Cheering Randy Hamilton's Arrival

#30 / Flood Time Capsule: 2012

Ten years ago today, Randy Hamilton joined The Flood, heralding a new wave in our long story.

Week in and week out, while his bass lays down what the late Joe Dobbs liked to call the steady “heartbeat of the band,” Randy’s vocals — leads as well as harmonies — bring such richness to our repertoire. To celebrate his 10th anniversary, here is a pair of Randy Hamilton specials:

At the start of the above video, Randy leads us through “Can You Run?” a tune he brought to us from eastern Kentucky’s remarkable songwriter, Chris Stapleton. That is followed by Randy’s moving rendition of “Wayfarin’ Stranger” (a video shot at a Heritage Station gig by Flood friend, the late Michael Lyzenga). This is an encore of Randy’s performance of the same song on our 2016 “Live, In Concert” album.

Today the bounty of Randy’s gifts just keeps on coming. For instance, lately he has been teaming with new Floodster Veezy Coffman for their innovative combination of “Dink’s Song” and “Loch Lomond,” as illustrated in last month’s “Urging the Cousins to Dance” post here.

Meanwhile…

The Flood had known Randy for a good long while before he officially joined the band on Jan. 18, 2012. In fact, Randy and his previous band, Sheldon Road, started occasionally jamming with The Flood six years before that, and Floodsters often were in the audience whenever that wonderful trio played.

And a few years later, another third of that awesome threesome -- the incomparable Paul Martin -- became a Floodster as well. Want more of that story? Don’t miss the Randy and Paul Channel on the free Radio Floodango music streaming feature, right here.

Oh, And About Paddy King…

Finally, you probably noticed in the video that started this post that we had an extraordinary guest artist on “Can You Run?” To that jam session, Floodster Emeritus Dave Ball brought a young Florida fiddler named Paddy King, who just rocked every tune we played that night. We ended up making this hour-long video of that lovely evening as part of our 2019 “Pajama Jam” series of shows: