Abilene

 Singer/songwrirer Bob Gibson was a very early arrival on the folk music scene in the late 1950s. In fact, Bob was already so well established by the time of the 1959 Newport Folk Festival that it was he who introduced the crowd to a then-unknown Joan Baez. His songs were recorded by everybody from Peter, Paul and Mary and Simon & Garfunkel to the Byrds and Bob Dylan. Perhaps Gibson’s best-known song is “Abilene,” which he wrote with Lester Brown and John D. Loudermilk in the early 1960s. Bob always said he was inspired to write the song after watching cowboy star Randolph Scott’s film “Abilene Town,” which was set in Abilene, Kansas, the railhead town at the end of the Chisholm Trail. The Flood’s been doing some version of this tune for at least a decade now. Here’s the 2021 rendition, with Randy rocking the vocal harmonies, supported by sweet solos from Veezy, Doug and Sam.