Nora Brown – Long Time To Be Gone

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Banjo playing in the United States could not be in better shape. From, to name a few, Rhiannon Giddens, Kaia Kater, Leyla McCalla, Dom Flemons and Jake Blount (lauded by Giddens), and Nora Brown, not yet quite 17 years old but about to release Long Time To Be Gone, her third record. At this year’s Newport Folk Festival, Nora played with both Rhiannon Giddens and Jake Blount, and you don’t have to spend much time with Long Time To Be Gone to appreciate why she belongs in that company.

We may know Polly Put the Kettle On as a nursery rhyme, but the tune, often known as Molly rather than Polly, can be found in Scotland and Ireland as a traditional reel – it is in O’Neill’s Music of Ireland, and there’s a fine version on Christy McNamara’s The House I Was Reared In album with Martin Hayes on fiddle – and, as Nora notes, ‘is a fairly common tune across Appalachia’. Nora’s playing of Kentucky banjo player Virgil Anderson’s version – titled Jenny Put the Kettle On – is suitably bright, with a consummate combination of rhythm and tune. It also has an understated, low-in-the-mix vocal, which is also true of the other vocal tracks, keeping the tunes at the forefront.

Miner’s Dream is another track from Virgil Anderson from his On the Tennessee Line album – which Nora learnt during the first COVID lockdown. Nora’s playing creates a floaty, otherworldly feel, particularly enhanced by an echoey, descending run of notes that repeat throughout the tune. She describes the tune as having ‘one of the most perfect song title fits’ and having ‘a bit of a dreamy quality’.

Nora recorded her last album, Sidetrack My Engine, in an underground tunnel which she said: “complemented some tunes, but not all – specifically, quiet, solo banjo ones”. She describes her new album as: “a sort of second take on the ones that didn’t make the last project, becoming a compilation of some of my favourite solo banjo tunes, often instrumental”. Long Time To Be Gone was recorded over a weekend last year in St. Ann’s Church in Brooklyn, New York, where the Brooklyn Folk Festival is held (Brooklyn is home to Nora). There is a strong sense of Nora making maximum use of that space. She says that “In recording this project, we experimented with the sound that different locations in the church produced, mics were configured around the room. On a lot of the tracks you can hear the expanse of the space pretty clearly.” Her exploration of recording in different spaces is reminiscent of Amedo Production’s Locations project (review here), which included recordings in a tunnel and, with Ríoghnach Connolly, in a Manchester church.

Cumberland Gap is a tune Nora recorded on her first 2019 album, Cinnamon Tree. The contrast between those two versions illuminates what Nora sets out to achieve on this album. Whilst the earlier version has a more typical, sprightly Kentucky pace and sound, the new recording, albeit a different version played on a fretless banjo, has a depth and beauty all its own, sounding, in a lower key and a little slower, wistful and faraway. You can clearly ‘hear the expanse of the space’ in the church.

The story behind the tunes and songs is something Nora Brown pays close attention to. Coal mining is closely associated with the Appalachian Mountains, where most of Nora’s tunes originate. Coal Creek March is a version from Roscoe Holcomb that Nora learned from Eli Smith. She writes in the sleeve notes that: “In 1891, miners rebelled against convict labor – a historic rebellion sometimes referred to as the Coal Creek War.” The mine owners began to replace miners “by the leasing of prisoners by the state in penal labor… In response to this, miners went on strike setting fire to prisons and mining property as well as releasing large numbers of convicts from bondage.”

In an interview last year, Nora talked about the importance of the “interconnection of cultures that created the traditional music that we hear and play today.” She acknowledged musicians like Rhiannon Giddens for “bringing attention to the African history of the banjo.” In her notes for Wade’s Tune, Nora describes learning a tune from Mac Traynham of Floyd, Virginia, that he called the “real Half Shaved”. On further investigation, including a convoluted story about mixed-up tune titles, Nora discovered that:

“The tune’s title, ‘Half Shaved’ was originally followed by the n-word. Putting this track on the record creates difficult questions. I think the only way to play old time music is to talk about and acknowledge the racism that surrounds almost every piece of music. It is not only the ones that have offensive titles but the music itself. We must understand that many of the people that have kept this tradition alive were racists, however they were not the only ones that created these songs and fostered the growth of this tradition. All that being said, I’m calling the tune ‘Wade’s Tune’ to give it a bit of a new life but at the same time acknowledging its history.”

Whilst Nora Brown’s playing on her first two records was unquestionably wonderfully accomplished and vibrant, Long Time To Be Gone feels like a significant musical advance. It has a sense of maturity and added individuality, and as Nora, herself says, “less tailored”. The pace is slowed down, giving an overall reflective, organic mood. With all that, she remains humble and self-effacing. The French Waltz is a tune Nora learned from Clyde Troxel, another Kentucky banjo player. She says, “Watching him play this song is just so amazing. I don’t even know what his right hand is doing”. That certainly doesn’t stop her from turning in a stunning performance of a “tough but delicate” tune with a “really beautiful melody”.

Long Time To Be Gone is an engrossing and resonant album from start to finish; Nora’s playing is always expressive and moving. The album could be described as a banjo album that people who think they don’t like banjo playing might immediately appreciate. The striking thing about Nora’s youth, given her substantial achievements up until now, is to imagine what she might realise in the next ten, twenty, thirty or more years. Fellow banjo player Jake Blount got it absolutely right when he tweeted: “If you’re not listening to Nora Brown yet, you’re wasting your life”.

If you’re not listening to Nora Brown yet you’re wasting your life

— Jake Blount (@forked_queer) July 22, 2022

Long Time To Be Gone is released on 26th August 2022.

Pre-Order via Bandcamp: https://norabrown.bandcamp.com/album/long-time-to-be-gone