This Week's Freebie from The 1937 Flood

 After we Floodified a version of “Peaceful Easy Feeling” earlier this year, we started looking around for another Eagles tune we might bring into the repertoire. 

 
That’s when Randy Hamilton stepped up and said, “I might have one.” The old Eagles song “Love Will Keep Us Alive” is his sister’s favorite tune — in fact, Randy sang it at her wedding a while back — and when he started singing for us, it just naturally slipped into a Flood groove. 

Here from last week’s rehearsal is Randy leading the way!

This Week's Freebie from The 1937 Flood

 It was towards the end of a rollicking rehearsal, when between songs the guys start talking about what they plan to do in the week ahead. 

Danny mentions that he’d been getting out to take his walk in the mornings before the heat sets in. That prompts Charlie to start singing that old Fats Domino song, “I’m walkin’, yes, indeed, and I’m talking’….” 

 
Well, Danny — who by anybody’s definition is a walking jukebox — starts playing the old tune. Sam and Jack immediately pick up the vibe. Charlie reaches for the banjo to add a little pepper to the plot as Randy starts searching his memory bank for the words and melody — and suddenly the song seems to be arranging itself.

This Week's Freebie from The 1937 Flood

 Dave Peyton and Charlie first heard this great old Charlie Poole song back in the mid-1970s when they were lucky enough to regularly sit in with the good folks of The Kentucky Foothill Ramblers. 

That band’s founder — H. David Holbrook — was already a walking/talking encyclopedia of old-time music and taught us so many of those good old tunes. 

So it was only natural when The Flood got re-energized 30 years ago, this old tune was on the playlist. And it still is!

This Week's Freebie from The 1937 Flood

 Some nights are just magical, when everything we do — even a hundred-year-old song — seems suddenly fresh and new. Click out this tune from The Great Depression.

This Week's Freebie from The 1937 Flood

 Having known each other since high school, Randy Hamilton and Danny Cox have a bond and shared musical instincts that bring lots of riches to our room. 

 
Whenever Dan and Randy put a song to the table — as they did last week with this simply gorgeous old Neil Young classic — they have usually already worked out the arrangement. 

It’s ready for the rest of us to just  jump on board and ride!

This Week's Freebie from The 1937 Flood

Whenever we played this song back in the day, Joe Dobbs used to say, “I love those chords you found!” 

It’s true that the simplified country version that Joe grew up hearing was a little boring, but when The Flood started playing “Careless Love,” we dug around to find what Joe like to call “those Nawlins chords” that were favored by the early jazz bands who also played it.

Just listen, for instance, to all the ideas that Sam St. Clair, Danny Cox and Randy Hamilton come up with in this latest rendition from last week’s rehearsal.

This Week's Freebie from The 1937 Flood

Randy Hamilton and Charlie Bowen have been doing this old song for a dozen years or more, but “My Blue Heaven” also gets a facelift when new people join the band. 

Just listen to the 2024 version of the song and to what Danny Cox and Jack Nuckols have brought to this great old jazz standard from the Roarin’ Twenties.