Blue Moon Alert!

Wow, we have a blue moon this month. Now, the term “blue moon” generally means two full moons in the same month. (In this case, the first full moon is this Thursday and the second full moon will be on Saturday, March 31.) Yeah, I know — it’s just a little public service announcement from your friends in The Flood. Anyway, to get you ready for all your blue moon frolicking, here’s a lunar tune from last night’s rehearsal.

Ookpik

The folk process in music is interesting. Sometimes tunes begin in the foggy ruins of time, as Bob Dylan might say — uh, DID say, actually — and then make their way into contemporary songs. For instance, Jimmy Driftwood’s “The Battle of New Orleans”(“in 1814, we took a little trip…”) began life as a fiddle tune called “The 8th of January,” which is still played by the pros today. And sometimes the folk process works in the other direction. In other words, a composed tune enters the hearts and minds of traditional musicians and takes on a false narrative of antiquity, sort “going native.” A case in point in the Canadian-American tune called “Ookpik,” which began surfacing on the fiddle contest circuit in the 1970s with rumors ancient roots among Native Americans. After all, the name itself is an Inuit word for “snowy” or for “Arctic owl.” Well, despite all those stories about this being some time-honored Eskimo waltz, “Ookpik” was written by a late British Columbia fiddler named Frankie Rodgers, who actually published it in a book of his compositions in 1965. Okay, fine, but whatever it provenance, it’s a beautiful melody, one that Doug Chaffin brought to us a few years ago. On this track from a couple of weeks ago, Doug starts the tune with his rich, warm guitar, then we hand it off to Paul Martin’s mandolin while Doug switches to his fiddle to bring the song to sweet conclusion.

Remember!... eventually...

Our old friends Linda and Wendell Dobbs once recommended a tune to us … well, wait a minute. We know the actual date! It was July 12, 2012, at the start of the Joe Dobbs book tour. Yeah, it’s weird, the things we remember, but we were doing a show and a reading in Ashland, Ky., at the Paramount Arts Center, and, during a break, Wendell said, “You know, you guys oughta try doing ‘A Taste of Honey.’ It’d be a good song for you!” Well, we did give the song a spin at a couple of rehearsals, but then, you know how it is —things happened and we got distracted and “Honey” just sort of went back on the shelf. Until earlier this month, when we got a hankering for another little taste of honey. It was as if the tune had to wait for Doug Chaffin and Paul Martin to season it with their beautiful solos, as you’ll hear in this track from a recent rehearsal. So, then, this is for Wendell and Linda. We don’t forget; it’s just that sometimes it takes us a while to remember! By the way, we remembered the actual date of Linda and Wendell’s suggestion because of a new project we’ve launched, a kind of online scrapbook of stories, pictures, audios and videos called “Five Decades of Floodishness.”  Come to our web site — www.1937flood.com — to check it out.

Jim Sweetens Up the Jam

When we recently switched our rehearsal nights from Tuesdays to Mondays, we didn’t realize that one of the benefits would be that our old friend Jim Rumbaugh could now occasionally drop in for a visit. Last night, our harmonicat Sam St. Clair could not make the practice session, but as luck would have it, just as we were starting, Jim came by with him harps and sat down for a big helping of Floodishness. Here’s a particularly tasty bit in the evening’s offerings. Listen as Jim sweetens up one of Paul Martin’s signature tunes, his rendition of the 1969 hit by Marmalade, “Reflections of My Life,” and how Jim’s solo nicely echos Doug Chaffin’s fiddle.