Honeysuckle Rose

We’ve been playing around with Fats Waller’s “Honeysuckle Rose” for more than a decade now and, it’s funny, but just when we think we've got it nailed down, the band’s membership changes and we have to start all over. Here’s a fun moment from a Flood rehearsal back in February. You’ll hear the track start out with Charlie talking to our new bass player, Paul Callicoat, about how we approach the song. Then as we launch into it, you’ll hear Doug say he can’t remember his part, and Charlie assuring him he’ll think of something. And of course, he does. Things start really rocking when Michelle comes in with her high, cool vocal lead. Meanwhile, Vanessa Coffman has been taking all this in, so when we call for a little saxophone about midway through the tune, Veezy’s ready with a couple tasty choruses. Oh, be sure to hang around for Doug’s comment at the end. Hey, it’s all in an evening’s work/fun in The Flood house.

I Almost Lost My Mind

Musicians have always understood Brother Aristotle’s comment that the whole is greater than the sum of its part. After all, that’s what musicians always try to do when they sit down in a circle to play: to make something bigger than all of them put together. And the secret to the magic in music is a simple one: Just listen to each other. Here’s an example from a recent Flood rehearsal. Listen to how right from the start, Paul Callicoat’s bass is putting down a heartbeat-like rhythm that beautifully reflects the mood of the lyrics. Then midway through, listen to how Veezy Coffman’s sax solo builds on the simple, solemn mood that Sam St. Clair outlines with his harmonica two choruses earlier. Oh, and then toward the end of the tune, hear how for his mandolin solo, Paul Martin beautifully continues the lines that Doug Chaffin has been laying down in the fills he’s playing on his guitar between the lines of the vocals. Yes, listen closely and you’ll hear there’s much more to this story than just the lyrics Charlie and Michelle are singing.

Wonderful World

"Social distancing" doesn’t come naturally to most musicians. We’re a hugging, humming, harmonizing kind of people who generally don’t suffer solitude gladly. But during this awful Coronavirus pandemic, we are behaving ourselves — staying at home, washing our hands, not touching our faces. It’s now been a month since the Family Flood has been together in the same room, and we miss each other terribly. But our family, like yours, will get through this thing. Meanwhile, for these weekly podcasts, we continue to rely on recordings from months ago, and some of them suddenly seem especially poignant. For instance, back in mid-winter, when Michelle and guys did this tune at a rehearsal, we had no idea how in just a few weeks it would have us longing for the simple pleasure of just being back together.

Rest in Peace, John Prine

For many of us, this pandemic thing got real about week ago when we learned that singer/composer John Prine had been hospitalized with the COVID-19 virus. And then last night we were absolutely heartbroken to learn that John — called by many the Mark Twain of American songwriting — had lost that fight, dead at 73. So, we are in mourning today. But we’re also thinking about something we read that John said one time. He said, “I guess I just process death differently than some folks. Realizing you're not going to see that person again is always the most difficult part about it. But that feeling settles, and then you are glad you had that person in your life, and then the happiness and the sadness all get swirled up inside you." John will certainly be living inside of us in The Flood. We started doing his tunes more than 40 years ago, just ripping ‘em right that first album in the early 1970s. And now, decades later, we’re still adding John Prine tunes to our songbag. Just recently, for instance, we started doing a song from John’s “Storm Windows” album that he released in 1980, a song that our old partner the late Roger Samples was partial to. Here from a rehearsal a few months ago is “One Red Rose.”

If You Lose Your Money

Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee are two of our all-time favorite blues artists. Back in the late 1950s, the pair recorded an incredible album for Smithsonian Folkways called "Brownie McGhee and Sonny Terry Sing.” It was from that album that we took our inspiration for this blues with which we often open or close a rehearsal session, just because it's so much fun to play. Now, we don’t do the tune the way Sonny and Brownie did it; the whole “folk process” idea calls on us all to bring our own style and attitude to the music we play. And that was something that Sonny and Brownie certainly knew, because they too were building on the blues they had heard from their heroes. The evidence is that the song’s provocative key line — “If you lose your money, please don’t lose your mind” — didn’t originate with them. Back in 1936, Blind Boy Fuller used exactly the same line in his recording of “Keep Away From My Woman.” But it didn’t start with him either; seven years earlier, in 1929, Blind Joe Reynolds used the same line to open his tune, “Outside Woman Blues,” a song, incidentally, that would be covered 40 years later by the rock group Cream. So, hey, the bottom line is we’re in very good company in offering our take on the tune. Here it is, then, from a recent Flood rehearsal, with a double helping of solos from everyone, Doug, the two Pauls, Vanessa and Sam. It’s “If You Lose Your Money.”