Sidetrack My Engine Green

Nora Brown, at 16 years of age, plays with beauty and depth in the performances captured on her new album, Sidetrack My Engine. Recorded in mono, live to tape in a large 19th century vaulted stone cellar, below the streets of Brooklyn, the album combines the raw and immediate quality of a field recording with the recording quality of a studio album. The album is now available on 12" LP.The songs, and instrumentals on this record draw the listener in: They are poignant and transformative, challenging listeners to allow this old and "outsider" music into their present day life, alongside the music on the radio, TV and front pages of the internet. Nora is joined on several songs by Jackson Lynch and Jerron "Blindboy" Paxton, hailed by the New York Times as "easily the most talented young acoustic bluesman to come along in many, many years."These songs were learned by Nora through the continued tradition of visiting elder musicians in her community, from old records and from field recordings in archival collections.The record opens with 8th of January, a tune commemorating the Battle of New Orleans in the War of 1812. Nora learned this tune from an archival recording of the great African American banjo and fiddle duet, Frazier and Patterson. The essential American ballad Frankie and Albert was learned in person from the contemporary Eastern Kentucky banjo player, John Haywood. The Very Day I'm Gone was adapted by Nora from a version sung by the ballad singer Addie Graham. Wedding Dress came to Nora from John Cohen and is heard here in her own arrangement and version.