Thursday, April 28, 2011

House of the Rising Sun

Sometimes the magic happens at the tail-end of the evening, after the voices are strained and the fingers are tender from all that picking. On this particular track, half the band had already packed gone home. Jacob Scarr and Joe Dobbs were fixing to do same, when our buddy Jim Rumbaugh came in late from the cold and limbered up his harmonicas, so they decided to stick around for a couple more tunes.

Thursday, April 21, 2011

Fiddler Susan Staton's First Flood Jam Session

One of our favorite parts of the weekly jam sessions is getting to sit in with musicians from all over the country who stop in for one of our Wednesday nights. Last night was the first time for fiddler Susan Staton of the Central-Florida-based Streak of Lean old-time string band. Susan grew up in our area, but went to work for the railroad and transferred to various cities, from Richmond to Jacksonville. But she obviously never forgot her Appalachian roots. Here Susan leads us on a raucous romp through "Soldier Joy." And if you listen closely, you'll hear that Joe Dobbs, the Flood's regular fiddler, switches to mandolin for the occasion. And Dave Peyton does some nice Autoharp work before passing it back to the visiting violinist. Kick it off, Sue!

Thursday, April 14, 2011

One Meatball

From Chesapeake, Ohio, N.F. Brown -- everybody calls him "Nerf" -- first dropped by the jam session a few weeks ago and for most of that evening, he just sat quietly in the corner strumming his Taylor guitar. It was only near the end of the night, after many of the regulars had already gone home, that Nerf offered a tune -- and blew the doors off the place with his big, beautiful voice. Right then and there we told him he had to come back and next time sing earlier so more folks would get to hear him. Well, last night was the night -- here Mr. Brown leads The Flood through a great old Josh White standard. Good times, Nerf -- come back any time, buddy!

Thursday, April 7, 2011

The 1937 Flood Orchestra

We had so many pickers at the jam session last night, it was more like The 1937 Flood orchestra, with guest artists. Jim Rumbaugh came in with a belt full of harmonicas. Randy Brown was there with his big beautiful f-cut Gibson and Floodster emeritus Chuck Romine dropped by with that sweet little tenor guitar that we've always loved so much. With all that extra string and wind power, we rocked the neighborhood.