The First Time with "The Last Time"

Paul Martin is such a joyous addition to The Flood. He brings us beautiful mandolin and guitar work, wonderful vocals, a great sense of humor -- and often very interesting new tunes to try out. For instance, a few months ago, Paul said, just in passing, "Hey, y'all ever heard this one?" and launched into a gorgeous song with a Civil War theme called "The Last Time," one that recorded some time ago by the McPeak Brothers and by The Rarely Herd. Well, the first time that we heard "The Last Time," we fell in love with the song, and we've been playing with it all summer long. Here, from last night's rehearsal, is its latest incarnation. That's Paul on the lead vocal and everyone jumping in on the chorus. We suspect you'll be singing along too before it's done.

Fishin' Blues

It's interesting where some songs come from. Taj Mahal's "Fishin' Blues" has never been on a set list for any of our shows, and we've not played in a practice session for years, but last night it just sort of washed up in our collective consciousness somehow as a perfect little warmup tune and everybody just went with it. So, here's a little three-minute snippet of a summer evening in Floodville.

These Days

Jackson Browne was just 16 when he wrote "These Days," a song so rich in themes of loss and regret that you would have to believe it had to come from someone at least three times that age. The song was recorded by so many people back in the '70s. Greg Allman has a wonderful rendition, but we always loved the lesser known version recorded by Tom Rush in 1970. Today "These Days" is often a warm-up up tune for The Flood as we're waiting for the rest of the band to arrive for the weekly rehearsal, as it is in this simple track taken from an evening's workout a few weeks ago.

Lulu's Back in Town (Again)

Okay, we're not saying we're getting old and forgetful or anything, but we ARE saying that sometimes we have to, uh, re-learn tunes that we recorded 14 years ago. And too about half today's Flood wasn't even in the band a decade and a half ago so they just haven't not had the same opportunity to forget what some of us have. Anyway, this leads to some interesting each-one-teach-one moments at the rehearsals nowadays, like this from last night's get-together. We join, in progress, "Lulu's Back in a Town," a nifty 1935 tin pan alley number that we put on our second CD -- "The 1937 Flood Plays Up a Storm" -- way back back in 2002. This track is complete with a little 30-second workshop regarding the chords right in the middle of things. Enjoy.