Jam Logs, the Podcast of The 1937 Flood

Sometimes in the best conversations, not a word is spoken, such as when a group of musicians sit in a circle and listen to each other. In this little confab from last night’s rehearsal you can hear those wild, wordless ideas being exchanged by Sam St. Clair and Paul Martin, by Doug Chaffin and Paul Callicoat. And the subject of the moment? Why, it’s Gershwin and “Lady Be Good.”

Some tunes have their own long, strange stories for how they end up The Flood’s songbag. Here’s one. Back in 1952, blues great Sam "Lightnin'" Hopkins recorded a sweet, mournful number called “Jesus, Will Come By Here,” but the song went largely unnoticed for 20 years. Then in 1972, the great Cicely Tyson/Paul Winfield movie called ”Sounder" used it in the soundtrack, but renamed it "Needed Time.” Well, sitting here in Huntington, WV, both Roger Samples and Charlie Bowen saw that movie, loved that song, and a year or so later, as our band getting busy being born, “Needed Time” was a song that both Rog and Charlie brought to the table. Well, over the next decade or so, as we played it at the ever-more raucous music parties where The Flood was just getting its feet wet, our little tune evolved from a moan to a shout — a lot less Sunday morning and a lot more Saturday night, as Roger might have said — but, you know, we like to think even today the tune still taps into some of Lightnin’s original magic, what made us fall in love with the song in the first place a half century ago. So here’s “Needed Time: 2019.”

It was eight years ago this month that our youngest-ever Floodster — Jacob Scarr — left the nest. Jacob played lead guitar with us from the time he was about 15 until he graduated from high school and left for college and a new life in Colorado. Well, earlier this year, Jacob finished law school and is starting his first post-college job with a law firm in Denver. Ah, but he still he gets back to our time zone a couple of times a year and we’re so happy that, when he does, he always tries to make time to jam a little with us. Last night, Jacob partied with his Family Flood, swapping tunes and stories with old friends and new around the table, This was our first tune of the evening, one that was our usual warmup number back in Jacob’s days with the band, here with solos by Doug Chaffin and Paul Martin, Sam St. Clair and Paul Callicoat, and, of course, a couple of extra choruses by our guest of honor, Jacob Scarr. This is “If You Lose Your Money (Please Don’t Lose Your Mind).” Hey, also our manager Pamela shot a cool video at last night’s session. To check it out, visit our website at 1937flood.com and click on the option called “Our Videos” on the left-hand column.

The Flood’s had a love of swing era tunes for a very long time — well, since the late Joe Dobbs got us playing “Sunny Side of the Street,” what? More than 20 years ago. One of our favorites is “Moonglow,” a 1930s composition by Eddie DeLange and Will Hudson. And now, here’s a curious bit of trivia about the song. During the Big Band era, this pair wrote a bunch of hits. Usually, Eddie wrote the melodies and Will composed the lyrics, but on “Moonglow” they switched places. Hudson wrote the song originally as an instrumental and only later did DeLange add some words. The song was first recorded by the great jazz violinist Joe Venuti and his orchestra. A year later, Benny Goodman and Ethel Waters had a hit with it. After that, everyone — from Art Tatum to Billie Holiday — took a turn with the tune. For us, it’s a Michelle special. Here’s a rendition from a rehearsal a few weeks ago, with sweet solos by Sam, Paul and Doug. That’s Paul Callicoat on bass and Charlie helping Michelle out a little with some harmony on the choruses. Here’s The Flood’s version of “Moonglow.”

So earlier this summer, when Paul Callicoat started sitting in with us on bass, we realized that his learning curve would not be so steep if we took the time to write out chord charts for some of the less familiar Flood tunes. Well, that project turned into a pretty cool new features for the band’s website, one we call “the freakin' first-ever Full-Fledged FLOOD FAKEBOOK.” From time to time, a regular listener of this podcast will want to play along with that week’s online tune, and this new feature can help. To use it, go to the website — 1937flood.com — and click on “The Fakebook” option on the left-hand column. There you’ll find a list of four to five dozen Flood tunes. Just click on the title of the song you’re interested in and up pops a page of chords for that number. And you can try it out right now, using this song from last night’s rehearsal. It’s Michelle’s rendition of the great Eddy Arnold number, one that brother Ray Charles had a huge hit with in 1962, “You Don’t Know Me.”

If an alien anthropologist were flying by to study our music, he’d probably be fascinated — well, as we Earthlings are — with how altering a single element can change a whole vibe, even in mid-song. Here’s a case in point from last night’s Flood rehearsal. So, Michelle and Charlie are tooling along on pretty much a standard version of one of the band’s favorite warm-up tunes, our take on W.C. Handy’s good old “Careless Love.” Then, though, Doug Chaffin seems to hear something new that he can add to the piece, but he’ll need his fiddle instead of his guitar to do it. Listen and about a minute in — toward the end of Sam St. Clair’s harmonica solo — you’ll hear Doug switching instruments. A grin flashed from Paul Martin, who’s sitting right next to Doug at that moment, is our first signal that something in the tune is changing. On down the line, Paul Callicoat hears it too and soon he’s adding a little extra sumpin-sumpin to his bass line to compliment and encourage the bluesy fills that Doug is now playing on his fiddle. By the end, this old tune is in a brand new groove and somewhere out there in space, the little green men are probably grinning too.

Most musicians believe in magic, because magic is in the room on those nights whenever everything just cooks. Lately, the magic ingredient in The Flood’s special brew has been our dear friend Paul Callicoat. Now, Paul is old buddy of the band and as our other Paul -- Paul Martin -- noted last night, we’ve all recognized in him a kindred spirit. Well, lately, Paul Callicoat has been sitting in with us on bass, and suddenly old tunes have taken on new life. Right here’s just one of many examples for last night’s rehearsal. Now, we’ve been doing Bob Dylan’s “You Ain’t Going Nowhere” for a few years, but listen to this version. Check out the new notes that Doug has conjured up from somewhere for his fiddle solos. Oh, and hear the new vocal accents that Michelle has brought to the verses as well as the choruses. Everybody seems to be hearing the song with fresh ears. Hey, Mister C, that’s all you, buddy.

So, the story goes that 19-year-old William Christopher Handy was walking the dark streets of St. Louis one night when he met a woman who was very publicly mourning her husband’s abrupt absence. That in itself perhaps was not news, but young Bill was stopped in his tracks by what the woman said next. “My man,” she cried, “’s got a heart like a rock cast in the sea!” Well, the rest, as they say, is history. About a dozen years later, a now very grown-up W.C. Handy would publish a song that would change American music, a tune that some today call “the jazzman’s ‘Hamlet.’” Handy’s composition would memorialize that summer night in the city, right from the opening line: “I hate to see that evening sun go down.” Now, The Flood’s been knowing this song for decades. We did it as an instrumental for many years, but it took on a whole new life when Michelle Lewis claimed it for her own, these days making it seem brand new every time she rolls it out. Oh, and incidentally, it was new last night for some of us in the room. The evening marked Paul Callicoat’s first session with us sitting in on bass. Listen here as he makes memories for all of us with Michelle’s “Saint Louis Blues,” along with sweet solos by Doug Chaffin and Paul Martin.

Sometimes the tunes between the tunes are the most memorable of an evening. These in-between songs are the ones that crop up spontaneously between the ones we had planned to work on at that particular rehearsal. Here’s one from last night. Talk of dodging days of summer storms in the valley led to a raucous, impromptu rendition of this 1933 Harold Arlen composition. Michelle rocks the vocals, as always, and check out the happy solos by Doug on fiddle and Paul on guitar. Oh, we might never do this classic torch song like this again, but it was a fun moment last night.

Well, you don’t usually turn to the blues for optimism. That’s why we’ve always loved the old blues number “Trouble in Mind,” which say right up front, “I’m blue, but I won’t be blue always, ‘cause the sun’s gonna shine in my backdoor someday.” Uh-huh. Here’s a take on that tune from a Flood rehearsal a few weeks back, an especially sweet evening when our good buddy Jim Rumbaugh stopped by to play bass with us, along with nifty solos by Doug, Sam and Paul.