A Flood Teaching Moment

These days the weekly rehearsals are largely about figuring out what tunes we'd like to put on the next Flood CD which we hope to start working on later this year. That means checking out new songs but also revisiting pieces we used to play a lot but some reason have let slip away. A case in point is Dave Franklin's classic fiddle tune, "Cincinnati Rag." It was a regular of ours at gigs 10 years ago or so, but it never ended up on a CD. At last night's practice, Joe Dobbs brought it out again. This resulted in an obvious teaching moment -- you can hear us discussing the chords as Joe lays down the melody -- but by the end, everyone was in agreement: this tune needs to be back on the regular set list.

Doug and Randy Trade Places for the Evening

The Flood has a lot more options in instrumentation these days. Doug Chaffin can play mandolin and guitar, even fiddle, not to mention his superb work on the upright bass. And our newest Floodster, Randy Hamilton, usually plays bass these days, but also is an excellent lead guitarist. Last night, we decided to mix things up a bit -- we asked Doug to bring his bass and Randy to bring his six-string. The results were memorable -- but hey, judge for yourself. Here Michelle Walker leads us through Gershwin's "Summertime."

Joe Dobbs Gets His Happy Birthday Song from The Flood

It all started at a gig a few years back when a Flood fan said, "Hey, my brother's in the front row and it's his birthday -- would y'all play 'Happy Birthday' for him?'" We had to admit we didn't know "Happy Birthday." Well, that's back exactly true -- we recognize it when we hear it; we just never learned to play it. Then the fellow said, "So, what DO you play for birthdays?" Right there on stage, we huddled a minute and then said, "Well, how about that old jug band tune, 'You Can't Get That Stuff No More"? That got a laugh, we played the song and a new Flood tradition was born. From then on, The Flood has marked birthdays with that Tampa Red tune. Well, last night, one of our own celebrated a birthday -- Flood co-founder fiddler Joe Dobbs turned 78 -- and we had him playing on his own birthday serenade.