Joe Dobbs' Theme Song

#130 / Flood Time Capsule: 2002

Twenty years ago this week, The Flood headed into the studio to record a very special tune: An original number that we wrote to be the new theme song for Joe Dobbs’ beloved weekly “Music from the Mountains” show on West Virginia Public Radio.

The idea for a theme song came from Joe’s producer, the late great George Walker.

A month later, George also would engineer our second album (“The 1937 Flood Plays Up a Storm”), on which this new tune was the opening track. You can hear it if you push the button below:

How the Song Came To Be

George thought it was a no-brainer, that “Joe’s band oughta make up Joe’s theme song.”

Actually, though, we were fresh out of ideas for a new song, until Charlie remembered a tune that he had written… oh, maybe five years earlier, one he had never done anything with.

So in the summer of 2002, we re-appropriated that old melody, Dave Peyton wrote some snazzy new lyrics, we named it “Music from the Mountains Sets You Free” and headed for the studio.

Well, actually, we were already there. The Flood was the scheduled guest for a “Music from the Mountains” episode being recorded that evening. As Charlie told his mom in a later email, “We kicked off with ‘Sweet Georgia Brown,’ then went immediately into a crazy jug band song. After that, we were rolling for an hour of laughs and tunes. What a fun bunch to hang out with. Joe, who's a great interviewer, talked to each band member on the air, and we did tunes that featured each of them.”

After recording the show, we took a break, then came back to tape the new theme.

“We recorded a long version and a short version,” Charlie said in the email to his mom. “Then George asked us to record some additional material. He had each member play his part alone so he could do some mixing magic on the piece.”

At one point, George left the recorder running to capture the process. Click the button below to hear that particular sausage-making moment:

From then on, our theme song was used on the air every week until the show ended its quarter-of-a-century run five years later.

By The Way…

The connection between the theme song and Charlie’s original tune was revisited in a Flood podcast a couple of summers ago in a jam session recorded at Doug Chaffin’s house.

Press the button below to hear that broadcast, which first recounts the theme’s back story, then compares it with Charlie’s original song:

Our Long Association with MftM

The song was just The Flood's latest association with Joe’s radio show. Since Dobbs was one of the founders of the band, it’s not surprising that a dozen times or more during the show's 23 years the band or individual Floodsters appeared as guests.

In fact, The Flood actually appeared on "Music from the Mountains" before there even WAS a "Music from the Mountains."

Picture it: Late summer, 1982. Joe is just starting to think about pitching West Virginia Public Radio with his idea for a weekly show. The fiddler puts out the call. Peyton, Bowen, Rog Samples and Bill Hoke all drop whatever they’re doing and come to Joe's shop, Fret 'n Fiddle, to record a demo, complete with interviews segueing into live music.

That was more than a year before the show actually hit the air on Nov. 11, 1983. In the demo, Joe called his then-imaginary show “West Virginia R.F.D.” That name didn’t stick, of course. He later selected “Music from the Mountains,” because, as he wrote in A Country Fiddler, his autobiography, he wanted a title “that would give me the freedom to air any type of acoustic music I wanted, such as a folk group or a string quartet.” The original Flood demo session would become one of the first MftM shows to be aired. Here’s a nine-minute chunk of that broadcast: