Long Time to Be Gone

Listening to ‘Jenny Put the Kettle On’, the opening track on Nora Brown’s third full-length album, Long Time to Be Gone, the first thing that hits the ears is the sound. It’s that of a vaguely familiar era still lingering in the synapses. Part of the sound comes from the instrument, one of a quiver of banjoes used on the album by Brown, which includes an 1888 Luscomb model handed down from her great-great-grandfather; a fretless tackhead banjo built by her father; and a historic five-string banjo, which once belonged to the late John Cohen, a member of the New Lost City Ramblers and one of Brown’s mentors.

Subdued and quietly percussive, unlike the steely sprang of the instrument in a ‘normal’ bluegrass setting, the sound seems closer to that of the banjo’s ancestors, which were carved from gourds and strung with horsehair by African slaves. Then comes the voice, an otherworldly, softly resonant mixture of youth and age; at 17, Brown is the embodiment of an ‘old soul.’ On Long Time to Be Gone, her treatment of traditional, mostly Appalachian, songs, such as ‘Southern Texas’, ‘Shortnin’ Bread’ and ‘Po’ Black Sheep’, represents a fascinating recasting of an imagined past.