Digital Jam Session
Each week The Flood gives away a free tune that can be heard online without special software or magic decoder ring. Listening is easy: just scroll this page, and click the gold arrow key 
before any song description to hear it right now.
Recorded at the weekly Wednesday night jam sessions, the tracks are far from "studio quality." On the contrary, they are in the finest warts-and-all tradition of "field recordings," so they have what one listener called a decided "back porch sound."
That means that in addition to the occasional flubs and miscues in the performances (the guys meticulously craft and insert these misfires only for your amusement, you understand), you often hear in the background people chatting, laughing, whispering, rolling dice, shuffling cards, performing the Heimlich Maneuver… Because of the nature of the beast, there are times, of course, when we wish the microphone had been positioned differently or the guys had given a little more thought to a bit of harmony, etc., but despite such glitches, the tunes do capture the joy of jams and we hope you like being part of it.
(Incidentally, each free tune is also turned into the Flood's weekly podcast, Jam Logs, so if you a pod person and would rather have the week's new song delivered directly to you, just subscribe to the podcast. For all the details on that, click here.)
NOTE: The "gold arrow" links below that you click to hear the audio use Flash software technology, which should work with most computers and browsers configurations. However, if you don't hear the audio, you might try this link to reach the podcast files directly. Just click titles on specific tunes on the resulting pages.
Katy Dear. It was international night at this week's 
Wednesday gathering. Veronica Smith, mother of Flood buddy Mike Smith, was visiting from England and taking in her first Flood jam session. And from Down Under, old friends Rod and Judy Jones were back in town and sittin' in. It's hard to 
believe that it's been more than 30 years since The Flood first met Rod and Judy when, on their first visit to the states, they ended up on stage with us in a concert at the Huntington Museum of Art. Back home in Australia, along with another old friend, Lindsay Mar, they play in the popular My-T-Fine Stringband. Here fiddlin' Joe Dobbs joins them on an old-time classic.
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St. Louis Blues. 
By the time of his death in 1958, W.C. Handy was earning upwards of $25,000 a year in royalties on his best-known tune, "St. Louis Blues." Not bad for a child that had been bringing home the bacon since its birth in 1914.
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I
ngrid Bergman. Last night's weekly jam session happened to fall on Woody Guthrie's birthday. The Flood paid tribute to the great American troubadour with a verse or two from "Do Re Mi," but it was Flood buddy Mike Smith who stole the evening with his version of a little-known Woody Guthrie pipe dream that was later set to music by the great Billy Bragg.
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Sweet Georgia Brown. We've been playing around with "Sweet Georgia Brown" for years now, but only recently did 
we learn of the song's West Virginia connection. Dave Peyton dropped the news on us as a recent jam session -- "Hey, man, it's a West Virginia tune." True enough -- composer Maceo Pinkard was born in Bluefield, West Virginia, in 1897 and went on to become one of the greatest composers in the Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s and '30s. While he wrote hundreds of tunes, including many for stage and screen, this was his greatest one. Yes, she might have been Sweet Georgia Brown, but the girl also had West Virginia roots.
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My Dear Companion. It was old-home week at the jam session. Two dear companions, former Floodsters from the 1970s, dropped in for a 
visit. Bill Hoke of Abingdon, Va., who used to play bass with us, and Stewart Schneider of Ashland, Ky., our one-time harmonica player, were both on hand. We even got Stewart to dust off his harps and sit in with us for a few tunes, including this one, a great old Jean Ritchie composition called -- appropriately enough -- "My Dear Companion."
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Moonglow. The first time Michelle Walker sang in public with The Flood was about seven years. We were playing 
at West Virginia's Snowshoe Mountain Resort and her tune was "Moonglow." We still do this great old Will Hudson - Irving Mills standard. Here, from last night's jam session, Michelle teams up with Joe Dobbs' beautiful fiddle for the 2010 version of the 1934 classic.
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Blues for Jim. In the etiquette of The Flood, when a 
fine harmonica player drops in on your weekly jam session, you gotta trot out a blues or two. In the world of harmonicas, you don't get much finer than Jim Rumbaugh. Around here, Jim's been driving force in the incredibly successful, entertaining Huntington Harmonica Club. We were so pleased have him with us last night that we hardly let him get settled in before we had him wailing on a little sumpin in the key of E..
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Come All Ye Fair and Tender Maidens.. It was more than 35 years ago now when Dave, Charlie and Joe first got 
together to start The Flood. Dozens of good friends have been in the band over the years, and one of the first tunes we ever did was this old Jean Ritchie ballad that veteran Floodster Rog Samples and Charlie arranged back in the mid-1970s. Nowadays, we don't think to do it much any more at the weekly jam sessions, but last night it just seemed like the perfect song to start with on a misty summer evening.
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Trouble in Mind. At a recent weekly jam session, Joe 
Dobbs brought along a beautiful new dreadnought guitar made by Bob Thompson of Ravenswood, West Virginia. It passed from hand to hand for a while, but then spent most of the evening in the hands of our young lead guitar player, Jacob Scarr. It's interesting how something like that can add an extra spark to an already-energized night.
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You Don't Know Me. 
It was only a couple of weeks ago that Michelle first brought up this tune, and it's already become a favorite at the weekly jam session. It was written in 1955 by Cindy Walker and Eddy Arnold. Jerry Vale's version charted the following year, but the best-selling rendition was the 1962 hit by Ray Charles. Here's Michelle Walker's "You Don't Know Me," with Randy Brown doing the honors on the solo.
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Ramblin' Boy. Whether at a concert or at a jam session, the music often depends as much on the people who 
listen as the people who play. All musicians know that -- it's the other side of the equation. Our good friend Bob McCoy passed away suddenly, and we lost one of our favorite listeners. Now, as we hear to this tune from a jam session last year, we can still see Bob grinning at us from across the room and singing along on the chorus.
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Statesboro Blues. Blind Willie McTell did this tune in 1928 and the "Statesboro" in the title refers to McTell's home 
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Don't Get Around Much Anymore. When Duke Ellington wrote this tune, he called it "Never No Lament," and his orchestra recorded it under that name in 1940. But then Bob 
Russell came along two years later and wrote some dynamite lyrics that gave the melody a whole new life as "Don't Get Around Much Anymore." The following year, there were no fewer than three versions on the charts at the same time -- The Duke's own as well as renditions by The Ink Spots and Glen Gray. Here's Michelle Walker's take on the tune.
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All of Me. It was just a goofy night at the Flood jam session. Spring in the air, I suppose, and seeing old friends after 
a seemingly endless winter. Coming out to sit in with us were Chuck Romine on banjo and Randy Brown on guitar and Dale Jones, leader of the Backyard Dixie Jazz Stompers, brought his trombone. And hands down, the highlight of the evening was when Dale used his trombone mute as make-shift megaphone to do his best Rudy Vallee imitation.
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Stealin'. Here's a song that nobody can really claim to have written. Some individual lines in the lyric cropped up in 
blues recorded as early as 1921. Others didn't show up until the version we learned it from, the Memphis Jug Band rendition recorded in September 1928. We in The Flood can't even remember when we started doing this one … but heck, there are LOTS of things *we* can't remember.
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Abilene. Back in 1963, Bob Gibson and John D. Loudermilk wrote "Abilene," a tune that would stay at Number 1 on the country charts for four weeks when it was recorded by Mr. Suntan himself, George Hamilton IV, but the song's been recorded by many people 
since then. And incidentally, Gibson and Loudermilk never really said whether they were writing about Abilene, Texas, or Abilene, Kansas. Both cities claim it as their own.
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Rickety Tickety Tin. Our good friend, Mike Smith, often comes to the weekly jam session with a beautiful a cappella 
ballad from his home in the British Isles. But if you ask Mike for a tune near April Fool's Day, as we did a few Wednesdays ago, well, watch out. He was ready for us with this pseudo Irish ballad from the permanently warped mind of the great satirical songwriter, Tom Lehrer.
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Bye Bye Blues. This tune was written in Tin Pan Alley 
in 1930 and over the next few decades was recorded by one great another another -- Count Basie, Benny Goodman, Cab Calloway. But most people didn't really notice the song until 1952 when it became a smash hit for Les Paul and Mary Ford. Here's The Flood's take on "Bye Bye Blues."
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Nobody Knows You When You're Down and Out. 
Jimmy Cox wrote this tune in 1923 and the great Bessie Smith recorded it that same year, her first year of recording for Columbia Records. Since then, the song's been recorded by … oh, well,-- everybody, from Leadbelly and Josh White to Jose Feliciano and The Allman Brothers to Billy Joel, Eric Clapton and Rod Stewart. This track was just a passing fancy at a recent Flood jam session.
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Ain't Misbehavin'. Fats Waller wrote this song in 
1929 and recorded that year for Victor Records. For the next 80 years, it's been recorded by Billie Holiday, Ella Fitzgerald, Louis Armstrong, Miles Davis, Kay Starr, Ray Charles -- the list just goes on and on. In 1978, it was the title tune of a successful Broadway musical. And in 1984, Fats' original 1929 recording received the Grammy Hall of Fame Award. A few years ago, the song also was included in the National Recording Registry by the Library of Congress. Our buddy Randy Brown is sitting in with us on guitar on this version from the jam session.
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Please Don't Talk About Me When I'm Gone. 
Jazz guitarist Randy Brown has been making music around our town for nearly 40 years. Most of the time he plays with Dale Jones and his Backyard Dixie Jazz Stompers. Recently, Randy dropped by the Flood's weekly jam session to sit in with his beautiful 1935 Gibson L-5. Here's a cut for the evening, featuring Randy and guys on a great old 1930s jazz standard.
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Didn't He Ramble? Here's a tune that's been around the block so many times, it doesn't know WHERE it came from. 
Louis Armstrong used to do it. So did Jelly Roll Morton. Rowdy college boys in the 1920s sang it. Before them, ragtime players had a version. Some even say the great W.C. Handy had a hand its creation. Don't know about, but The Flood takes its version from a late 1920s recording by our hero, legendary banjo picker Charlie Poole.
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Since I Fell For You. The guys all love it when Michelle Walker can make it to a jam session. The lady we call The Chick Singer always has us sampling tasty tunes that aren't The Flood's usual menu. Here Michelle's take on that great old Lenny Welch hit from the 1960s, "Since I Fell For You."
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Alberta, 
Let Your Hair Hang Down. This old folk tune actually is an Ohio River song that was sung by the roustabouts who loaded and unloaded steamboats at the turn of the last century. Hundreds of contemporary versions exist, including one by The Blues Project back in the late 1960s and a fairly recent cover by brother Bob Dylan. This track came from the early hours of a recent Wednesday night Flood jam session.
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Furniture Man. Dick Justice was a West Virginia original -- a Logan County coal miner and a white blues singer who was heavily influenced by black musicians, especially Luke 
Jordan from the hills of neighboring Virginia. Our Dave Peyton found this great old tune years ago on an anthology of little known recordings by West Virginians in the early 20th Century, and he's been singing it with The Flood for years now as "Furniture Man." Dick recorded his original -- for the old Brunswick label in the spring of 1929 -- as "Cocaine Blues."
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Walk Right In. The first jug band tune we ever heard was on the radio. A.M. radio. Trouble was we didn't even know it 
WAS a jug band tune. It was 47 years ago -- 1963 -- and the song, at number 1 on the Billboard chart, was "Walk Right In" by Eric Darling's folk music trio, The Rooftop Singers. We didn't find out until later that "Walk Right In" was a much older song, that it was written and recorded in the late 1920s by the great Gus Cannon and His Jug Stompers. This version, recorded at last night's jam session, is The Flood's tip of the hat to Brother Gus.
The Wagoner's Lad. It's always a special night when singer-songwriter Doug Imbrogno drops by our weekly jam 
session. And a highlight of last night's session was the tune Doug left us with at the end of the evening, his simple, a cappella rendition of a great old traditional number, "The Wagoner's Lad." This song is related to a lot of American folk songs, from "My Horse's Ain't Hungry" and "Rye Whiskey" to even "Pretty Polly" and "On Top of Old Smokey." The verses, found in many songs, can be traced back to England in the 1730s and a song called "The Ladies Case."
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Raglan Road. Poet Patrick Kavanagh wrote the "On Raglan Road" in 1946 and it quickly became a beloved poem in 
his native Ireland. But it didn't become internationally known until years later when the poet met Luke Kelly of the famous Irish band, The Dubiners, and Luke set Patrick's words to the music of a traditional melody, "The Dawning of the Day." This recording comes from the end of a long Flood jam session when Joe Dobbs teamed up with Flood buddy Mike Smith for some inspired twin fiddle.
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Jelly Roll Baker. Born in New Orleans in 1899, Alonzo "Lonnie" Johnson was one of America's great blues and jazz artist, recording with Louis 
Armstrong and Duke Ellington, Charlie Christian, Eddie Lang and many, many more. After World War II, Johnson started recording rhythm and blues with King Records in Cincinnati. This tune, recorded by scores of blues players over the years, came out of that period, and The Flood learned its version from a great 1960s recording by folksinger Tom Rush.
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Stormy Weather was written in 1933 and first performed in Harlem at The Cotton Club by the great Ethel 
Waters. Since then, it's been recorded by artists as diverse as Frank Sinatra and Ringo Starr. The Library of Congress honored the song in 2004 by adding it to the National Recording Registry. Here Michelle Walker, The Flood's Chick Singer, takes the tune through its paces at a recent Wednesday night jam session.
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Jacky Tar. So we ask our buddy Mike Smith for Christmas song at last night's jam session and this is what he 
came up with. You know, we've never taken in Christmas in Mike's hometown back in Great Britain, but, based on this tune, we're hoping some day to at least see the video! … Okay, okay, Mike never claimed that "Jacky Tar" is really about Christmas, but it is a merry little song and it IS about giving and receiving a, uh, present, all wrapped up in rather an interesting use of string.
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The Duck Yas Yas Yas. Well, here's a song that came from the whorehouses of St. Louis, not to put too fine point on 
it. It was first recorded in 1928 by James "Stump" Johnson. We learned our version from the following year's recording by our heroes, Tampa Red and Georgia Tom. You know, a song with this many double entendres is hard to introduce when we're in polite company, so we follow the advice of The Flood's harmonicat, Sam St. Clair -- "Hey, just tell 'em it's about food!" Yas yasssss… This is about …. food...
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It Takes a Lot to Laugh, It Takes a Train to Cry. We often say Jacob Scarr must have been listening to Bob 
Dylan in utero. At 16, he was born three or four decades after Zimmy's greatest hits were being recorded. But his dad, Tom Scarr, is a huge Dylan fan and Jacob grew up hearing Bob Dylan as part of the household soundtrack. Here, Jacob takes all the solos on a classic Dylan blues from the "Highway 61 Revisited" sessions.
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My Blue Heaven. It's hard to believe this song is more than 80 years old. "My Blue Heaven" was published in 
1927 and became a monster hit for crooner Gene Austin. It charted for 26 weeks and stayed at Number 1 for 13, selling five million copies -- unprecedented in those days. And it didn't end there. The tune was a hit again in 1935 for Jimmie Lunceford and again in 1956 for Fats Domino. Here Michelle Walker performs the Flood version of the song, accompanied by Joe Dobbs and his sweet five-string fiddle.
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Jugband Song. It was blues night at a recent Wednesday jam session. A young New York guitar player named 
Matthew Parker dropped in -- and then sat in -- and for most of the evening, he and The Flood's Jacob Scarr traded licks on one tune after another. On this track, they work through an old David Bromberg standard. Sandwiched between the vocals, that's Jacob taking the first ride, then Doug cleans the palate with a tasty bass solo, after which Matt takes charge of the final chorus. You know, listening to these young men play, we're happy to report that improvisational acoustic music is in good hands.
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Up a Lazy River. In our hometown of Huntington, West Virginia, Dale Jones is a local treasure. As leader of the 
Backyard Dixie Jazz Stompers, Dale has provided a showcase for dozen of dixieland musicians over the past 25 years. He plays cornet and valved trombone and more and is also a Flood fan. Dale dropped by a recent Wednesday jam session and, best of all, brought his tuba with him. Here he is guiding us through an old jazz standard, putting the cut in our strut and the glide in our stride. Thank you, Brother Jones!
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Blackberry Blossom. The tunes the guys choose to play on any given Wednesday night often just depends on who 
shows up to listen. Here's a case in point. Whenever our dear friend Nancy McClellan comes up from Ashland, Ky., to hear the jam session, Joe Dobbs is almost certain to trot out his version of "Blackberry Blossom." We all know Nancy loves that old fiddle tune, and we love watching Nancy smile.
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Make Me a Pallet on Your Floor. There must be hundreds -- maybe thousands -- of versions of this old tune. Search Google for "Make Me a Pallet on Your Floor" and you'll find references to recordings by Gillian Welch and Sandy 
Denny, by Doc Watson and Odetta, by Mississippi John Hurt and the Memphis Jug Band. There are versions in blues, folk, bluegrass and jazz. Louis Armstrong's "Atlanta Blues" tips its hat to the song because composer W.C. Handy obviously had heard it. There's a printed reference to the tune as early as 1911, when it was reported to be a favorite of New Orleans' Buddy Bolden Band. The Flood's version? It comes from a 1961 Folkways recording by the late great Boston bluesmen Rolf Cahn and Eric Von Schmidt.
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Little Darlin' Pal of Mine. Dave, Joe and Charlie 
met singer-guitarist Bill Hoke in the mid-1970s, soon after he finished a six-year stint in the Navy, and Bill quickly became a regular in their circle of friends. He was one of the founders of a great local band called The Kentucky Foothill Ramblers, but Bill also had time play in The Flood too in its first six or seven years. Bill moved away in the early '80s and we don't get to see him much any more, but recently on a drive home to Dayton, Ohio, he stopped to take in a Wednesday night jam session. Here Bill Hoke leads the band on a spirited version of a Carter Family song.
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You Can't Get That Stuff No More. He was born in 
1904 in Smithville, Georgia, and was given what was definitely 
NOT a blues name: Hudson Woodbridge. Well, the world wouldn't know him by that handle -- it was as Tampa Red that he became one of the most accomplished and influential musicians of his day. His big break came in 1928 when he was hired to accompany blues legend Ma Rainey, and their subsequent recordings would popularize the silly, bawdy sound we lovingly know as "hokum music." Here Dave Peyton leads us one of our favorite Tampa Red hokum songs … genetically altered, of course, to incorporate a few West Virginia references.
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Your Flag Decal Won't Get You Into Heaven Anymore. Our weekly jam sessions are not just rehearsals. Sometimes they're also trips down the foggy ruins of time. 
Occasionally, someone will ask for a tune we haven't done in years and it's fun to find out if we still remember how it goes. Here's a case in point. John Prine write "Your Decal Won't Get You into Heaven Anymore" during the Vietnam War years, and that's when Dave Peyton and Charlie Bowen first started doing it. You know, it's sad that the funny little tune is still relevant… how many wars later?
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Margaret's Waltz. The Margaret of "Margaret's Waltz" was Margaret Grant, well known in country dance circles 
in the south west of England in the 1950s. Pat Shaw wrote this beautiful piece in her honor in the early 1960s, and the tune was beautifully recorded by the celtic greats, The Boys of the Lough. But in our part of the world, this tune is famously associated with fiddle legend J.P. Fraley, a dear old friend of The Flood. Here, Joe Dobbs models his rendition of this great waltz on the playing of J.P. Fraley.
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Tear It Down (Foldin' Bed). A good case can be made that jugband music was actually born down river from us 
in the city of Louisville, Ky. I suppose it can't be proved, but what we do know for a fact is that a great number of jugbands flourished in Louisville in the '20s and '30s, and there was none better than the wonderful Whistler's Jug Band headed by guitarist Buford Threlkeld. Whistler was the first group in the nation to record jugband music, starting in 1924. Now, we know that over the years, a lot of bands did this tune, "Tear It Down," as known as "Foldin' Bed," but we suspect Whistler was the first. Here's The Flood's version, from a recent jam session.
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Sittin' on Top of the World. Some Bluegrass pickers who these days do the standard "Sittin' on Top of the World" might be astounded to find out where their tune came from. It was actually written and recorded in the early 1930s by 
some Flood heroes: the great country blues band, The Mississippi Sheiks. And over the years, versions of this song have been done by everyone from Ray Charles to Bill Monroe, from the Grateful Dead to Willie Nelson. Oh, and here's a curious bit of trivia. A great verse in this song goes, "If you don't like my peaches, don't shake my tree." Well, it turns out that the "peaches" verse has a long history in popular music. A variation of the line even appeared nearly a hundred years ago in a chorus of a little-known Irving Berlin song, as "If you don't want my peaches / You'd better stop shaking my tree." Irving, you old dog, you!
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Jesus, Will You Come By Here. Sometimes at The Flood's jam sessions, impromptu tributes to our heroes come 
about when we land on tunes we don't usually plays. Here's a case in point. Sam "Lightnin'" Hopkins recorded "Jesus, Will Come By Here" back in 1952, but the song went largely unnoticed for 20 years. Then in 1972, the Cicely Tyson/Paul Winfield movie, "Sounder," used it in the soundtrack, calling it "Needed Time," and that's the first we heard it. This jam session version is a lot more raucous than Lightnin's original, but it does capture the joy of Wednesday nights with the Family Flood.
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Jug Band Music. We learned this tune from a 1960s recording by our heroes, the Jim Kweskin Jug Band. And THEY 
learned it from a 1934 recording by everybody's heroes, the Memphis Jug Band headed up by the legendary Will Shade. Kweskin called the tune "Jug Band Music," but it was known as "Jug Band Quartette" on the original 1930s recording. Not unlike The Flood itself, the Memphis Jug Band didn't like to easily categorize its music, recording a wild mixture of ballads, dance tunes, knock-about novelty numbers, blues and even their own special take on pop tunes of the day.
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Way Downtown. Our good buddy Chuck Romine 
played tenor banjo with The Flood for six glorious years, before stepping down to spend more time traveling and visiting with his family. But hey, as we often say, The Flood is easier to get into than it is to get out of, and once a Floodster, always a Floodster. Chuck still sits in with us occasionally at gigs and other gatherings, and recently, ol' Dr. Jazz surprised us by dropping by this Wednesday night jam session.
By the way, we also created a video last year with a live performance of this tune in concert in Kentucky in 2002, featuring Chuck and the guys. Click here to view it.
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Walkin' After Midnight. We always associate "Walkin' After Midnight" with the late, great Patsy Cline, but it wasn't originally intended for her, and she almost didn't record it 
at all. The story goes that Alan Block and Don Hecht wrote the song specifically for pop vocalist Kay Starr but, for some reason, her recording company didn't want her to record it, so the tune sat unused. Later on, Don Hecht thought up and coming Patsy Cline's voice was perfect for the song, but Patsy didn't like it, thinking it was too "pop" for her decidedly country sound. In 1957, when Patsy auditioned for Arthur Godfrey's Talent Scouts program, she was supposed to sing her song, "A Poor Man's Roses," but someone on the show insisted on "Walkin' After Midnight" instead. Patsy then won the competition with the song, and the rest, as they say, is history. This is our Michelle Walker's version of this 50-year-old classic.
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Suffer to Sing the Blues. Some of us in The Flood have been loving the music of David Bromberg for nearly 40 years now. And this old tune, dusted off at a recent jam session, comes from Bromberg's debut album back in 1971. It's a song that reminds us that, dang, boy, you just got to suffer if you're going to sing the blues.
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St. Anne's Reel. Our fiddler, Joe Dobbs, has been playing this great old tune for years, but there's a lot of confusion about its origins, because these days, it's played from 
Scotland and Ireland to New England and other spots all around the world. It's been claimed as a Shetland tune, an Irish reel, a contra-dance number and an American old-time standard. But The Flood is pretty much convinced that "St. Anne's Reel" comes to us from the French-Canadian tradition. It appears the tune was first made popular in the early 1930s through a recording of Québec fiddler Joseph Allard and later spread to English Canada and the Eastern U.S. Adding credence to the theory is that Saint Anne, of course, is traditionally a cultural and religious icon in Québec. Enjoy!
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Summertime from "Porgy and Bess" is one of the most 
performed songs of the modern era. Any respectable music collection has dozens of versions of the Gershwin classic, from Ella Fitzgerald's smoky take on the tune to Janis Joplin's raw, electric rendering. The Flood's been doing the song for years -- we even put it on a CD back in 2002. But "Summertime" changed for us when Michelle came along to sing the lead and let us play with some harmonies. Here's Michelle's "Summertime" from a recent Wednesday evening.
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Oor Hamlet. Our buddy Mike Smith simply brought 
down the house one Wednesday night recently when he introduced us to this wonderful bit of reduced Shakespeare. Here's his four-minute a cappella recap of all five acts of "Hamlet." Mike's tune comes from the madly unbuttoned mind of Scottish folksinger Adam McNaughtan.
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Somebody Stole My Gal. Daniel Trout is a fine 
young percussionist who occasionally -- way too occasionally -- drives down fromAthens, Ohio, to sit in with us. The other night, Daniel showed up with a Cuban box drum called a cajón and joined us for the entire evening. Take a listen to his solo on this great old 1920s jazz standard.
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Peggy Day. Bob Dylan wrote and released this tune more than 40 years ago on the great "Nashville Skyline" album and we're surprised that more performers haven't recorded it over the years. "Peggy Day" is one of The Flood's favorite warm-up tunes.
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Please Don't Bury Me. Dave Peyton and Charlie Bowen started doing this old John Prine song back before The 
Flood was even a glint in our eyes. In fact, "Please Don't Bury Me" was one of the crazy tunes they brought along when Rog Samplesand Joe Dobbs, Stewart Schneider and Bill Hoke joined them to start The Flood back in the mid-70s. And Dave and Charlie still dust this old tune off from time to time, as they did at this recent Wednesday night jam session.
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Somebody's Been Using That Thing. If there's such a thing as a "standard" in jug band music, this tune is 
certainly one of them. Our heroes, the Hokum Boys, recorded it back in 1930, but the song was done by lots of folks, even country blues performers in the '30s and '40s, like Homer and Walter Callahan and Milton Browne and his Musical Brownies. Well, we've always loved the song, but The Flood didn't get around to doing it until just recently, when we heard a version earlier this year by our old buddy, Ed Light, and his new band with a great name: It's Ed Light and The All New Genetically Altered Jug Band. Too cool, Ed! So, here's the Flood's take on "Somebody's Been Using That Thing."
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Whisky Before Breakfast -- not an especially good idea, but one fine fiddle tune -- has been on the Flood's menu for more than three decades, ever 
since fiddlin' Joe Dobbs brought to us back in the late '70s. It's been a Flood standard ever since. Lately, our favorite new Flood friend, Mike Smith, has been joining in on the tune, and suddenly "Whisky" has a new life as a twin fiddle piece. Check out this version from Joe and Mike from a jam session a week or so ago.
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Sunny Side of the Street. Michelle Walker -- we 
affectionately call her The Chick Singer -- first sang on stage with The Flood about five years ago at West Virginia's Snowshoe Mountain Resort, and this wonderful old 1930s standard was her debut number. Michelle's still singing with us regularly and we're still doing this great tune. In fact, this version was recorded at a recent jam session.
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Come Back to Us, Barbara Lewis Hare Krishna Beauregard. The Flood fellas have been fans of John Prine for nearly 40 years. In fact, Prine's debut album came out just about 
the time The Flood was stumbling into existence back in the hippy-dippy days of the early 1970s, so it was only natural that John Prine songs have been on our set lists since the very beginning. Dave Peyton, our Mount Union Road crooner, took this tune as his own as soon as it came out, and all these years later, it's still a regular at our weekly jam sessions. Now, as often with the informal tunes on these podcasts, the recording quality isn't the best, but it does capture the spirit of the evening.
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The Farmer's Servant. Okay, most of the noise made at The Flood's weekly jam session is made by The Flood itself. 
But occasionally, the guys sit back and listen to somebody else's song. These days a much welcomed addition to the weekly get-togethers is Mike Smith, who sits in to play fiddle and sometimes gives us a tune from his native England. On this track, he brought down the house with this old English drinking song that was also recorded by the great Martin Carthy in the mid 1960s.
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If You Lose Your Money. Here's a track that perfectly captures the mood of our weekly jam sessions. The 
other night, we'd just launched into this great old Sonny Terry/Brownie McGhee song when our man Sam St. Clair came in the back door. We tell him, Sam, we'll keep the song going until you can get in on it. In the background, you can hear Brother Sam unpacking his harmonicas and in a minute he's taking the first of what will be three choruses before the tune is done.
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Ain't No Free. Sam St. Clair brought us this crowd pleaser a few years ago and we almost never miss an opportunity 
to slip it into the set list when we're on stage, though this version was recorded at a recent Wednesday night jam session. "Ain't No Free" comes to us from the New Rhythm and Blues Quartet. NRBQ is one of America's great unknown bands -- and it's even older than the Flood, tracing back to 1967.
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The Dutchman. Back in the early 1980s, when he was still playing regularly with the band he helped start, Rog 
Samples brought this great Michael Smith tune to The Flood after learning it from a Steve Goodman album. Well, now, of course, Rog has been away from The Flood for more than 25 years and the song was forgotten for a while, tucked away in the band's foggy long-term memory. But recently the guys have dusted it off again, and it often gets trotted out at the end of a long evening's jam session. So, this is The Flood 3.0's version of "The Dutchman," with solos by Doug Chaffin, Sam St. Clair and Joe Dobbs. Dave Ball (Bub) is on bass here. Alas, Brother Peyton wasn't at this session, so we didn't get his Autoharp on this track.
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Billy in the Low Ground. Our fiddler, Joe Dobbs, says his grandfather used to fiddle this tune. Not 
surprising. "Billy in the Low Ground" is an old one. In fact, it's believed to have begun life among the bagpipers of Highland Scotland. As an American fiddle tune, it's particularly associated with southern Virginia and first appeared in print in a book of Virginia reels published more than 20 years before the Civil War. The tune's had many names. Our favorite? Well, that's got to be: "Fiddler's Drunk and the Fun's All Over."
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Hoochie Coochie Man/7th Son. Jacob Scarr, the newest — and youngest ever — member of The Flood, was getting ready to leave the jam session the other night when the guys said, “Aw, kid, do one more!” This track, 
with Jacob’s guitar solos, was the result. It’s The Flood’s tribute to bluesmen Muddy Waters and Willie Dixon. “Hoochie-Coochie Man” was written by Dixon and recorded by Muddy Waters in 1954, and most of our rendition is that tune. But we also incorporate a little shout-out to another favorite Willie Dixon composition, “Seventh Son.”
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Fly Me to the Moon. Michelle Walker, takes the Flood in a whole ‘nother direction with the great standard from the 1950s. “Fly Me to the Moon” is often associated with Frank Sinatra, of 
course, but his version wasn’t recorded until 10 years after Bart Howard wrote the song. Over the years, it’s been recorded by everyone from Nat King Cole, Count Basie and Earl Grant to Connie Francis and Doris Day. More recently it’s had a rebirth in the movies, used in the opening titles of Oliver Stone’s 1987 film, “Wall Street” and in the closing moments of Clint Eastwood’s 2000 film, “Space Cowboys.” Incidentally, the tune was originally entitled, “In Other Words,” but became popularly called “Fly Me to the Moon” because of its first line. It took the publishers a few years to officially change the song’s name.
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Soldier' Joy. Young British fiddler Mike Smith and his stepdaughter Sydney have become regulars at the Wednesday night jam sessions, and lately Mike and Joe Dobbs have been working on some nice duets. Here the twin fiddles rock through a sweet version of “Soldier’s Joy,” perhaps the best known fiddle tune on either side of the Atlantic. “Soldier’s Joy,” like many fiddle tunes, was popularized by minstrel shows in the 19th Century, but the tune is much older than that and is known by other names. For instance, the Amish in north central Ohio know this tune as “Two Rattle.” Meanwhile, there are various theories about what “Soldier’s Joy” means. Some think tune originated in Ireland as “Soldier’s Hornpipe.” Another story has it that a soldier’s “joy” was his pay, prompting some to call the tune “Pay Day in the Army.” But you’ll also hear that the name was bestowed by wounded soldiers in the American Civil War who nicknamed their morphine “soldier’s joy.”
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Buddy Bolden Blues. The story of Charles “Buddy” Bolden — also known as King Bolden — is the story of jazz itself at its very beginnings. A trumpet player in New Orleans in the first few years of the 20th Century, Bolden influenced the first 
generation of jazzmen. We have no recordings of Bolden, but the great Jelly Roll Morton called him “the most powerful trumpet player I’ve ever heard.” This tune was Bolden’s only known piece of original music, which he called “Funky Butt.” Jelly Roll later recorded it with the opening line, “I thought I heard Buddy Bolden say,” and it’s come down to us as “Buddy Bolden Blues.” Jelly Roll was the only person recording the tune who’d actually heard Buddy play it. The Flood learned its version of the song from a 1961 Folkways recording by bluesmen Rolf Cahn and Eric von Schmidt.
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Georgie Buck. The late Aunt Jennie Wilson was born in 1900 in Logan County, West Virginia. She learned tunes from 
family members and other musicians in her coalfield community and was among the first women in her region to play the banjo. Our Dave Peyton got to know Jennie in the 1960s and learned a number of songs from her, many of which he has taught the Flood. Here Dave leads the boys in a rendition of Jennie's old play-party tune, "Georgie Buck." Incidentally, the Carolina Chocolate Drops do an interesting, different version of this same old string band number.
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Dead Cat on the Line. Many blues singers have recorded this cool old song over the years, but we took our inspiration 
from the April 1934 recording by our heroes Tampa Red and Georgia Tom. Incidentally, while the Flood always does feline noises in this number, the "dead cat" in this title may actually be talking about fishing. Words guru William Safire wrote in no less an authority than The New York Times in 1998 that the phase "dead cat on the line" appears to refer to a dead catfish on a trotline, evidence that a lazy fisherman has not been checking his poles. In other words, something's fishy...
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Wade in the Water. This old spiritual was first published in 1901 in “New Jubilee Songs as Sung by the Fisk Jubilee Singers” by John Wesley Work II and his brother, Frederick J. Work. “Wade in the Water” was a popular instrumental hit in 1966 for the Ramsey Lewis Trio, which prompted further instrumental recordings. But our favorite version was the late, great Odetta in 1954.
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Blue Moon. We started doing this old standard soon after Michelle Walker, the Chick Singer, made her Flood debut a few years back. There’s something so relaxing about this Rodgers and Hart melody and lyric. The first commercial release of “Blue Moon” was by Connee Boswell in 1935, but of course, since then it’s been recorded by everyone from Sinatra and Ella Fitzgerald to Dylan and the Cowboy Junkies.
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Down in the Flood. This old Bob Dylan tune seems more or less MADE for The Flood. We’ve loved every version we’ve ever heard, from Bobby’s original to Flatt & Scruggs (Oh Mama!)…
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9. Good As I Been To You. This old tune dates back to the fall of 1927 when a bluesman called Blind Blake recorded it in Chicago. Nobody know much about Blake -- even where he was born (they think it was Florida) or when he died (probably in the early '30s) -- but he left us about 80 tracks recorded for the old Paramount label. Bob Dylan recorded this song in 1992 as "You're Gonna Quit Me." The Flood often uses it for a warm-up tune, giving everybody a couple of choruses.
McLeod' Reel. Dr. Wendell Dobbs — a professor at Marshall University, a section leader of the Huntington Symphony Orchestra — is an old friend. In fact, his Irish band, Blackbirds and Thrushes, has performed in the same programs with The Flood often over the years. One night not long ago, Wendell dropped by with his flute to jam with us, and here Joe and Wendell team up on a great old fiddle tune.
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The New Wreck of the Old 97. The guys are playing around with an old parody Charlie learned from the recordings of the late, great Utah Phillips, stopping for solos by Joe, Dave and Doug.
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St. Louis Blues. It was a warm June evening in 2008, late in the jam session. Doug and Charlie started picking a blues and Mickey Dee and Bub hopped right in. Before it was over, Joe had joined before they handed it off to Jacob. And somewhere along the line, the guys determined that they must be playing “St. Louis Blues,” the old W.C. Handy piece.