This Week's Freebie from The 1937 Flood

 Christmas is a time of tradition and what says tradition better than an ancient melody that has been associated with the gentle Yuletide season for centuries?

This Week's Freebie from The 1937 Flood

 Whenever Charlie’s cousin Kathy Castner comes for a visit from her Cincinnati home, they sing, and their musical connection goes back a long way. 

As a child, Kathy regularly visited relatives in Ashland. Whenever she did, her grandmother often assigned Charlie to sing her to sleep at her bedtime. One of the tune he brought to bear on the little girl’s eyelids was this New Christy Minstrels classic — “Today (While the Blossoms Still Cling to the Vine)” — and they’re still singing all these decades later. 

 
Here, from Kathy’s visit with the Family Flood last week, is the latest rendition, with sweet solos by Dan, Veezy and Sam and with Randy joining Kathy and Charlie on the harmonies.

This Week's Freebie from The 1937 Flood

 Christmas songs abound right now, but how about a tune for the downtrodden holiday shopper, the weary wielder of a maxed-out debit card? 

Well, your friends in The Flood can’t pick up the tab, but we can at least give you a blues to suit your mood, brought to you from a recent gig. After a day of rushing around spending money you don’t have buying things people don’t want, just take our advice: If you lose your money, please don’t lose your mind!

 

This Week's Freebie from The 1937 Flood

 Every configuration of The Flood — from the present all the way back to 1976 in our foggy ruins of time  — has done its own variation of this happy bit of hokum. And each version, in its way, has been a loving tribute to our heroes in the original Memphis Jug Band of the 1930s. 

 
This latest rendition, recorded at a recent gig, offers wonderful solos and fills by everyone in the band. Shoot, even the grins and the winks seem to come through in this track.

This Week's Freebie from The 1937 Flood

 You can learn about how versatile a band is by listening to its handling of instrumentals. Without the poetics of the lyrics or the theatrics of the singer, it’s up to the soloists to bring drama to the song. To hear what we mean, listen to this four-minute track from a recent Flood show. 

 
Vanessa Coffman opens the action with her tasteful statement of Fats Waller’s melody, “Honeysuckle Rose.” Then about a minute in, she begins to weave and spin brilliant new threads on that old familiar frame with her tenor sax, beautiful work that then inspires her bandmate, guitarist Danny Cox, when he follows with some gorgeous strings of his own. Yes, Veezy and Danny bring the honey to this rose.

This Week's Freebie from The 1937 Flood

 Danny and Randy brought us this song just a couple of weeks ago and in no time it became a rehearsal night favorite. 

Here’s our latest take on the tune, with Randy doing the honors on the vocals and everybody taking a turn on the solos.

This Week's Freebie from The 1937 Flood

 We have a different kind of podcast this week. Recently, the band has been working on some original compositions. This particular melody is one I started writing with back in the late 1970s, but you know what? Even after 40 years, the thing still doesn’t even have a name. Figures, I guess, for a song that’s about … well, procrastination. 

 Anyway, this week’s podcast invites you to eavesdrop as The Flood starts to craft an arrangement for this quirky little tune.