Jam Logs, the Podcast of The 1937 Flood

Well, we just barely had a quorum for last night's rehearsal. Suddenly, sicknesses of assorted stripe have struck us, but as we say around here, wherever two or more gather in its name, it is The Flood, and last night we had two plus two, which is just enough for some pre-summertime fun.

Arrangements while you wait! One of the things I love about rehearsing each week is that, for better or worse, we all begin to think alike … and, hey, mostly that's for the better! Now, all day long yesterday, I had a great old Ivory Joe Hunter tune stuck in my head, his 1950 hit song called "I Almost Lost My Mind." I started playing it last night at the practice session and, within minutes, an arrangement started coming to together. Michelle and Randy began finding great harmony vocals, Sam fell into a just natural harmonica groove, while for Doug… well, it brought back fond memories for Doug, of when he did that song with the bands he played with as a teenager when the song was new and the hottest tune on the radio.

Doug Chaffin has worn so many different hats in this band. When he joined up nearly 20 years ago, he played that driving upright bass behind the big guns of Joe Dobbs and Chuck Romine, Dave Peyton and Sam St. Clair. Later, when Dave Ball and then Randy Hamilton stepped in on bass, Doug moved to mandolin, trading licks with our young guitar wiz Jacob Scarr. After Jacob had to leave us to go to college, Doug added sweet guitar solos to his regular contributions. Lately, with the sad loss of our long-time bandmate Joe Dobbs, Doug's been dusting off his fiddle so well. Let's hear a few fiddle tunes from recent weeks.

The Flood will be out this Saturday night for a big benefit concert at Route 60 Music Co. in Barboursville to help fill the shelves of the Facing Hunger Food Bank. Admission to the show will be three cans or boxes of nonperishable food (or at least a five dollar donation.) We'll be playing songs from our new CD, "Live, In Concert," as well as some new things we've been working lately. The show starts at 7:30 Saturday night at 60 Peyton St. in Barboursville. Here's one of tunes we're working up for the evening.

So, you've got your sentimental songs. And you've got your train songs. And when you've got a sentimental song about trains, it's gotta be a winner. Here's a fun moment from a recent rehearsal. Listen to Michelle and Charlie switching lead and harmony vocals between the verses and the bridge. Listen to Doug lay a lovely extended solo with that new sweet little Paul Reed Smith guitar of his. And listen to Randy tie all together with a funky Addams Family lick. Yep, we're on a sentimental journey.

We had some great news last night. In the middle of our weekly rehearsal, two old friends, long-time Flood fans Norman Davis and Carol Angle, announced that, hey, they are getting married next month! We love these two so much, and joyous news deserves a joyous tune. Here's the very next song we played to welcome the new couple-to-be. Congratulations, dear friends.

It was our old friend Bill Hoke who was the first one we ever heard singing this great Paul Siebel composition. It was a party in the early 1970s. We'd been playing for hours, with a lot of loud and rowdy fiddle and banjo tunes that made the walls rattle. Then, during a break -- when the pickers had stopped to open new bottles -- Bill picked up his guitar and quietly started playing a tune called "Louise." We have loved that song ever since, and on special nights like last night, Louise, like a sad-eyed friendly spirit, comes 'round again. Here Paul and Doug handle the solos, and then Randy and Paul jump in on the vocal harmonies for the sweetest moment of the evening.

More than a hundred years ago, musicologist John Lomax recorded an African American woman they called "Dink" singing a song as she washed her man's clothes in a work camp on the banks of a river near Houston, Texas. Forty years later, in 1945, the great Josh White put it on his first album. Since then, it's been recorded by scores of performers, sometimes as "Fare Thee Well," but most often simply as "Dink's Song."

Sometimes a song walks right back into your life. About a decade ago, we were often playing that great old Lenny Welch tune from the mid-1960s, "Since I Fell for You," and then, for some reason, the song seemed to fall out of our repertoire. Nobody knew why, but we just didn't play anymore. 'Til last night. When Michelle Lewis came in from the wind and rain for our weekly rehearsal, that great old jazz standard strolled in right behind her. And we're so glad it did. Welcome home!

P { margin-bottom: 0.08in; } In The Flood's formative years, we used to have big music parties that went on all weekend long, and a highlight of the do was always when we got big Bob Toothman to play his special version of "Sister Kate." He's the man we learned it from. We still remember a year or so before Bob passed away his stopping by a Flood practice and just grinning all over himself at our slightly sexier version of his classic tune. These days, we still play around with "Sister Kate." Here's a take from a few weeks ago, with solos by Doug, Paul and Sam.