Bo Sweeney at the Controls

#370 / Flood Capsule: 2007

By the summer of 2007, The Flood was itching to record another album — after all, it had been more than four years since the last one — and the guys’ young friend Bo Sweeney was offering to put his mad recording skills to the task.

Now, Bo had been in The Flood stream for a few years by then. For instance, soon after he and his wife, Patty Jennings, moved next door to the Bowen House where the band gathered each week, Bo brought their 5-year-old son Chip by to see and hear what these old men were up to.

One particularly fun memory was a September night in 2004 when Chip sat in on a "kinder-music" cardboard dulcimer he had made in school.

A few days after these pictures were taken, Charlie was talking to Patty over the backyard fence and she said, "Get this: Bo asked Chip if he'd rather go to the Marshall game or play with The Flood and catch the end of the game on TV. And Chip said, 'I'm gonna play with The Flood!'"

Uh-huh…. Like Socrates, The Flood has a long history of corrupting the youth, as the gang discussed in this brief bit of banter from a later jam session:

Meanwhile….

Earlier that summer, Bo also had been on hand on a Saturday afternoon to help good ol’ George Walker run the sound system at a surprise 70th birthday party put together in Sam and Joan St. Clair’s backyard to honor Flood tribal elder Joe Dobbs.

And a month before that, Bo had flipped the switches and turned the knobs on the recorder when Charlie’s cousin Kathy Castner came in from Cincinnati for one of her rare visits.

The entire band was not available for that Saturday night, but Flood Lite — Joe along with Doug Chaffin and Dave Ball — joined Kathy and Charlie at the Bowens’ place. Here’s a sample of the sounds Sweeney mixed from that night:

Flash Forward

So three years later — July 2007 — he was ready and willing to lend a hand when The Flood took another stab at recording its next album. By then, the industrious Bo Sweeney had built a full-fledged recording studio, and he was interested in using the band to test it out.

However, the plan was that he would record in The Flood’s own digs — the band room in the Bowen House — then do all the mixing and general engineering in the new studio.

On this particular evening, Bo arrived early with a whole slew of recording equipment — mikes and stands, cables, a console — and was setting them up around the band’s usual practice space when the guys arrived.

This was much more agreeable than the band’s earlier recording sessions, since the band mates didn't have to travel to a studio and give the process hours and hours. This was just regular jam session, but with Bo flipping switches.

No Go

The recording went very well, but as it worked out, none of that evening's efforts ever ended up on a Flood album. The reason? The Floodisphere had no way of knowing it was headed for its next big change.

Within a few months, the guys were to meet young guitarist Jacob Scarr, who quickly became an integral part of the group. The lad they called “Youngblood” brought the band room a new sound, one that eventually would be preserved on the next album — Wade in the Water — but that turned out to be another four years in the future.

Sittin’ on Top of the World

Most of the tunes the guys played for Bo on that steamy summer night in 2007 eventually were re-arranged to appear on later albums. All except one. Even though the old boys have regularly performed their rendition of the Mississippi Sheiks’ standard “Sittin' on Top of the World” at shows over the decades, for some reason to this day the song has yet to make it onto a Flood album.

However, they did use Bo’s beautiful 2007 mix of the tune in this fun video of the period:

Bo Back

Meanwhile, Bo Sweeney eventually would be at the helm for a Flood album. Nine years later, Bo handled the recording the band’s first-ever live in-concert album on a January night in 2016.

Today that entire album is spin-able for free in our Radio Floodango feature. Click here to give it a listen.