This Week's Freebei from The 1937 Flood

 Around here, the best night of the week is whatever night we’re all getting together to pick. Everyone always comes in the room ready to rock. But some nights? Well, those night swing even more than usual. 

Last week, for instance, Danny Cox seemed to have a whole barrel of new riffs to try out on his guitar, and Jack Nuckols was absolutely cooking on his snare and high-hat. 

 
And, man, it seemed like Randy Hamilton was rocking before he even got his bass out of the case. Just listen to how Randy’s walking bass lines puts a strut and a glide in this great old Shelton Brooks tunes from the Roarin’ Twenties. 

Shoot, you can probably hear Charlie Bowen grinning while he's singing.

This Week's Freebie from the 1937 Flood

 Charlie first heard this centuries-old fiddle tune 50 years ago when an old friend Jim Strother played it with our favorite local string band, the good old Kentucky Foothill Ramblers. 

He couldn’t imagined The Flood ever playing it. However, a year or so ago, when he started studying the five-string banjo, the same old tune came rolling back in his brain. 

 
About the same time, Jack was dusting off his fiddle, and they worked it up together and then they taught it to Danny and Randy and Sam, who added their own sweet touches, and now the tune is a cool change of pace at our weekly rehearsals.

This Week's Freebie from The 1937 Flood

 We learned this great West Virginia tribute song in the 1970s, just a few years after Bruce Phillips wrote it. That’s because some of our local heroes — H. David Holbrook’s late great Kentucky Foothill Ramblers — started singing it at those parties where The Flood was born.

 
Nowadays, "Green Rolling Hills of West Virginia" is always on the playlist whenever Floodster Emerita Michelle Hoge is in the room, as she was one night last month.

This Week's Freebie from The 1937 Flood

 The Flood first started fooling around jug band tunes nearly 50 Springs ago, when the band was still a youngster. Before that, the guys played mainly old folk songs and some Bob Dylan and John Prine and a smattering of radio tunes from folks like James Taylor and The Eagles. 

But then they discovered some fine old recordings by Tampa Red and Georgia Tom, by groups like the Mississippi Sheiks and Gus Cannon’s Jug Stompers, and most especially the great Memphis Jug Band. 

 
Ever since then, The Flood’s music buffet table has been a lot bigger, with tunes like this one from the warmup at last week’s rehearsal.

This Week's Freebie from The 1937 Flood

 Michelle Hoge brought us this song about a decade ago. It immediately found a place on the next album we were working on and it became a standard feature in most of our shows. 

 
Sadly, these days, we don’t see Michelle so often — she and her husband Rich live more than two hours away — but whenever she rambles back this way, as she did last week, this mid-1950s classic is sure to make an appearance.

This Week's Freebie from The 1937 Flood

 At last week’s rehearsal, the first take on this tune was slow and bit lifeless, but then Randy Hamilton said, “Let’s try it again,” and kicked it up into a new gear. 

At the start of the track, you’ll hear him ask his band mates what they think. “Yeah!” they all say, then Danny Cox lets his guitar register his vote with some of the most inspired playing the whole night.

This Week's Freebie from The 1937 Flood

 The word “evergreen” has a special meaning in our band room. It means a tune that’s timeless. Like this Tom Paxton classic. It is 60 years old, but it feels it could have been written last week — or a century ago.