Backwater Blues

 After a long rehearsal, with lots of new material to work on, it’s always good to end up back on familiar ground, which for us usually means the blues. And more often than not, the blues means a shoutout to The Flood’s household deity, Miss Bessie Smith. Here’s a tune that Smith recorded almost a century ago. It’s since been recorded by everybody from Lead Belly, Josh White and B.B. King to Bob Dylan, Dinah Washington and Count Basie. Here’s The Flood’s 2021 rendering of the song, with a couple of solos by everybody in the room last night, Doug, Veezy and the two Pauls.