FLOODSTER PICKUP BAND: 'ORPHAN GIRL'

The 1937 Flood, The Band, Not the Natural Disaster, is a Mountain State institution, living up to its billing as 'West Virginia's Most Eclectic String Band.' When you look at the folks who play — and have played — with the Flood over half a century, you realize the band is maybe more of a collective. I was honored to sit in for a short set at the Flood's 50th Anniversary Concert this New Year's Eve in the cool hipster confines of the Alchemy Theatre's Geneva Kent Center for the Arts (the things you can do with retired elementary schools!).

BEHOLD, A FLOODSTER PICKUP BAND. It features himself on guitar and vocals; Michelle Diane Hoge on hurry-up-and-wing-it backup vocals; Danny Cox on lead guitar; David G. Bub Ball on acoustic bass; and Sam St. Clair on harp as we attempt — for the first time ever as an agglomeration of pick-up musicians — the great Gillian Welch tune "Orphan Girl." PS: Thanks to Charles Bowen and Pamela Bowen for my moment in the Flood.

PS: As one is wont to do winging it on stage, I messed and mussed up the lyrics and their sequence a bit. Here they are in their correct entirety.

'ORPHAN GIRL" by Gillian Welch

I am an orphan on God's highway
But I'll share my troubles if you go my way
I have no mother, no father
No sister, no brother
I am an orphan girl

I have had friendships, pure and golden
But the ties of kinship, I have not known them
I know no mother, no father
No sister, no brother
I am an orphan girl

But when He calls me I will be able
To meet my family at God's table
I'll meet my mother, my father
My sister, my brother
No more orphan girl

Blessed Savior, make me willing
And walk beside me until I'm with them
Be my mother, my father
My sister, my brother
I am an orphan girl