The 1937 Flood Watch Podcast

The mood can change very quickly in The Flood band room, often depending on whatever is the next song that crosses Charlie Bowen’s rattlin’ brain.

For instance, in the first few seconds of this week’s…

Whenever The Flood appears in public — as it did at Bahnhof WVrsthaus & Biergarten earlier this month — it positions itself the way most bands do at gigs: in a simple straight line politely facing th…

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 Nig…

Roving 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…

If you grew up in the 1960s or ‘70s, it seemed like many of the songs on the radio were answering other songs on the radio.

Roger Miller sang, “King of the Road,” and Jody Miller answered it with “Que…

Whenever we have fresh ears in The Flood’s band room, as we did last week, the newcomer’s first question often is, “What kind of music do you fellas play?”

No single easy answer is available, of cours…

Napoleon never heard “Bonaparte Crossing the Rhine,” because, well, it’s not French. The tune might be Scottish. But probably not. Some say it’s an American march. Maybe Irish instead. Or not.

One thi…

Randy 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 h…

A half century after the United States won its independence from Britain, Canada was rocked by two armed uprising known as the Rebellions of 1837-38.

The revolts failed, resulting in many rebels being…

One of the best songs written about West Virginia in the past half century was created by a man who was nicknamed for a state two time zones away.

Bruce “U. Utah” Phillips wrote “The Green Rolling Hil…

Whenever 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 gue…

Hokum bands of the 1920s and ’30s created a brand of urban folk tunes called “jug band music” that famously blended the sounds of the plantation and the church with those of the swing, swerve and swa…

Texan Cindy Walker already was a well-established songwriter in the fall of 1955 when she attended Nashville’s annual disc jockey convention.

By then, she had worked with Bing Crosby, not to mention G…

Spring 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…

For 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 …

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 wo…

Coming 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 p…

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…

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 …

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 m…