Friday, March 20, 2026

"July, You're a Woman"

 This old John Stewart composition came to us in the very first hours of The Flood’s origin story. And now, a half century later, darned if it hasn’t rolled back into our lives.

Friday, March 13, 2026

"Make Me a Pallet on Your Floor"

 We do a version of this song that most people don’t sing. We got our inspiration from an old Folkways album that Rolf Cahn and Eric von Schmidt recorded back in 1961.

Friday, March 6, 2026

"Alberta, Let Your Hair Hang Low"

 Here’s a song that we likely wouldn’t even know about were it not for the diligence and the curiosity of a researcher who was far from an ordinary young woman of her time. Born in 1892 to a prominent family in Paducah, Ky, Mary Guthrie Wheeler was destined from the start for adventure. Rather than settling into a quiet, conventional life, she embraced the extraordinary. And her most enduring adventure took place right at home, collecting the songs and stories in the hardscrabble life of the men and women who worked along the Ohio River. Here’s one she found for her 1944 book, “Steamboatin’ Days.”