"Pretty Polly"

 All kinds of stories are told at the weekly rehearsals. Some are shared for laughs. Others are merely melodies and improvisations. Some come with pictures. And some — like this one — are the tales that are many times older than all of us.

"Am I Blue?"

 Often the first notes of the evening set the pace, the mood and the tone for the entire rehearsal. Well, as you’ll hear on this track, Danny Cox came into last week’s session ready to set the Floodometer on sizzle — and, man, it worked! Now, we’ve been doing this great old 1920s jazz standard for only a couple of years, but it’s already become one of our go-to tunes for a good time, especially whenever Dan’s got new musical ideas to explore.

"Black Eye Blues"

 When the whole band can’t get together — like last week, when it was just Danny, Randy and Charlie — it’s an opportunity to explore tunes not usually on the practice list. Now, in Flood years, this old Ma Rainey song dates back nearly a half century, to when the fellows were just starting to fool with the hokum tunes of the 1920s and ‘30s.

"Stardust"

 Since its composition nearly a hundred years ago now, many folks have performed this song as a slow, romantic ballad, drawing out the words and the melody. Good for them. However, when Hoagy Carmichael wrote “Stardust” tback in 1927, he performed it with a bit of the sass and sway that characterized the jazz of his day, and we in The Flood like to carry on that tradition. The song has some of the best chords of anything in our repertoire and in this take from last week’s rehearsal you’ll hear two solos in which Danny Cox is finding all kinds of interesting ideas.

"Payday"

 Purists tell us this doesn’t sound much like Mississippi John Hurt’s original, but that’s pretty much by design. Once we learn a song, we usually stop listening to the original so it’s free to find its own form in the Floodisphere. At least, that’s our take on what Pete Seeger’s folklorist father called “the folk process.”

"I Am a Pilgrim"

 This great old song is generally performed with mellow reverence by country and folk artists as well as by many gospel groups. However, ever since we started doing the tune a couple of years ago, The Flood has taken its cue to the song’s original recording a hundred years ago. Like the Norfolk Jubilee Quartet which recorded it in 1924, we like to put a little cut its strut and a glide in its stride.

"Two Nineteen Blues"

 For folks who know The Flood only from its studio albums, this is the first tune they may have ever heard from the band. This rollicking Bob Gibson composition was what the guys played on the opening track of their very first commercial album nearly a quarter of a century ago now. A lot changes in a band over the decades, but good old tunes are like cherished letters from home. Here’s a track from a  recent rehearsal, with solos by everyone in the room.