Back to the Studio

#144 / Flood Time Capsule: 2002

On a chilly, rainy Saturday 20 years ago this week, The Flood was back in a Charleston studio to record a followup to the band’s debut album, which had been released less than a year earlier.

Gathered around our producer/engineer — the wise, funny, remarkably patient George Walker — it was a marathon session that produced a disc that a few months later was released as “The 1937 Flood Plays Up a Storm.”

It was a long day. The guys recorded 23 tunes in eight hours of staring at each other over microphones.

We started early. Everyone -- Dave, Charlie, Joe, Doug, Chuck and Sam -- reached the studio by noon, but the setup took a while. It was complicated to arrange mikes and cables for a six-piece band and then do the sound check, so it was 2 in the afternoon before we were ready to record.

George used digital tape for the session, so the band recorded five or six tunes in each 45-minute stretch, filling up one of the tape. Then we had to take a break while George formatted the next tape, a process that took about 20 to 30 minutes. That gave us time to order some pizzas for dinner and then go at it again.

Now, it is always fun when The Family Flood comes together, and that night everybody did his best stuff; however, by anybody’s definition, it was grueling day. In fact, some of the guys probably would have voted to end the session at 6 (when we had about 18 cuts in the can), but the majority decided to stay on for another two hours.

As it turned out everyone was glad we did. The final tunes we recorded -- despite our being tired and, yes, a bit grumpy with each other -- were the best of the whole bundle, such as this one, “I Never Cried.” Despite being the session’s last take, it included the best solos of the day:

Putting the Album Together

Six months before that chilly November day (and night) in the studio with George Walker, the Family Flood already had started planning the new album.

It began with a photo shoot at which Chuck Romine's brother-in-law, photographer Charles Romine, took public relations pictures of the band, one of which graced the back cover.

By the following April, the album was out and we hosted a release party at the Renaissance Ballroom that drew about 150 folks who bought nearly a thousand dollars’ worth of albums.

“Everybody was trying out new stuff in their solos,” Charlie told his mom in an email the nest day, “and everything worked. Magic night.”

Hear the Album Online

Two decades later, we put the entire album online as part of our free Radio Floodango feature, which you can hear right here.