Alison Brown

Alison Brown

FAIR WEATHER'S FRIENDS

Plucky Banjo Ace Alison Brown Leads an All-Star Roots Revival
It's been a long and winding road back home for Alison Brown. On FAIR WEATHER, the banjo star digs into some traditional bluegrass, though she is better known for her jazzy licks and forward-thinking fusion. Chalk it up to her stints with Grammy winner Alison Krauss, Michelle Shocked, and her own genre-splicing quartet. But teaming up with Vince Gill, Bela Fleck, Claire Lynch, her New Grange bandmate Todd Phillips, and others, Alison Brown is now taking a break from the music that she calls "too folk for the jazz people and to jazzy for the folk music lovers." Don't worry, though, there are still plenty of surprises. Brown spoke with Kerry Dexter about bluegrass, business, and her star-studded FAIR WEATHER.

Barnes & Noble.com: What drew you to the banjo?

Alison Brown: I was taking guitar lessons, and my guitar teacher brought over an Earl Scruggs record one day. I just loved the sound of the banjo. I wanted to learn how to make that sound.

Barnes & Noble.com: But you didn't plan a career as a musician?

AB: I always loved the banjo, but I never thought of it as a way to make a living. Both my parents are lawyers, and I always thought I'd go into a profession. I started on a premed curriculum at Harvard, but I abandoned that about halfway through. It became a choice between business school and law school after graduation. One of the reasons I chose to go to UCLA was that they had a lot of concentration in the entertainment industry, and I was thinking of maybe trying to find an MBA-type job that would allow me to combine my love for music with a business degree. But when I did an internship with a major record company during grad school I was really a fish out of water because I didn't find anybody doing any actual work, and I found that discouraging. The way it was explained to me was that you find one big act and it kind of floats the whole infrastructure -- the rest was just this kind of big charade, just people goofing off. I'm one who sort of believes more in hard work and such, so I just felt a little alienated by that -- coupled with the fact that most of the music they were doing just didn't speak to me at all.

Barnes & Noble.com: So you took a job as an investment banker with Smith Barney?

AB: I actually could relate more to that corporate culture than to the mid-1980s' rock 'n' roll record company scene. I found I liked what I was doing as banker, but I didn't love it. But I didn't resign from Smith Barney and decide: I'm going to be a banjo player for a living! I left Smith Barney thinking I wanted to have six months off and work on writing music, see if I could make a record. And then Alison Krauss called.

Barnes & Noble.com: You've investigated a lot of different directions with your music...

AB: I was thinking the other day that if somebody got 1990's SIMPLE PLEASURES and didn't get another one until OUT OF THE BLUE, they might think that there are two people named Alison Brown who play banjo. They're really pretty different. But with FAIR WEATHER, I wanted to make a real bluegrass album, with only the instruments you find in traditional bluegrass. It did turn out that way. It was just great getting to record these tunes with such amazing players.

Barnes & Noble.com: How did you decide whom to ask to record with you on the album?

AB: I knew that I wanted to record with my favorite bluegrass musicians. The wonderful thing is that they were all available! I had had a chance to play with everyone before, but there were a couple folks I had never had the chance to record with: Vince Gill, Bela Fleck, Garth Fundis, and Matt Flinner.

Barnes & Noble.com: Some of the covers aren't exactly from the bluegrass repertoire...

AB: Garry West, who produced the album, and I came up with a list of pop tunes that we thought would make good bluegrass covers. Elvis Costello's original version of "Everyday I Write the Book" has an interesting riff that sounds just like a banjo lick, and we worked that into our version. "Everybody's Talking" has a great feel that we thought would flow nicely as a mid-tempo bluegrass tune and create lots of opportunity for some melodic banjo lines. Beyond that, Claire [Lynch], Tim [O'Brien], Sam [Bush], and Vince are among my favorite singers in any style of music, and I was thrilled that they were interested in being a part of this project and willing to take a stab at the vocals we picked out for them.

Barnes & Noble.com: How about the tunes you wrote?

AB: The challenge I put to myself was to write bluegrass banjo instrumentals -- which is a big departure from the kind of writing I've done for my other recent solo projects. I tried to represent what I see as the different styles of bluegrass banjo playing in the tunes. I took the inspiration for "Girl's Breakdown" from Earl Scruggs' tune "Earl's Breakdown," working the melody around the use of "Scruggs' pegs" that allow you to change the pitch of a string while you're playing. "Poe's Pickin' Party" is an example of melodic-style banjo playing, and it gave a great opportunity for some beautiful twin mandolin playing with Mike Marshall and Sam Bush. "The Devil Went Down to Berkeley" is a tune I wrote with the original David Grisman Quintet in mind, and I was delighted to record it with Mike Marshall, Darol Anger, Tony Rice and Todd Phillips -- all veterans of David Grisman's early Quintet.

Barnes & Noble.com: What jazz record do you like best?

AB: New jazz: BEYOND THE MISSOURI SKY by Pat Metheny and Charlie Hayden. Old jazz: KNOW WHAT I MEAN? by Cannonball Adderly and Bill Evans.

Kerry Dexter