Nora Brown and Stephanie Coleman: The Very Day I'm Gone

BBC Radio 3's Late Junction is a treasure, so of course the station's controllers can't stop cutting it. It once ran for two hours, three time a week: now it's only 90 minutes and only on Fridays.

As Wikipedia says:

The programme has a wide musical scope. It is not uncommon to hear medieval ballads juxtaposed with 21st-century electronica, or jazz followed by international folk music followed by an ambient track.

It was on Late Junction that I heard Carl Orff's Trees and Flowers, which is surely taken from the soundtrack of a lost folk horror classic. 

And I remember hearing Cape Cod Kwassa Kwassa by something called Vampire Weekend. I thought I'd discovered an obscure band to feature here one Sunday, but on further investigation they proved to be about the trendiest band in the world at that time. (Normally, of course, I'm down with the kids.)

Which brings us to Nora Brown and Steph Coleman, who I heard on Late Junction the other week. Their billing for a gig at The Harrison – a pub near St Pancras where I've been known to meet Liberator friends – in 2023 explains:

First brought together by Brooklyn’s tight-knit old-time music community in 2017, Nora Brown and Stephanie Coleman share a rich musical partnership that belies their 20 year age difference. Nora is a banjo player, and has released 3 albums on Brooklyn based Jalopy Records. She has performed across the US, Europe and Japan including NPR’s Tiny Desk and TED EDU. 

Stephanie is a master old-time fiddler, having recorded with and toured internationally over the last two decades with celebrated artists such as trailblazing all-women stringband Uncle Earl, Watchhouse’s Andrew Marlin, and clawhammer banjo virtuoso Adam Hurt. 

Nora and Stephanie recorded together on Nora’s debut album Cinnamon Tree, and have performed as a duo at such renowned festivals as the Philadelphia Folk Festival and the Trans-Pecos Festival in Marfa, TX, and are looking forward to performing at major festivals in Canada and Europe in the coming year including the Winnipeg Folk Festival and the Roskilde Festival in Copenhagen.

I like The Very Day I'm Gone, though I suspect it's best listened to in the late evening.