Grammy Award-winner Alison Brown’s status as the world’s most unlikely banjo star is as undeniable as her command of the steel-stringed instrument long synonymous with her name.
“My parents were supportive,” Brown said. “But this was not something they, or I, ever contemplated for me as a career. And there were very few role models in the bluegrass/roots-music world then — especially banjo players — you could look at and say:Brown returns to San Diego to perform June 22 at UC San Diego’s downtown Park & Market with her four-man band.
“I worked on the municipal bond side of things at Smith Barney,” Brown said. “At work I would hide a copy of Bluegrass Unlimited magazine inside The Bond Buyer — which is what investment bankers read back then.”Brown happily left the world of high finance in 1987 to become a member of future bluegrass queen Alison Krauss’s band, Union Station. She was featured on the group’s Grammy Award-winning 1990 album, “I’ve Got That Old Feeling.
In 2000, Harvard Business School did a case study on Brown and Compass Records. It was a point of particular pride for her attorney father, John Brown, as he recalled in a 2014 Union-Tribune interview. “Many things,” she replied. “The rudiments of business — starting a business, starting a speed sheet and a P&L . Having that background was enough to convince our first-seed investors to come on board at Compass.wasn’t
In 2019, she became the first female 5-string banjo player to be inducted into the American Banjo Museum’s Hall of Fame. At Compass, she produces albums by other artists and plays a key role in marketing, business development and day-to-day operations. CDs were the dominant form of recorded music when Brown and her husband launched the Compass Records Group nearly 30 years ago.
Brown wrote specific pieces with specific artists in mind, both to showcase her musical guests on the album and to provide an eclectic mix of genres and approaches. “Both of us played solos on the spur of the moment, but the melody was very composed,” Brown noted. “We spent a day beforehand figuring out where the mandolin should play the melody and the banjo harmony, and vice versa.
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