The 1937 Flood Watch Podcast

While last week’s rehearsal was our first time to play with the remarkable fiddler John Ace, that evening was likely the last time that Floodster Emeritus Dave “Bub” Ball will get to jam with his old friend. It was only at the end of the evening we learned that John — after two decades of snow-birding it from Virginia to Florida — is at a new crossroads in his life, set to move permanently to New...

Recognizing a tune that many of us think ought to be the national anthem, The Flood is celebrating America’s 250th birthday with Woody Guthrie’s most beloved song , as seen in Pamela Bowen ’s video below: Just nine years after President Herbert Hoover signed a 1931 congressional resolution to make “The Star Spangled Banner” the country’s official anthem, Woody wrote “This Land Is Your Land.” About...

When the room needs a respite from the band’s frequent fare of loud and raucous tunes, Randy Hamilton and Danny Cox always have just what the doctor ordered . Friends since high school, these two seem to be able to read each other’s mind when it comes to music. Just listen to how they make this 60-year-old Danny O’Keefe composition sound like something they themselves just wrote . As reported here...

Rabon Delmore never learned to drive a car, so it was always his older brother Alton behind the wheel as they tooled between gigs in the early days of their career during the Great Depression. That routine played a big part in The Delmore Brothers’ prolific songwriting life. As he later described it in his autobiography, Truth Is Stranger Than Publicity , Alton would hum melodies while he drove an...

Our Flood brother Danny Cox and his sweet wife Tami are on vacation this week, but before they hit to the road, we had to give them a good Flood set-off. Here’s a little traveling music, the last tune of last week’s rehearsal. About the Song When Merle Travis included “I Am a Pilgrim” on his seminal 1947 Folk Songs from the Hills album in 1947, listeners assumed he wrote it. After all, the same al...

Woody Guthrie once wrote that a song is just “a conversation fixed up to where you can talk it over and over without getting tired of it.” “When you sit down with a couple of friends,” he continued, “and you’ve all got your guitars parked under a shade tree or in an old kitchen, you aren’t trying to show off. … You’re just talking. “One guy tells a story with his strings, and the next guy nods his...

Three summers ago when Charlie Bowen took his first tremulous steps into the world of banjocity, he bought a six-string banjo … and immediately got grief. “That ain’t no banjo!” one friend declared. “That’s just a guitar with delusions of grandeur. You can play dress it up all you want, man, but you’re not playing a banjo.” “Okay, now, wait a minute,” Charlie protested. “If a banjo’s got four stri...

Since it is Memorial Day weekend, we wanted to offer something appropriate in this week’s podcast. Of course, in the Floodisphere, our spiritual inclinations generally lean more toward a rambunctious New Orleans jazz funeral than to a little church in the wildwood. So, here’s jubilant little hymn from your friends in The Flood . The Jazz Funeral Tradition Blending strong European and African cultu...

The Flood band room is usually a rather raucous place — rocking tunes, loud talk, lots of laughter — but often that mood can turn on a dime to something softer, even almost fragile. We hadn’t done this old Jackson Browne song for years, but something last week — about watching the beautiful spring evening come falling in, seeing those long shadows rolling down over the newly green leaves outside o...

This great late-‘60s Lovin’ Spoonful tune is the perfect opportunity to answer readers’ requests for another little sample from Danny Cox ’s latest reunion with his old guitar-pickin’ buddy Bobby Murnahan . Just listen and at the end this track you’ll hear Dan and Bob trading choruses on “(Sittin’ Back) Lovin’ You.” As reported here last week, Danny and Bobby grew up together in Lawrence County, O...

We knew the band room was going to rock last week as soon as we saw Danny Cox was bringing along his life-long buddy, guitarist Bobby Murnahan , who was visiting from Colorado. As noted here earlier , Danny and Bobby have known each other since before grade school. “Our parents attended the same church,” Danny has said, “and we got acquainted in Sunday school.” Almost immediately the youngsters we...

A half dozen years after his death at beginning of the horrid Covid pandemic, songwriter John Prine is still very much on the minds of the folks in The Flood band room. In fact, every spring since the sad April 2020 day of his passing, John’s wonderful songs start popping up among the tunes that fill the weekly rehearsals, like this one , one of our favorites, which Prine wrote a few decades back....

Our rendering of this ancient bittersweet song of love and loss dates back more than 45 years now. But each times the band plays it, it seems as new and fresh as a summer evening. According to Flood lore, our version of this classic Appalachian folk song hearkens back to a hot summer’s night at the Bowen House in the early 1980s. Over beers and sandwiches, Flood co-founders Roger Samples and Charl...

Tunes in The Flood repertoire are always subject to re-evaluation and rehabilitation. Perhaps a new key will freshen it up. Maybe there are new verses that can be sung. A new rhythm? A new chord or two? “Ready for the Times to Get Better,” the Allen Reynolds song that Randy Hamilton brought to the table a few years ago, is just such a song. About the Song As reported here earlier , the tune alread...

The Flood started playing around with hokum music — those good old jug band tunes from the 1920s — about a half century ago , but it took another 20 years for us to feel confident enough to try to write one of those kind of songs ourselves . Charlie Bowen started putting this tune together back in the 1990s, but then it took another 30 years for us to feel like we could play it. In fact, the song...

Here’s a little festive Floodery to help you celebrate this first bright, sunny Saturday of Spring 2026. Pamela Bowen recorded these four minutes at this week’s rehearsal at the Bowen House with the band enjoying its newest favorite Tom Waits song. Waits wrote “Come On Up to the House” back in 1999 but, as reported here earlier , The Flood is late to the party on that one. We never heard the song...

Most love songs are about young love, and of course that is special, but really it’s nothing compared to love that has aged like fine wine. Here’s a song to all those champion life-long lovers out there. About the Song Charlie Bowen wrote “The Answer Is You” while reflecting on the decades that he and Pamela have been “in each other’s care,” the lyrics say. Beyond that, the song also was inspired...

This tune — “July, You’re a Woman” — entered the Floodisphere in the first hours of The 1937 Flood’s half-century origin story. As reported earlier , this lovely John Stewart composition is one of the songs that Charlie Bowen brought to his very first jam session with the late David Peyton at the 1973 New Year’s Eve where The Flood was born . For that first year, the song limped along as just a du...

As we were packing up following our most recent gig at Bahnhof last month , an old friend stepped up with a question. “Say,” he said, “where’d’ya get that melody for ‘ Pallet on the Floor’ ? I’ve been hearing that song for years, but I never heard it played the way you did it tonight. D’y’all write that?” “Well,” we said, thinking fast, “yes! Yes, we did! Do you want to buy it? You know, everythin...

Here’s a song that we likely wouldn’t even know about were it not for the persistence and curiosity of a researcher who was far from an ordinary young woman of her time. Born in 1892 in Paducah, Ky., into the family of a prominent U.S. congressman, Mary Guthrie Wheeler was destined from the start for adventure. Rather than settling into a quiet, conventional life, she embraced the extraordinary, s...

We love how this song , which Randy Hamilton brought the band nearly a decade ago now, continues to boldly represent a new direction in Appalachian music. Perspective, Then…. For decades, bluegrass music played it safe when singing about the American Civil War. It generally stuck to well-worn tales of shared heartbreak, ruined farms and missing home, while conveniently ignoring the brutal realitie...

When this Tom Waits song turned up during the closing credits of the latest “Knives Out” movie, Wake Up Dead Man , we heard shouts from all around the Floodisphere: “Whoa! What a great tune that would be for The Flood!” We agree. We only wish we’d thought of it earlier. After all, “Come On Up to the House” has been around for more than a quarter of a century, appearing as the closing track on Wait...

We’re setting the time machine back 20 years to a snowy Saturday night in Charleston. The Flood was on stage at the West Virginia Cultural Center for a FOOTMAD (“Friends of Old-Time Music and Dance”) concert, sharing the bill with another great band, Stewed Mulligan. As reported here earlier , it had been a fun evening of jug band songs and general silliness, blues and fiddle tunes and old-time st...

Our Randy Hamilton was born to sing songs like this. He and Danny Cox brought us “Spooky” last summer and we’ve been loving it ever since. Especially when we added Sam St. Clair’s funky harmonica and Jack Nuckols’ tasty percussion. About the Song As reported here earlier, while The Classics IV made the lyrics famous with a chart-topper in the fall of 1967, the story of “Spooky” began several years...

The fun of playing some songs is that we just never know what we’re going to hear. This George Gershwin piece has been like that ever since Danny Cox brought us better chords for it a year or so ago . Now the song is like a shiny little red convertible parked in the garage just waiting for the next sunny day. You and your buddies pile in, not knowing where you’re going, just enjoying the company a...