbs. It was exactly a year ago today that he … flew away, as they say in the old hymns, and not a day has gone by in the past year that we haven't thought about him.

But, you know, Joe wouldn't approve any kind of morbid anniversary of his death. The man just didn't like funerals and wouldn't go to one -- unless someone roped him into playing at it.

So instead, last night we remembered Joe in a few of the rowdy tunes he loved for us to play, like this oneClick to hear the tune.
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This Week's Freebie from The 1937 Flood

This week's freebie features a revisit with a great old tune.

Rivers are big deal us in the band. We live near them. We play by them and on them and we sing about them. We're always on the lookout for river songs.

Two years ago, when we were invited to perform in Marshall University's theater production of "Tom Sawyer," we dusted off this old folk song for our show, "The Water is Wide," and instantly our Michelle Lewis made it her own.

Last night in a quiet moment at the weekly rehearsal, we brought it out it again. Click to hear the tune.

This Week's Freebie from The 1937 Flood

This week's freebie features an old friend with a new toy.

Whenever Chuck Romine buys a new banjo -- and he now has five of them, which we think might be the legal limit -- he brings it around to show it off to his old bandmates.

Last night the star of the evening was Chuck's gorgeous new Bacon & Day Silver Bell #2. Built in the early 1920s, the banjo had been living in St. Louis until it just recently came to its new West Virginia home, and Chuck brought it out to break in by jamming with the Family Flood. Click to hear the tune.