Alison Brown

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Alison Brown is an American banjo player.

Brown learned to play guitar at eight and banjo at ten. When she was twelve, she met fiddler Stuart Duncan.

In the summer of 1978, Brown traveled across the country with Duncan and his father, playing festivals and contests. She won first place at the Canadian National Banjo Championship, which helped her land a one-night gig at the Grand Ole Opry.

In 1980, Brown went to Harvard, where she studied history and literature. After graduating from Harvard, she earned an MBA from UCLA. Brown worked for two years with Smith Barney in San Francisco, and then took a break to pursue her music interests.

In 1989, Alison Krauss asked her to join her band, Union Station. Brown spent three years with Krauss, and was named International Bluegrass Music Association Banjo Player of the Year in 1991. In 1990, she moved to Tennessee, and in 1992 became the band leader for Michelle Shocked. This experience led Brown to merge bluegrass with jazz and folk idioms, like Béla Fleck and David Grisman.

In the early 1990s, Brown and her husband, bass player Garry West, started their own record label, Small World Music. This company eventually led to the launch of Compass Records in 1995.

Brown is often confused with a woman of the same name in the United Kingdom, who sometimes sang in various naturist videos.