Biography

On August 9th, Compass Records Group will reissue trailblazing banjo player Alison Brown’s GRAMMY-nominated debut album SIMPLE PLEASURES. The album was produced by acoustic music icon and frequent Jerry Garcia collaborator, David Grisman (architect of “Dawg Music,” the jazz-influenced breakout fringe of the bluegrass genre,) and recorded at Dawg Studio in Marin, CA with an all-star cast of musicians, including Alison Krauss (fiddle), David Grisman (mandolin), Mike Marshall (guitar, fiddle, mandolin), Matt Eakle (flute), Joe Craven (percussion) and Jim Kerwin (bass).

Alison wrote all the music on the album, which includes the first recorded versions of some of her most well-known compositions: “Mambo Banjo,” “Leaving Cottondale,” “Wolf Moon,” and “Weetabix.” The reissue is available on limited-edition black and white swirl Vinyl, CD and all digital download platforms, and includes liner notes from Mike Marshall, recording engineer Dave Dennison, and Alison. The CD and vinyl download code versions also include 3 bonus tracks of never-before-released demos, recorded at Fantasy Studios in Berkeley, CA in 1988. The demos were produced by Richard Greene, who also played fiddle on the sessions, and feature David Grisman (mandolin), Mike Marshall (guitar), and Todd Phillips (bass).

SIMPLE PLEASURES was first released on Vanguard Records in 1990 but has been unavailable on all formats since the early 2000s. For the 2024 reissue, the original 8-track, 1” multitrack tapes were transferred at a resolution of 192kHz/36-bit, and remixed by Matt Coles at Compass Sound Studio in Nashville, the former Glaser Brothers Studio (aka “Hillbilly Central”), where Outlaw country originated. The remixed album was mastered by Randy LeRoy at Tonal Park.

SIMPLE PLEASURES was a leap forward for Scruggs-rooted 5 string banjo playing when it was first released and led to Alison’s immediate recognition as a banjo pioneer. It also set up her 1991 win for Banjo Player of the Year from the International Bluegrass Music Association (the first female to win an Instrumentalist of the Year award), and garnered Alison her first GRAMMY nomination. Out of the box critical praise included The Wall Street Journal and USA Today:

“One of the brightest new banjo players in bluegrass.” —The Wall Street Journal

“Her variations and forays into contemporary musical forms, along with high-speed “breakdown” picking, would make anyone sit up and take notice.” —USA Today

In his liner notes for the reissue, Mike Marshall wrote: “It is SO fun to revisit this first album of Alison’s and to remember how she put her own stamp on the acoustic music scene back in the early 90s both as a composer and monster instrumentalist. It was refreshing and very much needed to have a woman showing us guys what was what and, in the process, paving the way for the next generation of virtuoso female bluegrass pickers.”

One of the most multi-faceted minds in roots music, Alison Brown is a GRAMMY-winning musician, GRAMMY-nominated producer, and co-founder of Compass Records Group. She has released 12 critically-acclaimed solo albums including the GRAMMY-winning Fair Weather and 2023’s On Banjo. She is also a frequent collaborator with Steve Martin with whom she has released 2 bluegrass chart-topping singles: “Foggy Morning Breaking” (2023) and “Bluegrass Radio” (2024). Alison is a mainstay at tastemaker roots festivals and listening rooms with her genre-bending group, The Alison Brown Quintet.