Long Time Gone Featured in ROLLING STONE
“Zoë Boekbinder first met the inmates at New Folsom Prison in Folsom, California, in 2010 — and four years spent volunteering led to an album that would become Long Time Gone, a collaboration between Boekbinder, incarcerated men, and Ani DiFranco’s Righteous Babe Records and the Prison Music Project. The album is out June 5th.
“There are two million people in prison in the U.S. and each one of them has a story to tell. Nine of them are on this record,” DiFranco tells Rolling Stone. “The stories and the music on Long Time Gone are diverse in scope and sound, as are the people involved, but we are united in our humanity and in our hope for a more just justice system. In this time of human versus virus, when so many behind bars are sitting ducks, I hope we can address the reality of mass incarceration and fix it.”
After volunteering with prisoners for four years — playing concerts and teaching workshops — Boekbinder started working with inmates on songs of their own, with help from DiFranco. “The 10-year process of this record seemed to play out in slow motion, but it seems only fitting because many of the songwriters here are serving life-without-parole sentences,” the duo writes in a release. “For them, there is nothing but endless gaping time. Daring to hope and daring to feel in such a context becomes a revolutionary act. Our intention, with this project, is to simply reflect the shared humanity of people on both sides of prison bars.”