Hey, Congratulations, Norman and Carol!

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.

Louise Stops By

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.

Dink's Song

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."

Since I Fell For You. Again.

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!

Remembering Bob Toothman

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.