This Week's Freebie from The 1937 Flood

Bob Dylan's "Down in the Flood," which only a few years older than our band, by all rights ought to be The Flood’s theme song. 

The fact is, though, we’ve been doing it only about a dozen years or so, which is — well, “yesterday,” in FloodSpeak — but since then, we have embraced it. 

And in this, our latest rendition, we’re loving how Danny Cox and Veezy Coffman are just owning it!

This Week's Freebie from The 1937 Flood

 St. Patrick’s Day has always been a special time in the Floodisphere, and when it falls on our regular gathering night, well, the rehearsal turns into a bit of a céilí. 

Last night we brought out a number of rollicking tunes from the old sod, but evening ended on a quieter note, with this meditative old melody.

This Week's Freebie from The 1937 Flood

 Danny Cox’s years of close attention to guitar greats like Chet Atkins and Jerry Reed has perfectly prepared him for this solid old song. 

And like his heroes, Dan is an innovator, not an imitator. Just listen as Danny crafts four — count ‘em, four! — choruses to this song, bringing fresh ideas to each one of them.

This Week's Freebie from The 1937 Flood

 We’ve been doing this song for a dozen years of so,  but it’s always new, depending on who’s on hand to handle the solos. 

Last night it was Veezy and Danny’s turn to find sweet new nuance in all those old familiar chords.

This Week's Freebie from The 1937 Flood

 Now, we first started playing with this song about a year ago, but it’s been languishing for a while. 

It was just waiting for a blue and rainy evening like last night when Veezy, Danny, Randy and Charlie could revisit it.

It sounds like it’s ready to be a regular in our repertoire now.

This Week's Freebie from The 1937 Flood

What a wonderful family the Coffmans are, a young household full of musicians and artists, students and teachers. We feel so fortunate to know them through the transformative music of their eldest. Each week 21-year-old Vaness Coffman’s playing takes our ears to brand new places. 

Now, when Veezy plays her solo jazz sets at venues around our area, she’ll often mentions that every member of her family has a favorite song, and if you’re lucky, she’ll play them for you sometime during that night. 

Well, high on our list from that collection is her mom’s favorite. Julianne Coffman teaches music in the Cabell County schools and her Veezy tune is this 1948 jazz standard by Sonny Burke.

 So here it is, from last night’s Flood gathering: “Black Coffee.”

This Week's Freebie from The 1937 Flood

 The Flood learned its version of this tune from the great Jim Kweskin’s jug band and its 1966 album for Vanguard called “Relax Your Mind.” 

At last night’s Flood rehearsal, we were doing just that, thank you very much. Here we’ve got Randy Hamilton killing in on the harmonies and double dips of scintillating solos by Sam St. Clair and Danny Cox. 

As Jim Kweskin says, “I got mine — hope you got yours!”