Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow?

 We always love having Charlie’s cousin Kathy Castner sing a few tunes with us. Well, it never happens nearly often enough — usually only a couple of times a year, maybe once in the summer and again at Christmastime, when she comes in from Cincinnati to sit in with the band — and, of course, Kathy’s visits were another casualty of Covid. Because of the pandemic, we’d not seen and heard her for more than a year. But, bless her heart, as soon as the restrictions were loosened earlier this month, Kathy came hightailing it from Ohio to reunite with her extended Flood family. Here’s a sweet moment from that night, Kathy’s take on a 1960 Carole King classic that The Shirelles took all the way to No. 1. For us, this first tune of the evening is pretty strong evidence that whenever Kathy asks, “Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow?” our reply is a rather resounding, “Oh yes!”

Make Me a Pallet on Your Floor

 The great Jelly Roll Morton once told folklorist Alan Lomax that the song “Make Me a Pallet on Your Floor” was one of the earlier country blues to come rambling into the big city of New Orleans, that it was being played in the Crescent City many years before he was born there in the 1880s. The song was even known to be favorite of that jazz forefather, the legendary cornetist Buddy Bolden. But it wasn’t only in New Orleans; up in Memphis, Jelly Roll’s rival songwriter, W.C. Handy, must have heard it too, because, well, he re-appropriated big chunks of the same song for his “Atlanta Blues,” which Louis Armstrong put on a disc in 1954. The Flood got its version from a recording made a half dozen years later for Folkways by the late great Boston bluesmen Rolf Cahn and Eric Von Schmidt. Here, then — with some sweet soloing by Veezy, Sam, Randy and Doug — is our little homage to those earliest days of jazz.

Moonglow

 It’s summertime and about a third of the band is out of town right now, on vacation with their families. But hey, if you’ve got Michelle to the wail the vocal and Randy to lay down his signature rock-solid bass line and Doug to roll with the solos, gee, you got everything you need to make for a memorable evening. Here’s a favorite moment from last night’s rehearsal. Doug has switched to his sweet, soulful acoustic guitar and the four of us are grooving along on a Michelle Lewis special.

New Orleans

 If you’d been around in 1932 and had your ears on, you might have  thought that songwriter Hoagy Carmichael had already peaked. Oh, sure, he’d been writing for only for about eight years, but, shoot, by then he’d already published … let’s see… “Stardust” and “Georgia on My Mind,” “Rockin’ Chair” and “Riverboat Shuffle” and “Up a Lazy River.” Those songs right there were enough to warrant a legacy chapter in the Great American Songbook. So, you’d’ve been forgiven in 1932 for not realizing our man Hoagy had another half century of great originals to bring us. Ahead lay … oh, “Lazybones” and “The Nearness of You,” “Heart and Soul” and “Memphis in June,” “Hong Kong Blues,” “I Get Along Without You Very Well,” “Ole Buttermilk Sky,” “In the Still of the Night,” “Skylark.” Heck, we could do Hoagy tunes all night long — and, well, sometimes we do. Here, from last night’s Floodifying, is our first run at one of Carmichael’s 1932 compositions, a sweet, sexy little tune simply called, “New Orleans.”

One Red Rose

 It’s been a little more than a year now since one of our heroes — songwriter John Prine — passed away at the start of the dreadful Covid-19 pandemic, and at last night’s Flood gathering, we paused to remember John with one of our all-time favorite Prine composition. “One Red Rose” is all about remembering. In fact, Prine once explained that the imagery in the song came from a childhood memory of time when he was nine years old and he and his family were visiting his cousin Charlie Bill back in Muhlenberg County, Kentucky. “It was the back of a general store,” John said. “There was a tin roof and a wonderful thunderstorm going on above and around us. We were telling ghost stories and staying up late, and there was a curtain separating the bedroom from the mature adults' kitchen. Our light was off. Thus, their 'kitchen light fell asleep on the bedroom floor.’” Ah, only Prine would write that line. We miss you, John.