Jam Logs, the Podcast of The 1937 Flood

To warm up for an evening’s rehearsal, we often dig deep into our long, collective memory. Here is a tune that’s been on The Flood’s playlist for decades. In fact, 10 years ago — in the first months of this then-new weekly podcast — we offered up a version of this song, that one featuring our youngest and oldest Floodsters at the time, Jacob Scarr and Joe Dobbs. Now here, from last night’s get-together, is our 2019 version of this great old Mississippi Sheiks composition, with tasty solos by Doug, Paul and Randy. Yep, the facts are in: We’re still “Sittin’ on Top of the World.”

Boy, we sure are blessed with a mighty tolerant, forgiving band. When we have a big show coming up — like we did last weekend with the launch of the new season of “Route 60 Saturday Night” — The Flood has rehearsals and nails down the arrangements of all the tunes, deciding things like, okay, Doug and Paul will do a duet in this section, then Sam will come in for a solo on the bridge and then we’ll throw it back to Michelle for the vocals. But then sometimes when we get to the actual show, Charlie forgets everything we worked out. That’s what happened Saturday night with our carefully arranged plans for “Honeysuckle Rose.” Fortunately, as usual, our bandmates just grinned and winked at each other, as if to say, “Well, Old Charlie has wandered off on his own again.” Later our sweet-tempered bass player Randy Hamilton told him, “Hey, it’s not the mistakes you make; it’s how well you recover.” And we did seem to do okay on that score. Most people outside the band didn’t seem to notice the big screwup. Even Pamela, our manager, who hears our tunes more than anyone, thought, “Huh! Sounds like they’ve worked out a different version this time.” Uh, right! Anyway, as a musical footnote, here (from a rehearsal last week) is how “Honeysuckle Rose” was supposed to go Saturday night.

We don’t usually give homework assignments, but if you’re coming to this weekend’s Route 60 Saturday Night show, we want you to be ready for our special end-of-show sing-along. We tested it out for the first time last weekend at Taylor Books in Charleston and… well, heck, let’s just let Michelle explain it. Here’s that moment from last week’s show….  (Remember, we’ll ba-ba-ba be at Route 60 Saturday Night THIS Saturday night, March 16, for the opening of our fourth big season! The guest artists are singer-songwriters Wakita Billups and Luke Sadecky. The show starts at 7 p.m. at Route 60 Music Co., 60 Peyton Street in Barboursville. Admission is $5 and this month all proceeds go to the Lifehouse recovery program. Join us — it’s gonna be great evening!)

Charleston’s Taylor Books is a fun venue for us, in part because it reminds us of the coffeehouse culture of our youth. The Flood grew up in sweet spots like this, where the stage was a wide space at the end of the long room, the tables were tucked in near enough to the performers so the audience could easily sing along. Some of our best memories were born in rooms like this. That's why we’re always eager to return whenever the folks at Taylor Books invite us back, as they have this weekend. Here’s a tune we have on tap for Saturday night when we’re going back “Way Downtown” in Charleston. Remember, it’s Saturday night, Taylor Books, 226 Capitol Street, Charleston. The show starts at 7:30.

When we’re preparing a show — and we’re getting ready for a good one on Saturday, March 9, at Taylor Books in Charleston — we’re always on the lookout for tunes that would be especially good to open or close a set with. What we want here is a lively song that can get an audience clapping and singing along, either eager for the show to start or sorry to see it end. The song should feature everybody who’s on stage, highlighted by vocals and solos. In a word, it’s an ensemble piece. For the past half dozen years or so, a particular good one for an ensemble is this Jimmy Reed number, which you may recognize as the opening tune on our most recent CD, our “Live, In Concert” album. So, here, from a recent rehearsal, is the 2019 version of “You Got Me Slippin’.”

As we prepare for a busy spring season of shows, we’re working on new material, but also revisiting some of our older tunes. This is a useful exercise for us, because it helps us avoid losing some songs. A case in point is this great old Ivory Joe Hunter composition. Two years ago, we were singing it all the time, and then, for some reason, it just slipped off the radar, until last night, when Michelle and Randy started talking about it. Here’s our last rendition of “I Almost Lost My Mind,” with tasty solos by Doug, Paul and Sam.

The Flood is fixin’ to awaken from its long winter’s nap soon — we’ve got a busy set of Saturdays scheduled next month — and we’ll kick everything off by returning to our favorite capitol city venue, Charleston’s Taylor Books on Saturday, March 9. Please, mark your calendar. We’re going to have a ball there, as always! At last night’s rehearsal, we began thinking about the tunes we’ll want to play in that show, and at the top of list was this one. We’ve been doing W.C. Handy’s “St. Louis Blues” for decades, but the number never really took off until we turned it over to our amazing Michelle Lewis.

Our next album, which we’ve begun recording this winter in the mountain hide-away studio at the home of Floodster Paul Martin, will be a new idea for us: an all-instrumental CD, especially featuring some of the tunes that Doug Chaffin has brought us over the years. As long-time Flood fans know, Doug has played many instruments with the band in these, his first 20 years with us, from upright bass and mandolin to fiddle and guitar. Here, from last night’s rehearsal, is one of the numbers we’re considering for the new album, which will be out later this year. This is Doug’s rendition of “Waltz Around the World.”

At the start of a rehearsal, we’re usually thinking about getting our fingers limbered up for the night’s picking, but voices need to be warmed up too. When we can, we try to remember to start with a few tunes that will also get our vocal cords in gear. Here Michelle, Randy and Charlie lean into a wonderful half-century-old number by beloved folk song composer Tom Paxton. It’s a beautiful old lament that Tom himself, now at 81, is still singing out there in shows all across America. Here’s The Flood treatment of Paxton’s “The Last Thing on My Mind.”

In New York in a single year — 1925 — Tin Pan Alley composer Ray Henderson wrote three — count ‘em THREE — classics in the great American songbook: “Bye Bye Blackbird,” “Has Anybody Seen My Girl?” (“Five foot two, eyes of blues…”) and “I’m Sitting on Top of the World.” And then in the next year, maybe just to show he hadn’t shot his wad, Ray wrote this one, “The Birth of the Blues.” Now, The Flood started playing this song, gosh, probably 20 years ago — well, yeah, we put it on our second CD way back in 2002 with Joe Dobbs and Chuck Romine and Dave Peyton — but we hadn’t play it in about a decade. In fact, our newer Floodsters — Paul Martin and Randy Hamilton— had never even heard it, until Charlie started picking it one night at the recent rehearsal, and Doug jumped in with his sweet little Paul Reed Smith guitar, and then Paul Martin pick it up for a couple of solos, and suddenly Ray Henderson’s tune was up and rarin’ to go again.