Medicine and Candy (from this week's circle...)

Being in a band means knowing that the best minutes of the week will be those spent sitting in a circle making music with your friends, each note coming with a chuckle and smile. It's medicine and candy all in one. Here's a little sample of the joy from last night's circle.

Remembering Joe as He's Like to be Remembered

There was a somber moment at last night's rehearsal, thinking about our bandmate and running buddy Joe Dobbs. It was exactly a year ago today that he … flew away, as they say in the old hymns, and not a day has gone by in the past year that we haven't thought about him. But, you know, Joe wouldn't approve any kind of morbid anniversary of his death. The man just didn't like funerals and wouldn't go to one -- unless someone roped him into playing at it. So instead, last night we remembered Joe in a few of the rowdy tunes he loved for us to play, like this one.

The Water is (still) Wide

Rivers are big deal us in the band. We live near them. We play by them and on them and we sing about them. We're always on the lookout for river songs. Two years ago, when we were invited to perform in Marshall University's theater production of "Tom Sawyer," we dusted off this old folk song for our show, "The Water is Wide," and instantly our Michelle Lewis made it her own. Last night in a quiet moment at the weekly rehearsal, we brought it out it again.

Yas Yas Chuck

Whenever Chuck Romine buys a new banjo -- and he now has five of them, which we think might be the legal limit -- he brings it around to show it off to his old bandmates. Last night the star of the evening was Chuck's gorgeous new Bacon & Day Silver Bell #2. Built in the early 1920s, the banjo had been living in St. Louis until it just recently came to its new West Virginia home, and Chuck brought it out to break in by jamming with the Family Flood.