Following her highly acclaimed 2019 debut album Cinnamon Tree, Brooklyn-born old-time musician Nora Brown returned in 2021 with a highly accomplished second album, Sidetrack My Engine, which we reviewed here. The late John Cohen caught her music early on, and even then, recognised the intense involvement and relationship she had with her music and those old tunes:
“In her playing, an intense involvement is revealed as the music appears to wash over her. She sings of experiences way beyond her years, old songs from Appalachian sources, stories that reflect a more difficult way of life.” – John Cohen.
On the 26th of August, Nora Brown returns with her third album, Long Time To Be Gone, again released via Jalopy Records. The album was recorded at the historic St. Ann’s Church in Brooklyn Heights, whose gothic revival ceiling adorns the album’s cover.
“I recorded my last project in an underground tunnel,” says Brown, “but this time we were working in a cavernous church, which allowed us to really experiment with all the sounds that different locations in the sanctuary and different mic configurations could produce. When you listen, you can hear the expanse of the space pretty clearly, which was really important to our approach on these recordings.”
Taken from the album, listen below to her playing Little Satchel, a tune I first heard being played by Sam Amidon on his 2008 album ‘All Is Well”. Here, Brown’s version is more understated, leaning more towards the original collected by John Cohen (more on below) who, as well as being a musician, New Lost City Ramblers member, Folklorist, photographer and film-maker, was also Nora’s mentor.
On the album, she plays an 1888 Luscomb banjo owned by her great-great-grandfather, a fretless tack head banjo built by her dad, and a historic 5-string banjo that belonged to John (the instrument was played by Roscoe Halcomb on his iconic High Lonesome Sound album and is now in the permanent collection of the Library of Congress).
The tune was originally written for the banjo by Fred Cockerham of Round Peak, NC. and collected by John Cohen in 1965. It featured on a beautiful compilation album called High Atmosphere: Ballads and Banjo Tunes from Virginia and North Carolina that was originally released on Rounder Records in 1975.
You can pre-order Long Time To Be Gone via Bandcamp here: https://norabrown.bandcamp.com/album/long-time-to-be-gone