Shows
The 1937 Flood Watch Podcast"Moscow Nights"A relic of the Cold War, this tune was composed in 1955 by Vasily Solovyov-Sedoy under the title “Leningrad Nights,” but later at the request of the Soviet Ministry of Culture was renamed "Moscow Nights" with corresponding changes to poet Mikhail Matusovsky’s lyrics.For the first half dozen years of its life, the song was known primarily in the Soviet Union, where a young actor named Vladimire Troshin recorded it in 1956 for a scene in a documentary about Soviet athletic competition. Honestly, the film did nothing to promote the song, but thanks to radio broadcasts it gained popula...2025-05-0902 min
The 1937 Flood Watch PodcastBanner Night at Bahnhof'sRoving thunderstorms did not deter a roomful of diehard Flood fans from coming out to party at Huntington’s good ol’ Bahnhof WVrsthau & Biergarten on Thursday night. And as usual, band manager Pamela Bowen was faithfully at a ringside table to capture some video. These three tunes illustrate the diversity of the evening’s fare, opening with a century-old number that your sassy Grandpa probably sang, followed by a swinging instrumental on a 1940s jazz standard and wrapping up with a 1920s Charlie Poole tune that he had to have picked up in New Orleans.Backst...2025-05-0311 min
The 1937 Flood Watch PodcastA Randy Hamilton SpecialRandy Hamilton has brought so much to The Flood’s table in the past dozen years. As the late Joe Dobbs used to say, Randy’s bass is “the heartbeat of the band.”In addition, Randy’s vocals — whether harmonizing or taking the lead — have become a definitive ingredient in The Flood’s sound. And nothing demonstrates that better than a tune from this week’s rehearsal, captured in this video by band manager Pamela Bowen.About the SongAs reported earlier, “When You Say Nothing at All,” the 1988 composition by Paul Overstreet and Don Schlitz, has b...2025-04-1204 min
The 1937 Flood Watch PodcastSpring Saturday Afternoon in CharlestonWhenever Floodster Emerita Michelle Hoge makes one of her rare treks back to West Virginia, it’s a good excuse to try to land a gig somewhere at which the band’s beloved “chick singer” can be the guest star.This time the good folks at Charleston’s Edgewood Summit retirement community accommodated that mission, and yesterday the entire Family Flood rolled into that gorgeous facility for an afternoon of tunes, laughs and stories.Sitting in front row, Flood manager Pamela Bowen shots video. Here are four numbers from the show. Incidentally, if you’d like the his...2025-03-3012 min
The 1937 Flood Watch PodcastConjuring Up SummertimeSpring in Appalachia is notoriously fickle. One minute the sun is promising an early wakeup call for the dogwoods and the redbuds; the next minute, snow is mocking our optimism.Last week started, for example, with a lovely, bright preview of April. However, in midweek, The Flood’s weekly rehearsal was greeted by clouds, biting winds and cold rain. By the time the guys packed up to head home, ice would be forming on the back roads in the hills.But inside the band room, the guys have mad skills for climate control. Want some au...2025-03-1404 min
The 1937 Flood Watch PodcastDave Peyton's 'Happy Birthday' SongFor many decades, whenever anyone at a Flood gathering was celebrating a birthday, the guys turned to David Peyton to lead them in a rousing rendition of … no, oh, hell no, not THAT song… (Does this bunch really look like “Happy Birthday to You” people?) No, Br’er Peyton suggested a much more appropriate nativity-observing song for the Flood flock. Not only that, Dave enhanced the tune with his own special touch, the addition of a juicy reference to a sex scandal that was rocking West Virginia politics. More on that little tidbit in a moment.For now...2025-03-1105 min
The 1937 Flood Watch Podcast"I Can't Help But Wonder Where I'm Bound"For a half dozen years beginning in the late 1990s, The Flood always greeted March’s arrival with an annual road trip into the mountains. Providing an evening of music, jokes and stories, the band would entertain a roomful of visiting volunteers, kindly students who had come more than 600 miles from Milwaukee’s Marquette University to use their spring break helping with assorted post-winter chores around the little mining town of Rhodell on Tams Mountain about 20 miles south of Beckley.As reported here earlier, from 1997 to 2002 The Flood’s original three amigos — Joe Dobbs, David Peyton a...2025-03-0704 min
The 1937 Flood Watch PodcastTwo Tunes from a Rainy Winter's NightComing in from the wind and cold of a rainy winter’s night, it was cozy and bright in the band room last Thursday evening. Here are two tunes from the late 1960s that Pamela Bowen captured with her phone during the weekly rehearsal.The video opens with Randy Hamilton leading the crew on Danny O’Keefe’s soulful “Good Time Charlie’s Got the Blues” followed by a gentle rendition of a long-time Flood favorite, Bob Dylan’s “Tonight I’ll Be Staying Here With You.” This is a public episode. If y...2025-03-0206 min
The 1937 Flood Watch Podcast"Satin Doll"We remember the night Joe Dobbs wandered into The Flood band room a couple of decades ago and said, “Hey, do you know the song ‘Satin Doll’?”Boy, was he asking the right guy. Charlie Bowen grew up in a home full of his dad’s jazz records by Ella Fitzgerald and Duke Ellington and Count Basie and his mom’s Harry James and The Mills Brothers.In BowenWorld, “Satin Doll” was as much a part of the household soundtrack as anything on the radio right then.Joe didn’t really know any of the tune’s hono...2025-02-2803 min
The 1937 Flood Watch Podcast"Angelina Baker"Around campfires North and South, many of the tunes played and sung during the Civil War were the work of a 35-year-old Pennsylvanian who was America’s first full-time professional songwriter.By the time the war started, Stephen Collins Foster — who as a youth taught himself to play the clarinet, guitar, flute and the piano — had published more than 200 songs.His best ones — “Oh Susannah,” “Camptown Races,” “Old Folks at Home (Swanee River),” “My Old Kentucky Home,” “Jeanie with the Light Brown Hair,” “Hard Times Comes Again No More” — already were widely known throughout the country to amateur and professiona...2025-02-2103 min
The 1937 Flood Watch PodcastA Flood Valentine: "Peggy Day"Shortly after he recorded “Peggy Day” — exactly 56 years ago today, in fact, an appropriate choice for Valentine’s Day! — Bob Dylan told Rolling Stone magazine, “I kind of had The Mills Brothers in mind when I did that one.”A laugh was shared by Dylan and RS Editor Jann Wenner over that thought. However, the remark later really would resonate in the world of The Flood, which has taken much musical inspiration from The Mills Brothers, on everything from “Up a Lazy River” and “Lulu’s Back in Town” to “Am I Blue?” and “Opus One.”In other words, Floodsters hea...2025-02-1404 min
The 1937 Flood Watch Podcast"(Sitting Back) Loving You"What an amazing year 1966 was in music. Dylan’s Blonde on Blonde hit the racks. So did The Beatles’ Revolver, The Beach Boys’ Pet Sounds, The Stones’ Aftermath and so many more.Into this stellar crowd quietly strolled Hums of the Lovin’ Spoonful, the third studio album by Greenwich Village’s own folk-rock mavens. Today the disc just barely makes it onto a list of the top 50 albums of that lush, flush year, but in its own way, it made wonderful waves.Hums — which would ultimately be the last full project by the Spoonful’s original lineup...2025-02-0703 min
The 1937 Flood Watch PodcastSpreading the Good Works of John Prine to an Ashland, Ky., Coffeehouse CrowdAt a coffeehouse in Ashland, Ky., 50 years ago this week, Dave Peyton and Charlie Bowen continued their new mission to spread the good news about the work of young singer-songwriter John Prime.As reported in an earlier article here, Charlie and Dave had been listening this this Chicago-based folk wunderkind ever since his 1971 first album. The two, later joined by Flood co-founder Roger Samples, quickly started learning Prine tunes to share and sing along with at the Bowen Bashes and at festivals.The particular song featured in the above music video — one of the oldest au...2025-02-0403 min
The 1937 Flood Watch PodcastOur Nod to That MovieFor the past month, the world has been fascinated by a new movie about a 20-year-old with a head full of ideas rolling from the North Country into New York City in 1961 and changing music forever. The Bob Dylan biopic A Complete Unknown just yesterday scored eight Oscar nominations, including nods for best picture, best director, best lead and supporting actors, best sound and more.It already had garnered awards and nominations, from the Golden Globes and Screen Actors Guild, from BAFTA and Critics Choice.Our Tribute This week’s podcast, a...2025-01-2404 min
The 1937 Flood Watch PodcastStorytelling in Plain B MinorAll 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.As reported here earlier, traditional versions of “Pretty Polly” were on some of the first discs made by Appalachian musicians at the dawn of the recording industry. These included Eastern Kentuckian John Hammond's "Purty Polly" of 1925 and the "Pretty Polly" versions of B.F. Shelton and Dock Boggs, both in 1927.To read more about th...2025-01-1705 min
The 1937 Flood Watch PodcastFirst Visit to 'The Bunker'In the early 2000s, Joe Dobbs expanded his operations at his Fret ‘n Fiddle’s music store in downtown St. Albans to include a recording studio that he and his young staff dubbed “The Bunker.”The idea was that at the very least Joe could use the facilities to record some or all of the episodes for his ongoing “Music from the Mountains” radio show. What he really hoped, though, was that the new studio would be used by area musicians to create their next albums.As usual, The Flood was to be the guinea p...2025-01-1404 min
The 1937 Flood Watch PodcastBahnhof was a Blast!We thank everyone who braved the cold last night and came out to pack the house for our show at Huntington’s wonderful Bahnhof WVrsthaus & Biergarten. What a grand evening! Old friends, new friends and a whole bunch of fresh memories.At a ringside table, Pamela Bowen captured a bit of the joy in this video of this trio of tunes from the evening.We are especially happy that her video also recorded some pretty fancy footwork. Our favorite “dancin’ doctors” — Marshall professors Bonnie Lawrence and Clayton Brooks — were back in The Flood’s fold. We’ve missed y...2024-12-1312 min
The 1937 Flood Watch PodcastHow to Warm Up a Cold December NightBy all rights, this Bob Dylan tune ought to be The Flood’s theme song. The fact is, though, the guys have been doing it only about a dozen years or so, which is … well, “yesterday,” in FloodSpeak, but since then, they have embraced it.And the song has particularly righteous powers when it comes to warming up a room on a cold December night, as illustrated in Pamela Bowen’s video, shot at last week’s rehearsal.By the way, for a deeper dive into this song’s history, you might check out an earlier Flood...2024-12-0804 min
The 1937 Flood Watch PodcastTaking In StraysHolidays were hard for Roger Samples in 1975.He was living alone, just him and Josephine the Cat rattling around on Mount Union Road where he was house-sitting for Susan and David Peyton. (As reported earlier, the Peyton family had left town for six months in Lafayette, Louisiana, where Dave was researching Cajun culture for his Alicia Paterson Foundation fellowship project.)Nonetheless, that autumn was a fertile one for Roger and the fledgling Flood. That’s because every few days, Joe Dobbs would come by to jam with Rog; when he didn’t, Charlie Bowen did. In t...2024-12-0305 min
The 1937 Flood Watch Podcast"One Too Many Mornings"Johnny Cash had a long-time affinity for the work of — and for his friendship with — Bob Dylan.In his book Cash: The Autobiography, Johnny wrote of being on the road in the early ‘60s. “I had a portable record player that I’d take along on the road, and I’d put on Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan backstage, then go out and do my show, then listen again as soon as I came off.“After a while at that, I wrote Bob a letter telling him how much of a fan I was,” he said. “He wrote back almost im...2024-11-2204 min
The 1937 Flood Watch PodcastGettin' Juggy Wit ItFifteen years ago tonight, The Flood continued its mission to convince the world that jug band music could fit any occasion.This particular occasion — in the ballroom atop the Renaissance Performing Arts Center in the old Huntington High School building in the city’s South Side — was a benefit concert to help out with medical expenses for a family member of long-time Flood buddy Dale Jones.No one knows how successful the band’s hokum music proselytizing was — you can draw your own conclusions by watching Pamela Bowen’s video from that November 2009 night — but no one doubts...2024-11-1909 min
The 1937 Flood Watch PodcastCruisin' the Calendar: 1961The band does a lot of time traveling at its rehearsals. In those two hours each week, the guys might start with a rock classic like “Hey Baby,” as they do in this track from last week’s get-together.Then in the next moment The Flood Time Machine Lab might transport the lads back to, say, the Roarin’ Twenties.There they can sample a song or two of the day, maybe “Dinah” or “Lady Be Good” or “My Blue Heaven.”Then switching gears again, they swoop down into the Thirties or the Forties to toy with tunes fr...2024-11-1506 min
The 1937 Flood Watch PodcastOur New A.I. DepartmentFor such a bunch of old guys, The Flood has always had a rather rad technology division. Back in 2008, for instance, the notion of podcasting was only a few years old when the band started its own online broadcasts. Today, nearly 750 episodes later, the podcast is still going strong, with a new installment each week.That same year, when YouTube was but three years old, The Flood’s first digital video was posted, now having been viewed by nearly 10,000 folks around the world. Since then, with band manager Pamela Bowen operating the camera, the band ha...2024-11-0304 min
The 1937 Flood Watch Podcast"Way Downtown"Sam McGee — called by some “the granddad of country guitar pickers” — got his start in April 1926 when he traveled to New York City for his first recording session, backing up the legendary Uncle Dave Macon on eight sides at the Brunswick studios.Thirty-year-old McGee met Macon two years earlier when the banjoist played a show near Sam’s Franklin, Tennessee, home. Sam was a blacksmith in those days, but he had played guitar and banjo for many years.Following the show, McGee invited Macon home and, after hearing Sam pick “Missouri Waltz,” Uncle Dave invited him to play a...2024-11-0104 min
The 1937 Flood Watch PodcastCallin' Up The CoastersThe Coasters were formed 69 years ago this month, when two members of an L.A.-based R&B group called The Robins came east to join Atlantic Records. The new group was dubbed The Coasters because they crossed the continent to come together.About the same time, songwriters Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller produced “Smokey Joe's Cafe" for The Robins (their sixth for the group). Atlantic liked the tune so much, the company offered Leiber and Stoller an independent production contract to bring The Robins to Atlantic. However, when only two Robins — Carl Gardner and Bobb...2024-10-2704 min
The 1937 Flood Watch PodcastRemembering Fats DominoIt was seven years ago this Thursday that the great Fats Domino died at age 89.The Family Flood grew up with Fats’ music, so it was a joy at last week’s rehearsal to take a moment — which band manager Pamela Bowen captured in this video — to remember him with a fun ride on one of his finest songs.About the SongAs we reported in an earlier Flood Watch article, Fats wrote “I’m Walkin’” 67 years ago, working with his frequent collaborator Dave Bartholomew. The song became Domino's third release in a row to reac...2024-10-2003 min
The 1937 Flood Watch Podcast"Mama, You Been on My Mind"Music’s most famous breakup in the late 20th century was surely the failed love affair of youngsters Suze Rotolo and Bob Dylan. Or at least it was the most productive parting on record.Following their split, 20-year-old Dylan wrote some his most plaintive songs of the era. “Don't Think Twice, It’s All Right” and “Boots of Spanish Leather,” “Tomorrow is a Long Time” and “One Too Many Mornings,” “Ballad in Plain D” and more were all clearly about Suze.One of the lesser known of Bob’s breakup ballads from the same period was “Mama, You Been on My...2024-10-1803 min
The 1937 Flood Watch PodcastRiverfront ReduxFifteen years ago this week, The Flood was back at a favorite venue — Huntington’s Harris Riverfront Park — to celebrate the visit by a beautiful riverboat, the Belle of Cincinnati, and to entertain her passengers. It was a return engagement for both the boat and the band. Hospice of Huntington was so pleased with The Flood’s performance the previous year when it entertained those who came out for a sold-out fund-raising dinner cruise that the folks hired everyone back for a repeat performance. As with the earlier show, the weather was perfect for this October...2024-10-0802 min
The 1937 Flood Watch PodcastThat New/Old Song About the Ohio...A Flood Watch reader last week wrote, “Hey, recently y’all did a new song about the Ohio River, but I can’t remember what it was called. Can you help me?”Charlie Bowen gave her directions to last summer’s podcast that featured the song she was thinking of — it’s called “Shawneetown” — but her note was still on his mind when the band gathered later that evening for its weekly rehearsal.That’s why, when manager/videographer Pamela Bowen filmed a few tunes from the session, this song was one she captured.By the way, if you’d...2024-09-2805 min
The 1937 Flood Watch Podcast"Leaving Home (Frankie and Johnny)"Earning their chops in medicine shows and with minstrel troupes in the late 1890s, brothers Frank and Bert Leighton wrote and/or arranged many ragtime pieces for use in vaudeville.Among their work was a 1912 version of “Frankie and Johnny,” penned with partner Ren Shields, that would set the tone for many future renditions of the song, including a monster hit a decade and half later for Charlie Poole and his North Carolina Ramblers.The song that Poole and his pals released as “Leaving Home” on Columbia Records in May 1927 already was pretty well known by music...2024-09-2704 min
The 1937 Flood Watch PodcastJoy with Floodster Emeritus Paul MartinA surprise visit from Floodster Emeritus Paul Martin turned this week’s rehearsal into a happy reunion.Paul became active with the band nearly a decade ago. He was fundamental in recording and engineering The Flood’s two most recent albums (Live in Concert and Speechless).He also played a huge part in the guys’ several years as the house band in the good ol’ Route 60 Saturday Night music variety shows starting in 2017.But in 2021, demands of work and family required Paul to greatly reduce his Floodery. Since then, his old band mates see him...2024-09-2104 min
The 1937 Flood Watch Podcast"Careless Love"Here’s a tune that has touched the hearts and minds of more than a hundred years’ worth of Flood heroes.At the very start of the 20th century, it was one of the best-loved numbers in the repertoire of jazz legend Buddy Bolden down in the hot, dark streets of New Orleans.A couple decades later up in Memphis, W.C. Handy co-opted it, copyrighting a variation after he heard an old guy singing it in a railroad station.It was one of the first songs waxxed when the recording revolution began in t...2024-08-1607 min
The 1937 Flood Watch PodcastThat Last Day with RogerDave Peyton and Charlie Bowen could not know it, of course, but 11 years ago this week the pair of them spent their last afternoon with the man who had been their dear friend for nearly a half century, fellow Flood founder Roger Samples.On a perfectly suitable-for-framing Saturday in the summer of 2013, the Peytons and the Bowens trekked from their Huntington homes to Mount Sterling, Ky., to be with Roger and his wife, Tammy.They would always remember it as a day of laughs and food, of stories and, of course, music. And Pamela Bowen...2024-08-1312 min
The 1937 Flood Watch PodcastConversations in 4/4 TimeChatter is everywhere when the band gathers each week for rehearsal at the Bowen House. News, gossip, jokes. But the best conversations usually don’t involve words at all.The Flood Zone — like most tight-knit groups of friends — has developed its own language. It is a shorthand in which a grin and a nod could mean, “Wow — great solo. Cool new stuff!” while a shrug and a chuckle could tell everyone, “Oops — sorry about that, guys. Coulda sworn I knew what key we’re in!”But beyond gestures and facial expressions, the nouns and verbs of this wordless pat...2024-08-0902 min
The 1937 Flood Watch PodcastIt's Also >Fiddling< Jack Nuckols...So much of the band’s repertoire these days is jazzed by Jack Nuckols’ dynamic drumming. Tunes that were thought to be retired from The Flood set lists suddenly are back with a whole new burst of verve.Meanwhile, certain musical muscles that Jack thought were long retired also are being reawakened. That is because The Flood has got Nuckols fiddling again.In the Old Days…Back in the 1970s, when he was a regular at the Bowen Bashes where The Flood was born, Jack was part of the parties’ circle of fiddlers, joining...2024-07-3104 min
The 1937 Flood Watch Podcast"Took My Gal a-Walkin'"In our circle of talented friends back in the 1970s, whenever the moment called for a Charlie Poole song, we knew exactly on whom to call. H. David Holbrook and his powerful, popular Kentucky Foothill Ramblers string band covered the best of the Charlie Poole North Carolina Ramblers songbook, introducing so many of us to that marvelous old-time music of the 1920s.And despite KFR’s pronounced Poole supremacy in our extended musical family, the fledgling Flood occasionally could swipe a tune off that same table.In fact, in the antediluvian era before Th...2024-07-2902 min
The 1937 Flood Watch PodcastThe Flood Forum (our educational bits...)A standing joke in our world is that the band makes The Big Bucks from grant money scored by the Flood Education Department, mainly when we tell stories and history of the songs during our shows.That’s a lie, of course. There are not even little bucks in such blather, but we still like to rattle on about what we’ve found in our song research.Last night’s show at Woodlands, for instance, afforded us a lovely opportunity to discuss the connection we’ve discovered between three of our favorite early 20th tunes. Call it...2024-07-2714 min
The 1937 Flood Watch Podcast"Rag Mama"Eighty-nine years ago this week, a young North Carolinian walked into a New York recording studio as Fulton Allen and, after recording a few tunes, walked out again as “Blind Boy Fuller.” On the recording of his composition “Rag Mama” and two other songs pressed that day, the young man was accompanied by his mentor and blues tutor, the legendary Rev. Gary Davis. “When I first run across him,” Davis said years later, “he didn't know how to play but one piece and that was with a knife.”But with Davis’ guidance, Allen’s playing had improv...2024-07-2603 min
The 1937 Flood Watch PodcastCelebrating the High-Flying Rose RiterIt was 19 years ago this week when The Flood met its den mother/soul sister. The irrepressible Rose Marie Riter hired the band to play at her 70th birthday party.The boys in the band knew they were in for something different when she told them the venue for the afternoon’s party: The Lawrence County Airpark, near Chesapeake, Ohio.“The, uh … why?” they asked.Rose intended, she told them, to celebrate her seven decades on the planet by leaping from an airplane.Planning AheadArrive early, she told the Floo...2024-07-2301 min
The 1937 Flood Watch Podcast"Just Because"When Elvis Presley recorded “Just Because” in 1954 in Memphis’s Sun Studio, the 19-year-old rocker was revisiting a saucy novelty tune that was a monster hit five years earlier for a West Virginian known as “America’s Polka King.”Accordionist Frankie Yankovic — a native of Davis, WV, in Tucker County who recorded more than 200 songs and sold 30 million records — had just returned to his new home in Cleveland after four years of Army service in World War II, eager to resume what would be his 70-year career as a musician.One night in the bar he operated, Yan...2024-07-1904 min
The 1937 Flood Watch PodcastPlay That One About the Dog...Often a song has a special meaning that has absolutely nothing to do with either its lyrics or its melody.The Flood’s tight connection to W.C. Handy’s 100-year-old “Yellow Dog Blues,” for instance, dates back to 2020 and the deep, dark days of the Covid-19 epidemic.With the whole world masked and distanced, the band couldn’t get together for its weekly gatherings. It was during the loneliness of that seemingly endless quarantine that Charlie Bowen got obsessed with trying to learn that song.WoodsheddingIt wasn’t his first time t...2024-07-1205 min
The 1937 Flood Watch PodcastFlooding the TV!The Flood is thrilled to be featured in the latest installment of Armstrong Neighborhood Channel’s Press Room Recordings series of award-winning music videos.Douglas K. Morris and Shane Finster came by the Bowen House on June 27 to take in one of the band’s weekly rehearsals and to chat with Charlie Bowen about the group’s half-century history.The resulting half-hour film — released this morning — showcases The Flood’s eclectic mix of old and new tunes, ranging from swing pieces (“Ain’t Misbehavin’,” “Sunny Side of the Street,” “Am I Blue?”) to folk "(“I Am a Pilgrim,” “Peaceful Easy...2024-07-0629 min
The 1937 Flood Watch PodcastIt Had to be “Moonglow”!Rehearsals are not parties. They can be fun and satisfying, but the bottom line is that rehearsals are work sessions. The Flood is always trying to learn new songs, and since that’s where the songs are worked out, some rehearsals are just more fun than others. So the band usually try to end the evening on a high note. At one such rehearsal recently, Charlie Bowen asked if anybody had a tune in mind to end with. “How about something we know?” said Danny Cox with a chuckle and a grin. In...2024-07-0504 min
The 1937 Flood Watch PodcastNoel Sayre Made Sweet MemoriesThe love affair began on a summer night down by the riverside.It was June 2002 and The Flood was already there to make a memory, having been invited to perform as the guest artists with the Huntington Symphony Orchestra as part of its “Picnic with the Pops” series.Listening that night from the orchestra’s string section was a 30-year-old violinist named Noel Sayre, who was making memories of his own.Tickled that night by The Flood’s eclectic mix of folk, swing and hokum tunes, Noel took pains after the show — that ended with...2024-07-0201 min
The 1937 Flood Watch Podcast"Furniture Man"A signature tune from the late David Peyton — the song he called “Furniture Man” — entered the Floodisphere 45 years ago as a wild and crazy sing-along for the folks who attended the latter years of the Bowen Bashes.In fact, the song helped to make memories at the very last of those semiannual music parties at which The Flood was born. Here, from that evening (Sept. 19, 1981), the rocking rendition by Dave, accompanied by his original Flood band mates, Charlie Bowen and Roger Samples, Joe Dobbs and Bill Hoke is The Flood’s first recording of the song.2024-06-1103 min
The 1937 Flood Watch Podcast"Somebody Stole My Gal"Some songs have very deep roots in the Floodisphere. For instance, the late Joe Dobbs loved this song. In fact, we can remember Dave Peyton and Charlie Bowen jamming on this one with Joe and his brother Dennis at their Fret ‘n Fiddle music shop in its original Huntington West 14th Street location in the mid-1970s. (The song might even have been in the set list when the four opened for Little Jimmy Dickens’ concert at the old Memorial Field House in 1977.)The tune also was the first song that the great Doug Chaffin play...2024-06-0705 min
The 1937 Flood Watch Podcast"Can You Run?"We have always found this song incredibly moving, due in no small part to memories of the place and time when we played it in public for the first time.It was seven years ago at our favorite Charleston, WV, venue — Taylor Books — on the evening of Saturday, Aug. 12, 2017. Honestly, had the gig not already been booked for months in advance, we probably would not have wanted to perform that evening.That’s because for us — and for most of the people in the audience that night — images from the previous 24 hours were too fresh...2024-05-3105 min
The 1937 Flood Watch Podcast"Loving You Would Be So Good for Me"Charlie Bowen wrote this song about 30 years ago with the idea that The Flood would perform it some day, even though at that particular moment, the future seemed rather uncertain for the band he had helped create two decades earlier.As reported earlier, in the period between the mid-1980s and the early ‘90s, life had started interfering with Flood dreams. As band members began drifting off in different directions, pursuing the interests of family and new jobs, The Flood had started being just a sometimes-kind-of jam session/reunion thing.Bowen’s new tune...2024-05-2403 min
The 1937 Flood Watch PodcastSongs of Sun and RainAt this week’s rehearsal, Pamela Bowen, our manager/videographer, captured a couple more of the tunes that we are considering for inclusion in that new album we hope to start working on later this year.And, without our intending it, the two songs she videoed just happened to share the theme of rainy days and sunny days. That’s a hoot, even if it was unplanned.About the SongsThe first song on today’s “video extra” is The Flood’s take on Bob Dylan’s composition “Make You Feel My Love,” which debuted on B...2024-05-1806 min
The 1937 Flood Watch PodcastComing Back to Brother Ray's BluesRehearsal is always important, of course, but sometimes leaving a song alone for a while also has interesting effects.For instance, it’s been probably a year or more since the Ray Charles classic “Hard Times (Who Knows Better Than I)” has made an appearance at a Flood rehearsal. It’s a great tune, but for some reason it just didn’t come to mind for while.However, the song hasn’t been stagnating, as it turns out. When the tune finally did roll around again at last week’s gathering, it had been percolating in everyone’s...2024-05-1705 min
The 1937 Flood Watch PodcastAnother Candidate for the New Album. Tell Us What You Think ....Here’s another tune that is campaigning to be included on the new album we hope to start recording later this year. We’d like to hear what you think about it.As we noted earlier, we’ve loved “Peaceful Easy Feeling” ever since the late Roger Samples taught it to us back in the early 1970s when he joined Dave Peyton and Charlie Bowen to help start The Flood. But it now being a new century and all, we wanted to give the song a new sound. That’s why the guys are letting Charlie’s ba...2024-05-0404 min
The 1937 Flood Watch Podcast"Barbara Allen"A third of a millennium ago, Samuel Pepys wrote in his diary about a New Year’s party at which he hear the “little Scotch song of Barbary Allen….”Scholars often cite that Jan. 2, 1666, entry as evidence that this famous ballad — which tells the tale of a beautiful woman who denies a dying man's love, then dies of grief soon after his untimely demise — already was hundreds of years old by the time Francis Child collected it in the late 19th century.Barbara’s Other LifeIn fact, ethnomusicologists Steve Roud and Julia Bishop describ...2024-04-2605 min
The 1937 Flood Watch Podcast'Twas a Dandy FloodangoWhat a wonderful time we had yesterday afternoon with our friends at Alchemy Theatre when we launched the Spring Floodango. The stage was full. All five Floodsters — Charlie, Sam, Randy, Dan and Jack — were on hand. Joining them was the band’s beloved “chick singer,” Floodster Emerita Michelle Hoge, who drove in with her husband Rich from their Loveland, Ohio, home near Cincinnati just for the gig.Righteously augmenting The Flood fare were tasteful offerings by guest artist Douglas Eye (a/k/a Doug Imbrogno), who performed original tunes as well as richly innovative interpretations of traditi...2024-04-2218 min
The 1937 Flood Watch PodcastToday's the Day! We're All at AlchemyThe afternoon we have been waiting for has finally arrived. The Spring Floodango hits the stage at Alchemy Theatre today.The show starts at 2:30. Tickets are $20 and and all the proceeds go to support the wonderful work of Alchemy Theatre.As noted earlier, tickets will be available at the door OR you can order them online. Here’s the link for online ordering.Location, Location, LocationIf you have not been to the Alchemy venue yet and need help locating it, just put the address — 68 Holley Ave, Huntington, WV — into your phone’...2024-04-2101 min
The 1937 Flood Watch PodcastCome Party with Us on Sunday Afternoon!Ours is a band that was born at a party and born TO party. Whether we’re at home in our band room at the Bowen House, settled in the living room of somebody else’s house or on stage at a gig, the party tradition that started more than a half century ago continues today. And our next opportunity for a public party will be this very weekend when we launch the Spring Floodango this Sunday afternoon at Huntington’s Alchemy Theater. Here’s a tune we have on tap for the afternoo...2024-04-1904 min
The 1937 Flood Watch PodcastTim Irr and Susan Nicholas Get a Little Touch of Spring Floodango Fever!Floodango fever swept back into the WSAZ-TV studio this afternoon.On the heels of Monday morning’s visit to the station’s Studio 3 show, Flood and Alchemy Theatre folks were back in front of the cameras there this afternoon to talk with Tim Irr and Susan Nicholas about our big Spring Floodango show set for 2:30 p.m. this Sunday.As you’ll see in the above video, these First Look at 4 anchors sat down with Floodsters Charlie Bowen and Sam St. Clair and Alchemy’s Michael Murdock to discuss what folks expect at Sunday’s show. ...2024-04-1806 min
The 1937 Flood Watch PodcastWSAZ-TV Gives Us Some Love for Next Weekend's Spring Floodango ShowSusan Nicholas and Taylor Eaton and all the good folks at WSAZ-TV’s Studio 3 this morning gave some sweet attention to our Spring Floodango show set for 2:30 p.m. this Sunday at Alchemy Theatre.As you’ll see in the above video, the anchors sat down with Charlie Bowen of The Flood, Michael Murdock of Alchemy and Douglas Imbrogno, Sunday’s special guest artist, to talk about what folks can expect to hear and see at the show.Also, the broadcast gave us an opportunity to congratulate Mike on the first anniversary of the new Geneva...2024-04-1606 min
The 1937 Flood Watch Podcast"No Ash Will Burn"We learned this tune from the late Floodster Emeritus Bill Hoke, who — like many other people — said he first heard it at a folk festival some time in the early 1990s.It has been about 25 years ago now. Bill stopped off to visit at the Bowen House while on a trek from his Abingdon, Va., home to Dayton, Ohio, to see his dad. We can still picture him there in The Flood band room, picking up Charlie Bowen’s guitar and strumming a chord or two.“You guys ought to do this song,” he said softly, an...2024-04-1204 min
The 1937 Flood Watch Podcast"Peaceful Easy Feeling"She promised meet him after work, but she never showed up. Disappointed, he did what you do if you’re an aspiring composer: He put it all down in a song.A scene like that plays out every day somewhere in America. But it’s not every day that the resulting song becomes one of the most cherished tunes of the decade.Coffeehouse Roots“Peaceful Easy Feeling” began life on the cold linoleum floor of a coffeehouse after closing time. It was 1969 and a San Diego hippie by the name of Jack Tempchin was play...2024-03-2904 min
The 1937 Flood Watch PodcastTwo More for You to Vote OnWe really appreciate the feedback and suggestions we’ve been getting so far from all y’all about some of the songs we’re considering for the new album. Here are a couple more we thinking about including. Whaddaya think?At last week’s rehearsal, Pamela Bowen videoed two very different tunes. First is our take on the jazz standard “But Not for Me.”As reported here earlier, George and Ira Gershwin penned this song in 1930 for the stage musical “Girl Crazy” (in which it was premiered by Ginger Rogers). The song didn’t take off right away, bu...2024-03-1905 min
The 1937 Flood Watch PodcastJoyous St. Patrick's Days!St. Patrick’s Day has always been special to us, so it was particularly sweet six years ago tonight when the opening show for the 2018 season of “Route 60 Saturday Night” — the monthly musical variety bash for which The Flood was the house band — fell on March 17.To put a Celtic curl on the night, we dusted off some favorite songs from The Old Sod. As you’ll see in the above video, we opened the show at the good ol’ Route 60 Music Co. with one of the greatest sing-along in the Irish catalog — “The Wild Rover” — which we learned years ago f...2024-03-1707 min
The 1937 Flood Watch PodcastAn Ed Light SpecialWhen our friend Ed Light dropped in from the Baltimore area this week to sit in with The Flood for the very first time, he did something no one else has ever done: He wrote us a song!And we were so…. uh, well, you know, “honored” is not exactly the word we’re probably looking for here. But, considering the text that Brother Ed chose for his sermon, we were certainly dumbstruck by his discernment and thoroughly gassed by his sagacity.Playing on the 1951 Ernest Tubb/Red Foley classic “Too Old to Cut the Mustard,”...2024-03-0904 min
The 1937 Flood Watch Podcast"Make You Feel My Love"When Adele recorded “Make You Feel My Love” in 2008 for her debut album 19, many of her fans assumed she wrote it. After all, the British superstar-to-be had written or co-written all the other songs on that disc.However, more cosmopolitan ears in the crowd knew the truth, that this song had a distinguished pedigree all its own.In fact, it was Bob Dylan who wrote “Make You Feel My Love” for his 1997 Time Out of Mind album, and immediately the song attracted an illustrious following. Among the artists in the next decade to cover th...2024-03-0105 min
The 1937 Flood Watch PodcastNeeded TimeAh, memories. It was an autumn night 52 years ago, and Pamela and Charlie Bowen went to a theater in downtown Huntington is see the new Cicely Tyson/Paul Winfield movie called Sounder. What a wonderful film, and Charlie especially loved the bluesy musical score performed by Taj Mahal, who also played the character “Ike” on screen.Charlie loved it so much, in fact, that he started haunting Davidson Records Store down the street, just waiting to buy the soundtrack LP and learn some of the tunes. Besides Taj Mahal’s excellent work, the real s...2024-02-2303 min
The 1937 Flood Watch PodcastOkay, How About This One?We thank all y’all for your feedback last week on our plans for the new album. Your thoughts and suggestions on the tune we asked you about — “(When She Wants Good Lovin’) Baby Comes to Me”— are so helpful. So, now can we get your thoughts on another song we’re considering? “Am I Blue?”, featured in the video above, is a tune we often trot out at the start of a rehearsal so everyone can limber up for the evening. Our manager, Pamela Bowen, who shot the video, says that, while she likes the song well enou...2024-02-1803 min
The 1937 Flood Watch PodcastWhaddaya Think About This Tune for the Next Album?We want your advice, friends. We’re in the early — EARLY! — stages of planning The Flood’s next album, which we hope to record later this year.Right now we’re just starting to figure out what tunes we might want to record in the project, and we would really appreciate your thoughts and suggestions.For instance, here’s a tune we like from last week’s rehearsal that our manager, Pamela Bowen, captured on video. What do you think? Is this one we should take to the studio? About the SongThis great o...2024-02-1104 min
The 1937 Flood Watch PodcastSam's SongIt was 15 years ago when Sam St. Clair brought us this tune, and it quickly became his theme song. Ever since then, “Ain’t No Free” has been a beloved standard in many a Flood show.So, of course, the song had to have a place of honor at our big New Year’s Eve birthday bash at Alchemy Theatre several weeks ago:Click the video above to watch — or re-watch, if you were in the house with us that fun evening — Sam’s latest performance of the tune, as videoed by Pamela Bowen and Gina Martin fr...2024-01-2603 min
The 1937 Flood Watch PodcastWhen She Wants Good Lovin’ ...This tune has really deep roots in the Floodisphere.About 20 years after our heroes, The Coasters, released this Jerry Leiber / Mike Stoller song in 1957, The Flood started fiddling with it one fun summer night. After that, though, the song went back to sleep for, oh, a half century or so. We told much of that tale in an earlier Flood Watch article that also explored the history of the song. Click here to read all about that.The Song AwakesAnyway, on a winter’s evening a couple of years ago, th...2024-01-1905 min
The 1937 Flood Watch PodcastWow, What a Birthday Party!New and old friends made epic memories for us as we celebrated the band’s 50th birthday with a New Year’s Eve bash at Alchemy Theatre, where Nora Ankrom, Mike Murdock, Stephen Vance and the rest made us all feel so very welcome.Obviously, a 20-minute video can’t do justice to almost five hours of near continuous live music, right up to the strike of midnight. However, working with the superb footage that Pamela Bowen shot from her ringside table, we can at least give a feel for the evening’s festivities.More than a d...2024-01-0220 min
The 1937 Flood Watch PodcastIt's Tonight! Happy Birthday to UsAll this month we’ve been telling you about plans for our big “Flood at 50” Birthday Bash. Well, kids, tonight’s The Night, and, as Cousin Brucie used to say on good ol’ WABC, “Hey, be there or be square!”The fun starts at 7:30 at Alchemy Theatre, 68 Holley Ave. Unfamiliar with the location? No problem. Click here for a Google map.Or you can see it on our “The Venue” page on the web site at FloodAt50.com, which also has information on tickets, recent media coverage, the back story on the celebration and much more.It wil...2023-12-3102 min
The 1937 Flood Watch Podcast"Raise a Ruckus Tonight"Here’s a tune we always trot out whenever we feel a party coming on. So you can bet we’ll have it on the set list this weekend for the big “Flood at 50” birthday bash on New Year’s Eve at Alchemy Theatre.In fact, we’re so eager for this weekend that we actually started putting the song through its paces earlier this month.Here’s our take on the tune from a joyous night at Sal’s Speakeasy in Ashland just a couple of weeks ago, featuring Michelle Hoge and the guys on the harmonies...2023-12-2904 min
The 1937 Flood Watch PodcastMore Love from WSAZ-TV for Sunday's BashWSAZ-TV, which last week featured The Flood and Alchemy Theatre on its “Studio 3” show, invited us all back this afternoon for more information about Sunday night’s big “Flood at 50” New Year’s Eve birthday bash.This time Martina Bills interviewed Charlie Bowen and Danny Cox of The Flood and Nora Ankrom and Mike Murdock of Alchemy for a five-minute spot during the station’s “First Look at 4” program, produced by Summer Jewell.In addition to playing file footage from recent Flood gigs, Bills interviewed us all about how the band began and about details of Sunday’s celebr...2023-12-2705 min
The 1937 Flood Watch PodcastSpreading the Word about New Year's Eve!Susan Nicholas and Taylor Eaton of WSAZ-TV’s Studio 3 hosted a bunch of us this morning to talk about plans for our big “Flood at 50” birthday bash upcoming this New Year’s Eve at Alchemy Theatre.On hand for the spot were Charlie Bowen and Sam St. Clair from The Flood and Nora Ankrom and Mike Murdock from Alchemy.And In Print!Meanwhile, in Ashland, Ky., today, Lee Ward of The Daily Independent published a lovely story about the upcoming celebration. Click here to read her story.Links to these stories and othe...2023-12-2105 min
The 1937 Flood Watch PodcastA Sweet December Night at Sal'sReturning to Sal’s Speakeasy last night for our latest monthly gig at our favorite Ashland, Ky., venue, we not only had the entire band on stage, but also we were joined by our beloved Floodster Emerita, Michelle Hoge, who drove in from Loveland, Ohio, just to be part of the fun.Band manager Pamela Bowen, our regular videographer, was under the weather and couldn’t make the gig, so we drafted a dear friend of The Flood — Danny Cox’s lovely sister Jeanette Trent — to shoot a little video. Thanks, luv!The resulting film features t...2023-12-1711 min
The 1937 Flood Watch Podcast"Our House"As we noted last week, highlights of Floodlandia’s Decembers are holiday visits with Charlie Bowen’s cousin Kathy Castner, who usually can be persuaded each time to sit in with the band for a special night.Jam sessions with Kathy are always chances to revisit favorite old tunes, like “Loving Arms” and “The Rose,” but they also can be opportunities to explore some new material too.For years now Kathy and Charlie have been doing a duet on Graham Nash’s classic song “Our House,” but it was last week during Kathy’s Christmas 2023 trek from her Cincin...2023-12-1202 min
The 1937 Flood Watch PodcastAll Set for the Big New Year's Eve Birthday Bash!Not many bands that can brag of being active for 50 years, but The 1937 Flood is celebrating its Golden Anniversary this year. And we’re hoping you will come out and join the fun!Alchemy Theatre’s Mike Murdock and Nora Ankrom — the kind folks who brought The Flood in to be part of the wonderful “Bright Star” production last summer — are hosting The Flood's 50th Birthday Party this New Year’s Eve. The fun starts that night at 7:30 at the Geneva Kent Center for the Arts, 80 Holley Ave.The band will play a couple of full sets and...2023-12-0502 min
The 1937 Flood Watch Podcast"July, You're a Woman"Charlie Bowen played this song for David Peyton on the first night they jammed together at a New Year’s Eve party 50 years ago. “July, You’re a Woman” was the one of the best tunes in the repertoire for their earliest gigs, especially after Roger Samples came along later that year to sing harmony on the chorus and do magic with his guitar solos.Bowen adapted his version of the song after learning it when it was brand new in 1969, released by composer John Stewart on his second solo album, California Bloodlines.John Ste...2023-11-1705 min
The 1937 Flood Watch Podcast"Opus One"Midway through his seven-year stint with the Tommy Dorsey Orchestra, the brilliant arranger/composer Sy Oliver wrote this tune, which became a huge late World War II-era hit for the band. The chart-topping sensation — which Sy called simply “Opus No. 1” — went on to be radio hits for many other performers as well, from Gene Krupa and Harry James to the Mills Brothers and the Four Freshmen.Sid Garris and Those Sassy LyricsLargely responsible for the song’s success was Sid Garris’s work in creating those playful words.His lyrics lays out the...2023-10-0603 min
The 1937 Flood Watch Podcast"Buddy Bolden's Blues"The story of Charles Joseph “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 years of the 20th Century, Bolden influenced several generations of jazz players.No recordings of Bolden exist, 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, a song that he called “Funky Butt.” Jelly Roll later recorded it with the opening line, “I thought I heard Buddy Bolden say...2023-09-2204 min
The 1937 Flood Watch Podcast"Twisted Laurel" (with Banjocity)We have great memories of attending folk festivals over the years. One of the fondest is the time we heard the original Red Clay Ramblers back in 1977. That was just a few years after that great old band formed, and it drove up to play a festival in Grayson County, Ky.We in the fledgling Flood had bought The Ramblers’ new album, and we were simply blown away by its second track. How astounding it was to discover that one of the best new songs about West Virginia was recorded by a North Carolina band. What??! ...2023-09-0805 min
The 1937 Flood Watch Podcast"Pretty Polly"Americans know “Pretty Polly” as the short, tragic story of a young woman who is lured into the forest and murdered by her brutal lover, who then buries her in a shallow grave and runs away.Actually, though, the oldest versions of this song — which has its origins almost 300 years ago in Great Britain — needed up to 36 verses to tell its grim story.In the original English ballad — called “The Gosport Tragedy” or “The Cruel Ship’s Carpenter” — the murderer is a sailor who promised to marry the girl he seduced, but then changes his mind when he learns sh...2023-08-1105 min
The 1937 Flood Watch Podcast"Delia's Gone"Our version of this traditional tune originated with Roger Samples and the quiet picking sessions he and Charlie Bowen had back in the mid-1970s. They had been listening to David Bromberg’s then-new debut album, on which they both liked Bromberg’s arrangement of something that Philadelphia folkie called “Dehlia.” But of course, as usual, Samples had his own ideas for the song. Crafting a new melody that he borrowed from assorted sources — versions had been recorded over the years by everyone from Blind Willie McTell and Blind Blake to Pete Seeger and Josh White, fro...2023-07-2805 min
The 1937 Flood Watch Podcast"Didn't He Ramble?"Looking for songs to play in our nightly pre-show set as Alchemy Theater’s wonderful Bright Star musical enters its final weekend tonight, we hit on one of the oldest tunes in The Flood’s repertoire, a rollicking number that relates the deeds and misadventures of a rambling ne’er-do-well named Buster.It was nearly 50 years ago when we first heard “Didn’t He Ramble?” Dave Peyton and Charlie Bowen learned it from the great local string band, The Kentucky Foothill Ramblers, whose leader, banjoist H. David Holbrook, seemed to know the entire Charlie Poole songbook. Bowen and Peyton s...2023-07-1404 min
The 1937 Flood Watch PodcastWe're Joining "Bright Star" on Stage!The Flood is honored and thrilled to be invited by Mike Murdock and Nora Ankrom to be part of their Alchemy Theater’s new production of the musical, Bright Star. This evening is opening night!The show runs for the next two weekends, July 7-9, 14-16 at Huntington’s new Geneva Kent Center for the Arts at 68 Holley Ave. Doors open at 7 p.m. each evening. In addition, there is one matinee performance at 2 p.m. on Sunday, July 9.Besides joining the wonderful Mark Smith and John Kinley in the house band, we’ll also be pla...2023-07-0704 min
The 1937 Flood Watch Podcast"Summertime"Barefoot Days have arrived, a season so sweet and easy that it has its own anthem.“Summertime,” from George Gershwin’s Porgy and Bess, is perhaps the perfect jazz standard. Unforgettable lyrics. A melody that seems to be from a dream. Like magic, the song sounds new every single time, no matter how many times you’ve heard it.And you’ve heard it many times. “Summertime” is one of the most recorded songs of all times; in fact, Guinness World Records is aware of more than 67,000 individual recordings of “Summertime” since its composition in 1934. Just two years lat...2023-06-0906 min
The 1937 Flood Watch Podcast"Singing the Blues"Purists love to tell us that many songs with “blues” in their title — “Blues in the Night,” “Birth of the Blues,” “Lovesick Blues” — technically are not blues at all. (Shoot, even the great “St. Louis Blues,” while it certainly opens with a traditional 12-bar blues structure, wraps up with 16 bars in a habanera rhythm that its composer W.C. Handy called his “tango section.”)Of course, many of these cited songs aren’t meant to be blues, but to be about having the blues, and 1950s classic rocker “Singing the Blues” certainly meets those specs.A perfect honky tonk tune of its t...2023-04-0703 min
The 1937 Flood Watch PodcastHappy St. Patrick's Day!In Floodlandia, we celebrate this day by channeling the grand, green spirit of William Butler Yeats. We do several songs based on verses by this beloved Nobel laureate. Our favorite is “Down by the Salley Gardens,” which Yeats published in his 1889 volume The Wanderings of Oisin and Other Poems.In notes about the work, Years once said the poem was "an attempt to reconstruct an old song from three lines imperfectly remembered by an old peasant woman in the village of Ballisodare, Sligo, who often sings them to herself."In fact, Yeats's original titl...2023-03-1704 min
The 1937 Flood Watch Podcast"Jamaica Say You Will"Jackson Browne has always called the first song on his 1972 self-titled debut album a kind of modern fable.His inspiration for “Jamaica Say You Will" was a girl who worked in an organic food orchard on California’s Zuma Beach, across the street from the Pacific Ocean, "like the Garden of Eden,” Browne once told an interviewer, “and she was a kind of Eden-like girl, too.”In the lyric, the girl leaves with her father to sail out into the world, “but my ship had not found the sea, as it were," Browne told Uncut magazine. “I...2023-02-0306 min
The 1937 Flood Watch Podcast"All Out of Season"A trope in our part of the world is, “If you don’t like the weather, wait an hour!”The fickleness of what comes from our skies around here — or sometimes doesn’t — was on Charlie Bowen’s mind years ago when he wrote a song called “All Out of Season.” His lyric opened with meteorological musings about a chilly afternoon when “suddenly from nowhere came an April kind of day / and sat herself right down in winter’s way….”Origin StoryThe song originally was performed by a short-lived group called Front Royal that Ch...2023-01-2705 min
The 1937 Flood Watch PodcastToday (While the Blossoms Still Cling to the Vine)For decades now, Kathy Castner and her cousin, Charlie Bowen, sing duets whenever they have one of those rare chances to be together. Their musical connection goes back a long way.As a child, Kathy regularly was brought to visit relatives in Ashland. Whenever she was, their grandmother usually assigned her cousin to sing her to sleep at bedtime. (Yes, Grandma Robertson was prescient about Bowen’s mad skills for putting audiences to sleep.) One of the tune the young troubadour brought to bear on the little girl’s eyelids was this New Christy Minstrels clas...2022-12-1605 min
The 1937 Flood Watch PodcastJug Band MusicWhen a friend recently asked us what song has the longest association with The Flood, we had to stop and think. Several old-timers are still in the band’s repertoire. The Carter Family-inspired “Solid Gone,” for instance, has been in our collective consciousness all along, going way back to when David Peyton and Charlie Bowen were just a modest little duo in 1973. Uncle Dave Macon’s “Way Downtown” has legs too; we have tapes from 1975 on which Charlie and Dave are doing that one with Roger Samples and Joe Dobbs the first time the new conf...2022-12-0206 min
The 1937 Flood Watch PodcastBirthing New MusicFor the first time in years, The Flood has started working on original compositions. Currently, for instance, we’re studying with bandmate Vanessa Coffman to craft accompaniments for her original folk songs in a project to remaster the “Brave Brigade Pirate” album that she previewed earlier this year.Meanwhile, to see if he has any tunes that might have a new life in a new millennium, Charlie is digging into his hippy diaries to bring out things he wrote — or sometimes just started writing and never finished — decades ago.A Different Kind of Podcast Th...2022-11-1110 min
The 1937 Flood Watch Podcast4th Street Mess AroundOne of Ray Charles’s first hits was “Mess Around,” released on Atlantic Records back in 1953, but actually in this case, Brother Ray was a little late to the party.Many of the ideas for that song can been heard in a whole mess of New Orleans boogie piano riffs, starting as early as, say, Cow Cow Davenport’s playing in the late 1920s. But if you want to go back even further — and, well, we generally do — there are references to dances called a “mess around” as far back the earliest days of jazz. For instanc...2022-11-0404 min
The 1937 Flood Watch PodcastDusty Boxcar WallOne of the wonderful things about the folk tradition in music is that you learn so much from people you know, sometimes from relatives, but more often from good friends. Terry Goller, a remarkable singer and guitar player who taught our whole community about folk music, was — long before we even formed The Flood — one of those inspiring friends.Terry was on hand for some of the seminal moments in the earliest days of The Flood’s history. And in our antediluvian history as well. For instance, as illustrated above, Goller was one of the first...2022-10-0703 min
The 1937 Flood Watch PodcastOn the Sunny Side of the StreetControversy surrounds the question of who actually wrote the 1930 standard “On the Sunny Side of Street.”If you rely only on what is printed on the sheet music, you see Jimmy McHugh listed as the composer. So, why is there an enduring legend in jazz circles that the melody actually was written by The Flood’s great hero Fats Waller? To this day, Waller’s contribution to the melody line remains unconfirmed, but there is some compelling evidence that the tune might have been his work.For starters, early drafts of the song appear t...2022-09-1603 min
The 1937 Flood Watch PodcastGeorgie BuckThe late Aunt Jennie Wilson, who was born in 1900 in Logan County, WV, 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 dear friend Dave Peyton — who is much on our minds, since today is the second anniversary of his death — got to know Jennie in the 1960s and learned a number of her songs, many of which he taught The Flood over the years. One of our all-time favorites is “Georgie Buck,” Jennie’s old play-party tune that has b...2022-09-0202 min
The 1937 Flood Watch Podcast(When She Wants Good Lovin') My Baby Comes to MeMany of us grew up listening to The Coasters, the iconic 1950s band that bridged the gap between doo-wop and R&B, that brought humor and sass to the birth of rock ’n’ roll. Remember “Yakety Yak” and “Charlie Brown,” “Along Came Jones” and “Poison Ivy,” “Wake Me, Shake Me” and “Little Egypt”? But before any of those tunes topped the charts, it was a lesser known Coasters cut that grabbed us. Picture it: Hot summer, 1957, and into our shiny new transistor radios The Coasters came sashaying into our ears with a sexy little song that said, yeah, she may go to the bake...2022-08-1904 min
The 1937 Flood Watch PodcastAm I Blue?Born in New York City in the waning years of the 19th century, Harry Akst started out as a vaudeville pianist, backing Nora Bayes as she belted out tunes like “Shine On, Harvest Moon.”In 1916 Harry enlisted in the army, and while at Camp Upton in Yaphank, NY, on Long Island, he befriended another young composer, Irving Berlin. At the end of World War I, Akst and Berlin collaborated on the No. 2 recording of 1921, "Home Again Blues.”Then in 1925, Akst teamed up with lyricists Sam Lewis and Joe Young, to write “Dinah,” one of the most record...2022-07-1504 min
The 1937 Flood Watch PodcastJamming with Josh WoodsWe were already having a righteous good time at Doug Chaffin’s house earlier this week when suddenly in walked a young guitar player who would ratchet things up to a whole new level of coolness. Now, Josh Woods is old friend of our newest Floodster, Danny Cox, but it turns out his roots go even deeper than that. That’s because we learned that Doug Chaffin used to regularly jam with Josh’s dad, John Woods. Needless to say, there were lots of stories between the tunes that night, with Danny, Josh and Doug rememb...2022-07-0105 min
The 1937 Flood Watch PodcastThat's All Right, MamaIt has been pretty convincingly argued that “That’s All Right, Mama” was the world’s first rock ’n’ roll song (and subsequently the soundtrack of countless tales of teenage rebellion from the 1950a onward).However, should we be honoring the tune’s composer and first performer — blues singer Arthur Crudup in 1946 — or the song’s more famous interpreter, Elvis Presley, who introduced it to a wider world in 1954?“Big Boy” Crudup, who started his blues career in the late 1930s in Mississippi, recorded his composition in Chicago on Sept. 6, 1946, incorporating some traditional blues verses first recorded 20 years...2022-06-2404 min