Don't Let Your Deal Go Down

Well, The Flood is back in the studio, working on the new CD. This will be our fifth album in 12 years. For this one, we're returning to Huntington's Trackside Studio to call on the production assistance of the extraordinary Bud Carroll, a young man with wonderfully old, educated ears.  Anyone who's attended a Flood rehearsal lately knows we've been focused like a laser on the material we're planning for this new release, like this old Charlie Poole tune, "Don't Let Your Deal Go Down."

Lady Be Good ... and Fast

When you've been around as long as this band has, you learn a few things. One thing we've learned is that songs sometimes rehabilitate themselves. Here's a case in point. About 10 years ago, we put the tune "Lady Be Good" on a CD. Perhaps we didn't like the song after that, or maybe we just got tired of it, but for whatever reason, for more than a decade, it fell off The Flood's playlist. Until last night. As we were getting ready to rehearse, Doug Chaffin started playing the tune on his guitar and, in a flash, the lady was back. And she was good. Now, we don't want to say she was better than she used to be, but she certainly was was faster.

Since I Fell For You

It's great how songs can remind you of specific times and places. At this week's rehearsal, when Michelle Walker and Doug Chaffin launched into "Since I Fell for You," we were transported back to a  snowy Saturday night in Charleston four or five years ago. We were playing a FOOTMAD concert, sharing the bill with another great band, Stewed Mulligan. It had been a fun evening of jug band songs and general silliness, blues and fiddle tunes and old-time string band music, so when Michelle started this classic 1940s jazz standard, a hush fell over the audience. In seconds, though, people were humming along, then they cheered so much for Doug's sweet mandolin solo that he had to take a second chorus. Finally, by the time Michelle got to the end of the number, people were on the feet to cheer her. What a sweet memory.

Peggy Day, 2013

One of the fun things about The Flood is that our tunes evolve. For instance, we've been doing Bob Dylan's "Peggy Day" literally for decades now. Back in the late 1970s, when Rog Samples was still with us, we did a version of the song that was fairly close to Dylan's original release on the 1969 "Nashville Skyline" album. In the 1990s, when Chuck Romine and his happy tenor banjo were front and center in The Flood, "Peggy Day" took on an almost-Dixieland feeling. Now, with Michelle Walker adding so much interesting vocal counterpoint to Flood playlist, "Peggy Day" is back with a brand new do. Check it out.

I Still Miss Someone

We don't do many commercial country songs, but ever so often a country classic shows itself to have the potential to be Floodified. For a while now, Michelle's been humming and whistling that old great old Johnny Cash tune, "I Still Miss Someone," and lately it's begun to resonate with the rest of the guys. So last night, we took it around the block. Sure, an arrangement is still evolving, but in the spirit of these informal podcasts, we thought we'd offer this progress report from the Flood subcommittee.

Fiddler Buddy Griffin Comes Callin'

Fiddler Buddy Griffin is a dear old friend we don't get to see nearly often enough. Yesterday Buddy was on the road from his home in Glenville, West Virginia, to visit another of our friends, former Floodster Roger Samples, and he stopped to spend some time with Joe Dobbs. Last night, Buddy came with Joe to the practice session and the two of them treated us to an evening of great twin-fiddle tunes. Here, Joe and Buddy make a memory with the Civil War-era classic, "Lorena."

Rachel

No one knows for sure, but tradition has it that the "Rachel" in the name of this grand old fiddle tune refers to Rachel Jackson, beloved wife of President Andrew Jackson. As fiddler Joe Dobbs says, any woman who inspires a duel should have at least one song named for her. Here Joe and Doug Chaffin end the evening by putting Rachel through her paces.