San Francisco Bay Blues

The first time we ever heard the kazoo played on the radio was in the mid-'60s when Peter, Paul and Mary took a kazoo break on "San Francisco Bay Blues." And it turns out the kazoo is generally associated with this great old tune. One-man band Jesse Fuller, who wrote the song, took a kazoo solo on his original 1962 recording of it. And then, 30 years later, super-cool Eric Clapton even took a kazoo break when he recorded it. Of course, in The Flood, it's Brother Dave Peyton who's our hoodoo kazoo guru, and last night he spun a little of that old kazoo magic on the tune when it popped up at the jam session.

Ditty Wah Ditty

Precious little is known about Blind Blake. There's only one photograph. We don't even known where he was born or when and how he died. But between 1926 and 1932, Arthur "Blind" Blake left a slew of wonderful blues recordings for Paramount Records. And Blake penned one song that for 80 years now has tickled the fancy of eclectic performers like Leon Redbone and Ry Cooder. Recently The Flood took a ride on the same great song on an evening when our old buddy Chuck Romine dropped by to sit in with us on his tenor banjo.

Heaven's Radio

The Flood's Dave Peyton was a good friend of country music stars Molly O'Day and her husband, band leader Lynn Davis. Columbia Records artists who were signed by the legendary Fred Rose himself, Molly and Lynn were much in demand in '40s and early '50s, but left at the height of their career, deciding instead to devote themselves to their church and gospel music. Dave met them in the 1970s, when Molly and Lynn settled in our town of Huntington and spent their last years performing on a local Christian radio station. Molly's name came up again at a recent Wednesday night jam session when our friends from Australia, Rod and Judy Jones, dropped in and dusted off a Molly O'Day classic. Here, with Joe Dobbs on fiddle, is "Heaven's Radio."

Somebody Stole Mah Gal

Our good friend Richard Cobb says our weekly jam session reminds him of an old-fashioned "happening." Every week, the music that happens is solely determined by who walks through the door that night. And last night was a good example. About a third of The Flood couldn't make the session, but those of us who did were joined by buddies who came just to sit in for the evening, good folks like Jim Rumbaugh on harmonica and Randy Brown on guitar. All that music got stirred up and the next thing you know, we were whipping up a new batch of "Somebody Stole My Girl."

The Bayou Sara

It was on the good old steamboat Delta Queen that we first met Missouri folksingers Cathy Barton and Dave Para. Most recently, Dave and Cathy shared the stage with us at a concert in Fairmont, W.Va., then a couple of weeks later, on the way home to Boonville, Mo., from Virginia, they stopped to spend the evening with us and shared a few tunes at the Wednesday night jam session. Cathy and Dave know a passel of riverboat songs. Here's a sweet one from Mary Wheeler's 1944 collection of roustabout tunes called "Steamboatin' Days."

Martha Campbell

Fiddler and educator John Harrod once called the fiddle tune "Martha Campbell" the Kentucky national anthem. The haunting melody does seem to have a remarkable resonance for the fiddlers of the Bluegrass State. It was one of the first tunes recorded by the great Kentucky fiddler Doc Roberts back in 1925. Researchers believe Roberts learned it at least 10 years earlier from his mentor, the African-American fiddler Owen Walker of Madison County, Ky. The Flood's Joe Dobbs has been playing "Martha Campbell" for decades now, and recently when our banjo-picking buddy Judy Jones was visiting from Australia, she and Joe dusted off the tune again.

Ain't The Gravy Good

Trumpeter Cootie Williams wrote and sang this novelty tune back in 1938 when it was recorded by Duke Ellington's orchestra. The Flood did it regularly five years ago or so, but only recently have we dusted it off again. We forgot how much fun it is to play. Now, our harmonicat Sam St. Clair often says about our racier songs that they're actually just "about food," but, hey, this one really is. Or, at least, we THINK it's about food...