Song Premiere: Thomm Jutz, “The Flood of 2010”

From May 1-2, 2010, the rains came to Nashville and didn’t let up. The Cumberland River rose out of its banks, rolling up lower Broadway and into the bars and honky-tonks. The Ryman Auditorium shut down, and the Opry was moved to the War Memorial Auditorium, its original home. The flood’s devastated Nashville, but the spirit of the city shone bright as hundreds of neighbors helped each other recover in the aftermath of the 1,000-year flood.

Nashville resident and songwriter and guitarist Thomm Jutz was on the road playing guitar for Nanci Griffith “stuck in an airport hotel in Oakland when the flood ravaged Music City. I was anxiously watching the news from my hotel room given that our house is less than two miles from Percy Priest Lake, but luckily our home was spared.”

In this sprightly classic bluegrass tune, Jutz—joined by Mike Compton, Mark Fain, Justin Moses, and Tammy Rogers—tells the story of the flood of 2010. Spry opening banjo rolls and guitar strums open the song, and Jutz’s warm, inviting vocals float gently over a cascade of fiddle, banjo, bass, and guitar, as Rogers’ glorious harmonies flow around and over the musical stream. A cracking good storyteller, Jutz joined forces with two other first-rate writers, Charley Stefl and Jon Weisberger, to memorialize the Nashville Flood of 2010. The song records both the devastation and the hope of those days ten years ago.

“People used to get news and preserve history through song,” Jutz notes. “To me, that era has never ended; it’s more real to me than anything on TV. In that tradition, Charley, Jon Weisberger and I wanted to write about the flood — from the book of Genesis to the Mississippi flood of 1927 to the Nashville flood of 2010.”

“The Flood of 2010” is available HERE.