Dear Diary ... The Podcast Archives: 2025

JANUARY

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Storytelling in B Minor

Jan, 3, 2025: Black Eye Blues. When the whole band can’t get together — like last week, when it was just Danny, Randy and Charlie — it’s an opportunity to explore tunes not usually on the practice list. Now, in Flood years, this old Ma Rainey song dates back nearly a half century, to when the fellows were just starting to fool with the hokum tunes of the 1920s and ‘30s.

Jan, 10, 2025: Am I Blue? Often the first notes of the evening set the pace, the mood and the tone for the entire rehearsal. Well, as you’ll hear on this track, Danny Cox came into last week’s session ready to set the Floodometer on sizzle — and, man, it worked! Now, we’ve been doing this great old1920s jazz standard for only a couple of years, but it’s already become one of our go-to tunes for a good time.

Jan, 17, 2025: Pretty Polly. All 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.

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Swing 'n' Sway, The Flood Way

Jan, 25, 2025: Corrina, Corrina. For the past month, the world has been fascinated by a new movie about a 20-year-old with a head full of ideas rolling in from the North Country into New York City in the 1960s and changing music forever. For our tribute to this wonderful Bob Dylan biopic, “A Complete Unknown,” here’s a tune from that period.

Jan, 31, 2025: Opus One. If your mother (or grandma or maybe your great-grandmother) was a Bobby-soxer in the 1940s, she probably danced to this song. It was a hit on the radio for Tommy Dorsey in late 1944, and an even bigger smash the following year for singer Anita O’Day, recording it with a band fronted by drummer Gene Krupa with the legendary Roy Eldridge on trumpet. In the Floodisphere,we’ve found that “Opus One” is wonderful way to warm up for an evening of tunes.

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Always a Ball at Bahnhof

FEBRUARY

Feb. 7, 2025: (Sitting Back) Loving You. We’re channelling 1966 with this tune. It’s our take on the first track of the third album by the late great Lovin’ Spoonful!

Feb. 14, 2025: Peggy Day. This bit of fluff from Bob Dylan’s “Nashville Skyline” album more than a half century ago is one of his least-recorded song, but The Flood has always enjoyed playing it over the decades. Here’s a happy take on the tune from a recent rehearsal, featuring solos from everyone in the room.

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Two from a Rainy Winter's Night

Feb. 21, 2025: Angelina Baker. The Flood has always celebrated diversity. We often follow at folk blues with a swing tune or chase a 1950s jazz standard with some 1920s jug band stuff. And deep in our DNA are the fiddle tunes we learned from Joe Dobbs and Doug Chaffin. Here’s a tune from around the time of the Civil War that we learned from fiddlin’ Jack Nuckols.

Feb. 28, 2025: Satin Doll. We still 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 jazz records by Ella Fitzgerald and Duke Ellington, Count Basie and Harry James. In BowenWorld, “Satin Doll” was as much a part of the household soundtrack and anything on the radio. Now, we don’t think Joe really cared about the song’s honored status in the jazz world. But he was tickled by a folksy rendition of it he had just heard by fiddler Stephane Grappelli and David Grisman and was eager to bring the tune into the Flood repertoire. And it still is. Here’s a take on the great old Duke Ellington-Billy Strayhorn number from last week’s Flood rehearsal.

MARCH

March 7, 2025: I Can't Help But Wonder Where I'm Bound.The word “evergreen” has a special meaning in our band room. It means a tune that’s timeless. Like this Tom Paxton classic. It is 60 years old, but it feels it could have been written last week — or a century ago.

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An Edgewood Afternoon

March 14, 2025: Summertime.At last week’s rehearsal, the first take on this tune was slow and bit lifeless, but then Randy Hamilton said, “Let’s try it again,” and kicked it up into a new gear. At the start of the track, you’ll hear him ask his band mates what they think. “Yeah!” they all say, then Danny Cox lets his guitar register his vote with some of the most inspired playing the whole night.

March 21, 2025: You Don't Know Me. Michelle Hoge brought us this song about a decade ago. It immediately found a place on the next album we were working on and it became a standard feature in most of our shows. Sadly, these days, we don’t see Michelle so often — she and her husband Rich live more than two hours away — but whenever she rambles back this way, as she did last week, this mid-1950s classic is sure to make an appearance.

March 28, 2025: The 4th Street Mess Around. The Flood first started fooling around jug band tunes nearly 50 Springs ago, when the band was still a youngster. Before that, the guys played mainly old folk songs and some Bob Dylan and John Prine and a smattering of radio tunes from folks like James Taylor and The Eagles. But then they discovered some fine old recordings by Tampa Red and Georgia Tom, by groups like the Mississippi Sheiks and Gus Cannon’s Jug Stompers, and most especially the great Memphis Jug Band. Ever since then, The Flood’s music buffet table has been a lot bigger, with tunes like this one from the warmup at last week’s rehearsal.

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at Home

APRIL

April 4, 2025: The Green Rolling Hills of West Virginia. We learned this great West Virginia tribute song in the 1970s, just a few years after Bruce Phillips wrote it. That’s because some of our local heroes — H. David Holbrook’s late great Kentucky Foothill Ramblers — started singing it at those parties where The Flood was born.

April 11, 2025: Un Canadien Errant. Thirty years ago, when the band first started doing this song, The Flood was back to being a trio of the original guys — Dave Peyton, Joe Dobbs and Charlie Bowen — and often on rehearsal night, the only listener in the room would be Dave’s sweet wife, Susan. At the end of the evening, when they’d ask Susie what last song she’d like to hear, it was almost always this wonderfully sad French Canadian tune, one that she remembered hearing 20 years earlier down in Louisiana when she and David and young Davy lived in Cajun country. We lost Susan three years ago this summer. This one’s for you, dear heart.

April 18, 2025: Bonaparte Crossing the Rhine. Charlie first heard this centuries-old fiddle tune 50 years ago when an old friend Jim Strother played it with our favorite local string band, the good old Kentucky Foothill Ramblers. He couldn’t imagined The Flood ever playing it. However, a year or so ago, when hr started studying the five-string banjo, the same old tune came rolling back in his brain. About the same time, Jack was dusting off his fiddle, and they worked it up together and then they taught it to Danny and Randy and Sam, who added their own sweet touches, and now the tune is a cool change of pace at our weekly rehearsals.

April 25, 2025: I Wonder Where My Easy Rider's Gone. Around here, the best night of the week is whatever night we’re all getting together to pick. Everyone always comes in the room ready to rock. But some nights? Well, those night swing even more than usual. Last week, for instance, Danny Cox seemed to have a whole barrel of new riffs to try out on his guitar, and Jack Nuckols was absolutely cooking on his snare and high-hat. And, man, but it seemed like Randy Hamilton was rocking before he even got his bass out of the case. Just listen to how Randy’s walking bass lines puts a strut and a glide in the great old Shelton Brooks tunes from the Roarin’ Twenties. Shoot, you can probably hear Charlie Bowen grinning while he's singing.