Thanksgiving Jam 2011

For many around here, Thanksgiving isn't so much about travel. Instead, we're the home that people come back to for the holiday. Last night, on the eve of Thanksgiving 2011, we had our dear friend Jacob Scarr home from college in Colorado. And New Yorker Matt Parker was in the town visiting his grandparents. Well, we had to get these two young guitarists trading licks on an old blues, the way they have at Thanksgiving jam sessions in previous years. Oh, and if you listen closely toward the end of the track, that's jam session newcomer Sonny Sumner with a tasteful little ride on his electric. Yes, it was a guitaroarious evening.

Michelle Walker Lights Up the Room

Bassist Randy Hamilton nailed it last night. As he was packing up at the end of the evening, he said, "Boy, there sure is a lot of energy in the room when the chick singer's here. She just radiates it!" So true. Our Michelle Walker can't make it to the jam session every week, but when she does, the room lights up. Here's her last number of the evening, and it's just as powerful as her first two hours earlier.

Mark Keen's First Flooding

Pittsburgh harmonica sensation Mark Keen actually grew up in our town. In fact, he and one of our jam session regulars, guitarist Randy Brown, went all through school together here back in the '70s. Well, Mark was back home in Huntington this week. Last night Randy brought him to his first Flood jam session, and, good golly, we had a ball. Mark limbered up his harps as soon as he hit door and we didn't stop for more than two hours. Now, we understand Mark doesn't get home very often but we hoping that from now when he does, he puts The Flood on his "to-do" list!

Down By the Sally Gardens

Not long ago, Joe Dobbs added a fifth string to one of his fiddles which gives him a lovely new lower register to play with. Sometimes it's like having another instrument in the band, a cross between a violin and viola. Late in the evening at a recent jam session, Joe demonstrated how this innovation can give a whole new voice to tune like "Down by the Sally Garden," which The Flood's been playing since its first CD more than 10 years ago. Oh, and by the way, that's our buddy Jim Rumbaugh playing that beautiful harmonica solo.

The Cincinnati Rag

Sometimes one tune sets the mood for the whole evening. At a recent jam session, I said to Joe Dobbs, "How about a fiddle tune?"Out came "Cincinnati Rag," a great old Byrd Moore - Clarence Green piece from 1930 that we haven't really done much with in years. Well, it got everybody grinning. And if you listen closely -- that Randy Brown in the middle of things, taking a break on a borrowed guitar. It was just that kind of night.

Tom Norman Finally Finds The Flood

Tom Norman has been playing in rock 'n' roll bands around here for decades, occasionally dipping into rockabilly. Back in the '90s, he was on Joe Dobbs's old "Music from the Mountains" radio show on West Virginia Public Radio show. Well, Tom finally made it to a Flood jam session and before the evening was out, we had him singing an original.

Rob McNurlin Sings "Blind Willie McTell"

Many of us think we know a lot of Bob Dylan tunes. And then we think again of our good friend Rob McNurlin, who REALLY knows a lot of Bob Dylan tunes. One night last summer when Rob was home from Nashville and sitting in with us, our old buddy Zoe Brewer was in the room and she said, "Hey, Rob, do that Willie McTell song!" Rob thought for a moment and then out came this beautiful, little-known song that Dylan wrote in the early 1980s and didn't release until almost a decade later. It was the hit of the evening.