Wayfaring Stranger 3.0

 In our world, songs — or at least, their musical arrangements  — evolve. A case in point is the wonderful old 19th century gospel song called “Wayfaring Stranger.” Now, back in the 1970s, Roger Samples and Charlie Bowen used to do this one as a duet, with the simple, folksy chords and harmonies that we did back then. Over time, we moved on to other tunes, and this one got put on the shelf for, well, a couple of decades. Then about 10 years ago, “Wayfaring Stranger” came back into The Flood world when Randy Hamilton joined the band. We whipped up a new arrangement with more interesting chords, and the song became a show piece for his beautiful tenor voice. In fact, Randy’s stellar performance of “Wayfaring Stranger” claimed its rightful place on our “Live, In Concert” album, which we brought in 2016. Well, when Randy left the band about a year and a half ago, we kind of thought maybe the song went with him. But lo and behold, it’s back. And this time it’s evolved into an instrumental. Listen to this moment from a recent rehearsal and the moody, lovely improvisational meditations by Doug Chaffin, Vanessa Coffman and Paul Martin.