Leroy Troy took to the late night stage at the Thomas Point Bluegrass Festival in Brunswick Sunday with the Tennessee Mafia Jug Band and, with the twirl of his banjo, opened a rift in time/space, whisking the crowd to the late 19th century when vaudevillians roamed the Earth.

He sang funny songs, drawled jokes and made sure every member of the group got a slice of the limelight. When the show was over, he stayed onstage for the after-midnight diehards, picking more solo tunes, flipping and spinning his banjo without missing a beat ‘till members of his band reminded him it was time to go.

Troy is a direct link to pre-bluegrass banjo music. He grew up and still lives in Goodlettsville, Tennessee where he was schooled in the art of entertaining a crowd by neighbor Cordell Kemp.

“Cordell was a feller that I learned a lot from,” Troy told me before the show. “He learned to pick the banjo from his daddy and he learned from his uncle. And he also learned from the feller who was known as the ‘Dixie Dewdrop,’ Uncle Dave Macon.”

Macon learned the banjo before 1900 from minstrel show banjo twirlers like Joel Davidson who stayed at his family’s Nashville hotel and practiced in the basement.

He was 45 years-old when he became the first big star of the Grand Ole Opry in Nashville, Tennessee, in 1925. Macon recorded around 180 records through the ‘20s and ‘30s. He’d given up a mule-powered freight business and hit the vaudeville circuit after being discovered by a theatre agent while entertaining in a barber shop around 1920.

Troy, born in 1966, first heard Macon on a record he found in a library. He quickly learned more from his own grandmother.

“When she was a kid, they lived just down the road from Uncle Dave Macon,” he said. “My grandmother said that when she was a kid, they’d be going to town in the wagon and Uncle Dave would be out there, picking his banjo under a tree in the front yard.”

That line, from Joel Davidson, to Uncle Dave, to Cordell Kemp, to Leroy Troy, skips over modern bluegrass, which was developed in the 1940s. Most people think of bluegrass when conjuring the sound of a banjo in their minds. That’s not what Leroy Troy plays, though. He’s hanging onto an older sound, one that might be extinct if not for his dedication to keeping his banjo “family tree” alive.

Leroy Troy, of Goodlettsville, Tennessee, performs at the Thomas Point Bluegrass Festival in Brunswick Sunday night. Troy is known for his old time banjo styles inspired by Uncle Dave Macon, one of the first stars of the Grand Ole Opry. Troy R. Bennett | BDN

Bluegrass stresses singular instrumental virtuosity. To me, it often comes off strained and competitive. It can forsake the audience in favor of intricate individual musical achievement.

Troy, and his Tennessee Mafia Jug Band-mates, never did that Sunday night. Their attention remained firmly affixed on the crowd. They took requests, joked with folks in the front row, while still proving they were masters of their instruments. At times, they clearly didn’t know what song they were going to play next, but the lack of preparation came off as refreshing, rather than unprofessional.

Just before 1 a.m., Troy finally left the stage a good half-hour, and several more songs, after the show was over. A couple in the front row, who’d set their lawn chairs up five hours earlier to make sure they got good seats, asked me what I thought.

“I feel like I just did some serious time-travelling,” I told them. “And I can’t wait to get back there again.”

Banjoist and songster Leroy Troy performs with the Tennessee Mafia Jug Band at the Thomas Point Bluegrass Festival in Brunswick Sunday night. Troy, from Goodlettsville, Tennessee, is known for his vaudeville-tinged old time banjo playing and acrobatics. Troy R. Bennett | BDN