Alison Brown
Alison Brown (born August 7, 1962) is a banjo player, guitarist, bandleader, producer, and record label owner. She was born in Hartford, Connecticut, and took up guitar at eight and banjo at ten. As a teenager she toured festivals and contests with fiddler Stuart Duncan, and she won the Canadian National Banjo Championship in 1978. She studied history and literature at Harvard University, where she helped re-form the band Northern Lights and played with it from 1982 to 1984. She later earned an MBA from UCLA and worked in finance. Alison Krauss invited her to join Union Station in 1987, and she spent three years with the band, playing on Krauss's Grammy-winning I've Got That Old Feeling. Her debut solo album, Simple Pleasures (1990), received a Grammy nomination. She became the first woman to win an IBMA instrumental award when she was named Banjo Player of the Year in 1991. She became Michelle Shocked's bandleader in 1992 and later formed the Alison Brown Quartet. She and her husband, Garry West, launched Compass Records in 1995. "Leaving Cottondale," her duet with Béla Fleck from her album Fair Weather, won the 2001 Grammy for Best Country Instrumental Performance. She gave the IBMA keynote address, "Embrace It All," in 2002, received the IBMA Distinguished Achievement Award in 2015, and co-hosted the 2025 IBMA Bluegrass Music Awards with Steve Martin.
In the newsletter
- No. 1 September 1994
- No. 2 January-March 1995
- No. 3 April-June 1995
- No. 4 July—Sept. 1995
- No. 8 Summer 1996
- No. 10 Winter 1997
- No. 17 Fall 1998
- No. 21 Fall 1999
- No. 23 Spring/Summer 2000
- No. 25 Winter 2001
- No. 26 Spring 2001
- No. 27 September 2001
- No. 29 May 2002
- No. 31 December 2002
- No. 32 April 2003
- No. 33 September 2003
Wrote
- ALISON BROWN - EMBRACE IT ALL: IBMA Keynote Address (No. 31)