16 Year-Old Brown Featured on Apple Playlists, Confirmed to Headline Brooklyn Folk Fest Nov 12
Traditional banjo player and folksinger Nora Brown’s new album Sidetrack My Engine debuted at number six on the Billboard Bluegrass Charts this week, following several key profiles and a track selection on NPR Music’s All Songs Considered.
On Spotify, the 16-year-old musician has amassed some 27,000 monthly listeners and Apple Music has placed her on the American Best Songs, New In Acoustic, and Acoustic Coming Soon playlists.
Brooklyn Magazine ran a feature on Nora.
She will headline November 12 at the Brooklyn Folk Festival, which runs through November 13 at St. Ann’s Church in Brooklyn, NY. This year has already seen her join Concerted Efforts, do an NPR Tiny Desk Concert, teach a workshop at Newport Folk Fest, and play several other key festivals.
Sidetrack My Engine was recorded using vintage analog equipment in an arched lagering tunnel built in the 1850s in Crown Heights, Brooklyn.
Here’s what else we’re reading:
“Some of the most interesting and haunting traditional music we’ve heard… impossibly talented… One thing that I really loved about both your albums is that both your banjo technique and your vocals are amazing. You seem to be mining these old songs with emotions far beyond your years.”
–Jason Verlinde, Fretboard Journal, September, 2021, full feature.
“Stirring.”
–Wide Open Country, September 14, 2021
“Sidetrack My Engine is both a reverent nod to deeply-rooted ole-time traditions, and an exhibit of sonic heirlooms carefully amended to meet a modern moment with vintage elegance.”
–Madeline Crone, American Songwriter, September 25, 2021
