Getting Flooded, By the Pint or By the Gallon

These days there are lots of ways to get a little Flood in your life, all through the magic that is the Web.

You can order complete CDs and have those little boxes of plastic delivered to your house by mail. Or you can download CDs, song by song, and save them in your computer, cutting the postal service right out of the equation.

But wait -- say you don't want an entire Flood CD. You can say that. Oh, you might break our hearts, but you can say that. In that case, you'll want to sample the tunes on the Flood CDs and then just pick and choose the specific tracks you want and have only those tunes downloaded to your computer.

Here are some ideas for flooding your ears...

iTunes

An easy way to get Flood audio is through the free iTunes software. Go to the iTunes store with this link, which takes you to a display of Flood albums. Click any cover to see (and sample) tracks. Options let you buy and download entire CDs for $9.99 or individual tracks for 99 cents each.

Of course, to use this, you'll need to be an iTunes user. It's great, free software from Apple that runs on Windows machines as well as Macs. Here's the link for a page where you can download and install iTunes software.

Amazon.com

If you want to save a few dimes on your downloads, Amazon.com offers full Floodishness for $6.99 to $8.99 per CD, and individual songs on Amazon can be had for a little as 89 cents per track. Here's the link for Amazon.com's Flood store.

Rhapsody

If you're a user of Rhapsody.com, where individual downloaded tracks are 99 cents and the complete CD downloads range from $10.99 to $12.99, here's your link.

CD Baby

Our CD Baby location enables you to buy CDs to be mailed to you for $15 each or will let you download entire CDs $8 (but provides no facilities for buying individual tracks). Here the CD Baby link.

Getting Discs Directly from the Flood

If you'd rather have discs mailed to you directly from us, we're happy to help. Just use this link to our page.

Getting Flooded for FREE

Finally, while all the above has been about buying Flood CDs or individual tracks, remember, the Original Old Boy Band has a lot of free music available too in the form of online streaming, free weekly podcasts of our "digital jam session" and free .mp3 downloads. Check it all out on our Freebies page on the site.

The Flood Goes Web 2.0 Crazy

Hey, The 1937 Flood can be as Web 2.0 cyber savant-ish as the next guy. Lately, in fact, the Original Old Boy Band has been expanding its online footprint into the new world of social networking, opening Flood-happy outposts on Facebook, MySpace, Twitter and last.fm.

Here's a roundup of our social network connections and the links that will take you to them.

-- Facebook is a primary social utility that connects people with friends and others who work, study and live around them. On Facebook, floodsters Pamela and Charlie Bowen, David and Susie Peyton, and Michelle Walker all have already created their own individual pages. And now to the Flood itself has set up a public Facebook page. Click here to reach it. If you too already have a Facebook account, we urge you to drop in at our public page and sign up as a Flood fan. (We're trying to jazz the numbers.) If you're not Facebook-friendly yet, hey, consider joining -- it's free and it's fun.

-- last.fm is perhaps our favorite Web 2.0 network, because it is all about music and musicians. The Flood uses last.fm to provide full-length samples of tracks and to run the popular Flood Radio feature, which we wrote about in an earlier blog. To reach us on last.fm, click here. You'll find that we also use last.fm as a major distributor of our weekly Digital Jam Session files, in addition to podcasting them, as we've reported earlier.

-- MySpace is one the of the oldest social networking site, offering email, a forum and communities. We're here on MySpace. Now, we're just getting started on this service and, honestly, from what we've seen so far, it doesn't seem as powerful or as interesting as Facebook. However, we're open to persuasion. If you're a MySpace mavin and think we're missing the point, feel free to enlighten us about what we're not seeing in this obviously popular network.

-- Twitter is a free social messaging utility for staying connected by using "mini-blogs" (messages limited to several hundred characters) in real time. To twitter and follow the Flood, click here. Well, like MySpace, Twitter is one of those services whose value seems to elude us. We're guessing we're missing something big here, because twittering has become an obsession with so many folks. OK, so here's the deal: if a lot of people sign up to twit about, oh, when The Flood is stuck in traffic, what the guys are having for lunch and who's having what operation when, we'll start using Twitter religiously. We're like that. And seriously, twitting does seem like it would be useful to report whether the weekly jam session is on schedule, when a gig is coming up and so on. As we say, we can be persuaded.

So, there you have it. Let us know what you think about any of these new net connections. And if you have suggestions for others we might explore, just sing out!

Freebies from The Flood

There are freebies from The Flood all around the web site. For instance, George Walker, who recorded, produced and mixed the Flood's second and third CDs (Plays Up a Storm and I'd Rather Be Flooded), recently started experimenting with some new recording software and decided to take a fresh listen to some of this older work. The result? Remasters of four flood tracks from 2002. Thanks, George!

Click here to reach the page and then click on a title from the list to hear and/or download the .mp3 for that specific tune. George's collection includes remixes of:

-- Alabama Jubilee. Penned in 1915 during Tin Pan Alley’s love affair with ragtime, this classic good-time tune was written by George L. Cobb, who that same year published his great “Are You From Dixie?”

-- Alberta, Let Your Hair Hang Down. This old folk tune actually is an Ohio River song, sung by the roustabouts who loaded and unloaded the steamboats. Hundreds of contemporary versions exist, including one by The Blues Project back in the late ’60s to a fairly recent Bob Dylan cover.

-- Lulu's Back in Town. Written by Harry Warner and Al Dubin for the 1935 stage show “Broadway Gondolier,” this great old tune was performed by the Ted Fiorito Orchestra, Mel Torme and The Mills Brothers, not to mention a fabulous version by another of our heroes, Leon Redbone.

-- Rag Mama/Gimme Dat Ding. We learned the first part of this medley (“Rag Mama”) from a 1964 recording by David Grisman’s Even Dozen Jug Band. The Flood takes the blame for combining it with “Gimme Dat Ding.” The wonderful old Albert Hammond-Mike Hazelwood novelty tune was first recorded by The Pipkins, but a better known version was the 1970s release by Dr. Hook and the Medicine Show.

Don't forget we also have downloadables from the weekly jam sessions. Each Wednesday night, some or all of the folks gather at Charlie & Pamela's house for the Flood jam session. These sessions usually are recorded and these days, we share occasional tracks through a project called Jam Logs, Freebies from The Flood. We stream the Jam Logs tunes on our Digital Jam Session page and we also make them available as free downloads on our last.fm pages.

And speaking of last.fm, we also allow for free listening of the Flood tracks on that site -- click here to visit our albums page on last.fm.

Getting the Picture(s)

The Family Flood does love its photos. Whether it's snapshots at parties or jam sessions, concert action photos (as much "action" has the old boys can get these days), posed shots or decidedly much UNposed shots, The Flood and its friends collect 'em and trade 'em.

Now, in the revamping of the web site, we've set aside some cyber space just for photo albums. Click here to reach the home base for Flood Fotos. So far, we have half dozen galleries in place:

-- Joe Elbert, long-time assistant managing editor for photography at The Washington Post, took in a Flood concert at Tamarack in Beckley, WV, in October 2008 and gave us some great photos of the guys, pictures that he's allowing us to share online.

-- Larry Kendall, long-time friend of the Flood, was on hand for the band's benefit concert for the ARTS Resources organization of Huntington in December 2008. Larry, who by day works in traffic safety with the City of Huntington, has shared some of the photographs he shot that evening.

-- Ed Strelau -- Cincinnati fiddler, photographer and fine Flood friend -- was working in the Huntington area in 2005 and regularly sitting in with the boys in their Wednesday night jam sessions. Ed also climbed aboard "The Delta Bub" to drive with The Flood to a recording session in the fall of '05 at the Bunker studio at Joe Dobbs' Fret 'n Fiddle in St. Albans. Ed took these pictures, which he gave to the band as a Christmas gift that year. Then later he returned with a beautiful six-pack of classic black and whites that he produced from that very Christmas visit.

-- Pamela, having been The Flood's manager for nearly a decade now, has had many opportunities to shoot the guys -- and to photograph them as well -- and she almost always has at least a camera handy. Her collection includes pictures from a wide variety of settings, from jam sessions to gigs, from parties to recording sessions. Here are some of Pamela's favorite shots over the years. Don't miss the "hulu dancers" she caught at Joe's 70th birthday party that took place in Sam and Joan's backyard.

-- Friends of the Flood. The extended Family Flood includes all the good people who come to listen and/or pick with us, either at the weekly jam sessions, at parties or at the performances. Here is an ever-growing (thankfully!) gallery of the Friends of the Flood.

-- The Old Flood Pix. Think of it as the Flood's baby pictures. Or blackmail... Take a band that's been around for more than 35 years, you've got great opportunities for photographic extortion. And, of course, the band that extorts ITSELF.... Well, we don't know where that thought is going, but, for better or worse, here are some snapshots from the Flood's earliest days, most of them from the 1970s and 1980s, including images of great friends who are former Floodsters, like Rog Samples, Stewart Schneider, Bill Hoke and others.

Enjoy the pictures. And we invite you to contribute to any of albums, or to send us material for new ones.

Come to The Flood Theater !

There's a rumor going around – okay, well, maybe we started the rumor ourselves – that the boys of The Flood don't show up on film. But we now have online proof to the contrary. The new, improved 1937 Flood web site offers more than an hour of music, film and photos in the form of 18 new music videos that you can view and listen online. Click here to dig into the goodies.

A big hunk of Flood history is covered here. Nearly a third of the videos are built around music and photos from the band's early days -- some from as early as 1979 -- with the sounds and images of Rog Samples, Stewart Schneider, Bill Hoke and other former Floodsters.

Two of the videos feature the great Chuck Romine, whose tenor banjo gave The Flood a new sound for more than five grand years. We even get to hear Chuck singing on a special rendition of “Bill Bailey,” recorded live in concert in the summer of 2002.

Of course, no collection of Flood tunes would be complete without some numbers by The Chick Singer. Michelle Walker's fabulous vocals are heard on “Walking After Midnight” and “Blue Moon.” She also joins in The Flood chorus on other videos in the set.

Speaking of wonderful singers, one video documents Kathy Castner's 2004 visit with the Flood, doing her drop-dead gorgeous version of that great Dobie Gray tune, “Lovin' Arms,” a track that also features Doug's terrific mandolin solo.

Music for these videos come from a wide variety of sources. The older pieces – Dave and Joe's “June Apple,” Charlie's rollicking “Samson & Delilah” and “Mama Don't Allow” -- come from party and coffeehouse tapes that somehow survived the '70s and early '80s.

Other pieces – like “Backwater Blues” and “Hootchie Coochie Man / 7th Son” featuring some hot guitar riffs by Jacob Scarr and Bub's driving bass – comes from tapes made at recent jam sessions.

Others – like Sam's crowd-pleaser, “Ain't No Free” and “Crazy Words, Crazy Tune,” with ragtime piano genius Jazzou Jones – were recorded live at the Flood's annual Coon Sanders Nighthawks Reunion gig last spring.

Some – like Dave and Charlie's “Georgie Buck” and the band rocking on “Jug Music Band” -- were captured by Pamela at recent gigs or practices with a hand-held Flip Video recorder.

Hands down, the best music of the entire collection -- “Down in the Flood,” “Didn't He Ramble?” “No Ash Will Burn,” “Sittin' on Top of the World” -- are the tracks recorded and mixed by long-time Flood pal, Bo Sweeney. Somehow Bo managed to make the practice room at the Bowen Bower sound like an uptown recording studio.

So, pop yourself some popcorn, make yourself comfortable and settle into the Flood Theater!

Come to the Digital Jam Session!

There are many good reasons why you might not be able to come in person to The Flood's regular weekly jam sessions.

Previous commitments. Great distances. Fear of mysterious infections...

But with the launch of The Flood's Jam Logs, Freebies from The Flood podcast, you can now attend a digital jam session whenever you need a Flood fix. It's free, it's easy and, cyberspatially speaking, it's pretty cool.

Regular FOFs (Friends of the Flood) know that every Wednesday night, some or all of the guys gather at Charlie & Pamela's house for the weekly Flood jam. Often friends and neighbors come round and frequently fellow musicians sit in on the fun too. These days, a recorder is often running as well, just ... oh, in case somebody happens to commit some art. Now that we've created the podcast, we can share occasional tracks from the jams.

If you use the free iTunes software on either a Windows or a Macintosh computer, the easiest way to get Jam Logs is to subscribe through that software, with this link.

Or if you want to use a different podcast listening software machine thing, use this link for a more generic signup screen.

If you sign up the podcast with either of those links, you'll automatically get the latest additions as they are made to the growing Jam Logs collection.

But wait a daggone minute, you say -- can you hear the freebie tracks from the digital jam session without subscribing to the podcast? Of course you can! We're always trying to figure out ways to make your life easier!

We stream the Jam Logs tunes on our Digital Jam Session page. Shoot, you can even download them for free on our last.fm pages.

So far we have four tunes in the Jam Logs file (St. Louis Blues, 4th Street Mess Around, Up a Lazy River and The New Wreck of the Old 97) and we expect to add another one each week or so.

So now, no excuses -- come jam with The Flood!

Come Listen to Flood Radio !

Here's something you didn't know -- The Flood has always dreamed of having its own radio station. But then, who hasn't? Imagine, day and night, listening to a radio that plays only the tunes of your favorite artists.

Of course, with the Flood -- West Virginia's most ECLECTIC string band, after all -- that would be a pretty diverse group of artists. The favorite performers group would have to start with great string bands and jug bands, both old and new, from the 1920s and 1930s stars like the Memphis Jug Band, Tampa Red and Georgia Tom and Gus Cannon's Jug Stompers, Riley Puckett and the Skillet Lickers, and, of course, Charlie Poole to 1960s Jim Kweskin, the Even Dozen Jug Band, the New Lost City Ramblers to today's Juggernaut Jug Band and the Old Crow Medicine Show.

But naturally it wouldn't stop there. The favorites would also have to include blues singers like Bessie Smith, Ma Rainey, Muddy Waters, Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee and Mississippi John Hurt up to Keb Mo' and Guy Davis, and classic bluegrassers from Flatt & Scruggs to the Stanley Brothers and the Coon Creek Girls, rock greats like Little Richard, Chuck Berry and Carl Perkins, folk singers like Tom Rush, Dave Von Ronk and Ian and Sylvia, songwriters from Hazel Dickens to John Prine and Steve Goodman to Hoagy Carmichael and Fats Waller. Then throw in a little Doc Watson, Staple Singers, Fats Domino, Lefty Frizzell, Louis Armstrong.

And of course, we'd have to give some air time to our buddies -- Rob McNurlin, John Lilly, Jazzou Jones, Cathy Barton and Dave Para, J.P. Fraley, Andy Cohen, Pat Surface and others.

And, heck, The Flood itself should appear on the station from time to time, shouldn't it?

Well, guess what? We now HAVE just such a station. Welcome, Flood Radio on the Internet!

It's made possible by last.fm, a UK-based Internet radio and music community website that now claims more than 21 million active users based in more than 200 countries. Just last year, the whole shootin' match was bought by CBS Interactive for about $280 million.

Using last.fm technology, The Flood has just created a custom radio station that plays the music of more than a hundred artists we've added to our online library, all the ones mentioned above and many more.

To check it out, just go to the Flood web site (1937flood.com) and click the "Flood Radio" link on the navigation bar at the left. Then click the circled arrow in the black last.fm player at the bottom of the resulting page. After a moment, you should be listening to Radio Free Flood!

The on-screen player will even give you details of what you're listening to at the moment. As we write this, Champion Jack Dupree's playing "Hometown New Orleans." A minute ago, it was Bob Wills & His Texas Playboys doing "Time Changes Everything," and before that, The Band was doing "Ophelia." On screen, the player even has links for buying the tune you're hearing, if you'd like. Yep, we're hooked.

Now, one note: Since last.fm is a rather cutting edge Web 2.0 application, it, well, doesn't always work right. Sometimes when we click the circled arrow, we get a message that says "no content / not enough content" or that there's been error loading the station. We've found, though, that if you just refresh page and try again or maybe leave the Flood site, then come back in and try again, it usually works. Sometimes, too, the player stops after a few tunes and has be re-launched. But hey, it's all free and pretty amazing, so if it's occasionally a bit hinky, well, hey, who the heck isn't?

Enjoy!