Alison Brown likes to tell people she “doesn’t play the banjo, but rather plays music on the banjo.”
It’s a subtle distinction but one that marks a different approach between Brown and others: While her mastery of the instrument is unchallenged she understands that unless the playing is in servience to the song it’s all for naught. On the instrumental food chain the five string banjo is a wild beast: defiant, impetuous, and damn near impossible to tame but it’s an instrument that in the hands of the right owner-and Earl Scruggs long ago set the standard-can do wondrous things.
Since the days of Flatt And Scruggs thousands of three-finger style banjo players have made their marks, but none has cut such a path or moved so far along it as has Alison Brown. She’s acclaimed as one of today’s finest progressive banjo players, but you’ll rarely find her in a conventional bluegrass setting. Rather she’s known for challenging such conventions, leading an ensemble that successfully blends: folk, jazz, Celtic and Latin into something uniquely hers.
With her latest project, The Song of the Banjo (Compass Records) the Grammy Award-winning musician/composer/producer/entrepreneur moves further along her restless journey of sonic exploration. As one might expect from a Harvard-educated MBA and co-founder of the now 20 year old label for which she records, little of what Alison Brown does is randomly designed. The title of her first album since 2009 was carefully considered, emanating from a poem by Rudyard Kipling. Brown chose it for more aesthetic reasons; “It points to the lyrical side of the banjo, which is the side I’m drawn to and one that is often ignored.”
Wanting something singular for her first project in six years Brown and her bassist/husband Garry West (who co-founded Compass) assembled an all-star cast, including some of Nashville’s most adventurous session players, as well as special guests Indigo Girls, Keb’ Mo’, label mate Colin Hay, ukulele virtuoso Jake Shimabukuro, legendary drummer Steve Gadd, fiddler Stuart Duncan, resophonic guitarist Rob Ickes, upright bassist Todd Phillips and, on guitar and bouzouki, Irish phenom John Doyle.
Of the 12 tracks on The Song of the Banjo seven are Brown originals, ranging from the melodic, pop-flavored title track to the piano/banjo duet, “Musette for the Last Fret.” “Stuff Happens,” written by Brown and West, plays wry tribute to Gadd’s old band of studio aces, Stuff, which helped set the bar for ‘70s pop-funk-jazz fusion. There’s that sense of genre hopping and Brown is brashly unapologetic. Her choices for cover songs are equally coy, including Orleans’ soft-rock 1978 hit “Dance With Me” and Cyndi Lauper’s hauntingly beautiful “Time After Time”. There’s even a duet with former Men At Work leader Colin Hay, as the two reinterpret-to great success-the Burt Bacharach penned Dionne Warwick classic “I’ll Never Fall In Love Again”.
Brown’s unique cover versions work two very different kinds of magic, revitalizing rock and pop classics while stripping away stereotypes of what a banjo can or can’t do. “Familiar music allows folks to understand an instrument that they may not be overly familiar with” she says. “The banjo is a complex and oft misunderstood instrument, with melodic ideas normally surrounded by rapid fire arpeggiated chords, but when you play a familiar tune it allows the audience to more clearly hear the voice of the instrument, and to understand how the playing style is integrated into, and around, the melody.”
That’s the sort of attitude that might distance Bluegrass purists but Alison Brown has never been one to worry about such things. She’s made a career out of challenging the status quo-both artistically and commercially-and so far it’s worked out pretty darn well. When she and her fabled quartet visit the Diana Wortham Theatre for an October 6th show you can bet she’ll bring along that same commitment to excellence and adventurous spirit that has sustained her for a quarter century of professional musicianship.
If You Go: The Alison Brown Quartet at the Diana Wortham Theatre on Friday, November 6, 2015 at 8 p.m. Tickets: Regular $32; Student $27; Child $20. For more information, call (828) 257-4530 or visit www.dwtheatre.com.