Alison Brown says she's hoping for May flowers when she plays in Bentonville on Saturday.
"It was a bit of a mud fest last year," she says of the FreshGrass Festival in Bentonville. Brown has been a regular performer at the progressive roots and Americana festival back at the Momentary for its third year.
"The last two festivals I think have been weather-challenged. So I've got my fingers crossed," she adds sweetly.
Chatting with her is like talking to an aunt you haven't seen in years or a polite stranger who's full of wisdom and who also happens to be one of the greatest banjo players in the world. It was a self-guided quest that began before Brown was a teenager.
She says that she was already taking guitar lessons "to sing Peter Paul and Mary songs" like so many others in the '70s.
"I heard Earl Scruggs' 'Foggy Mountain' banjo record when I was about 10 years old. And I just fell in love with the sound of the banjo, and that was really my door into the journey that I've been on since then," she says of the last 50 years.
When Brown was 12 years old she began touring bluegrass festivals in California with fiddle player Stuart Duncan and his dad.
"I didn't think that there would be anybody playing banjo, and I couldn't have been more wrong," she laughs. "There were a lot of banjo and fiddle contests. So I started entering those, and then winning those contests, and then getting a chance to play at the local festivals," which granted the duo access not only to bluegrass music but many of the folk clubs in California.
"There was a lot of cross-pollination between roots music, folk music, bluegrass and pop music at the time," she says. "I can't believe in retrospect that we got to be kind of tangentially a part of that scene."
After her childhood playing bluegrass, Brown attended Harvard and briefly worked in finance. She joined Alison Krauss and Union Station in the mid-1980s, earning her first Grammy nod. By 1991, she was the first woman to win the International Bluegrass Music Award for Banjo Player of the Year.
She's since plucked more Grammy wins while making her own albums on Compass Records Group with producer/bassist/husband Garry West. She's helmed projects by Dale Ann Bradley, Peter Rowan, Quiles & Cloud and Claire Lynch.
For her latest album, titled "On Banjo," she's reflected on banjo's long journey in music through 10 instrumental tracks featuring bluegrass, Brazillian grooves, a playful mixup of The Beatles' "Here Comes The Sun" and Brazilian composer Antônio Carlos Jobim's "Águas de Março," plus a cinematic-tinged swing-jazz closer with string chamber group Kronos Quartet -- among others.
Talking to her about making this album that connects so many genres is a history lesson.
"The banjo was there at the birth of jazz, which is pretty interesting to think about. That's 50 years before Earl Scruggs was even on the radar," she says. "There's definitely a musical kinship between bluegrass music and jazz, especially in the spirit of instrumental virtuosity and improvisation. And I think that's one of the reasons why bluegrass musicians often will look to jazz musicians for inspiration and kind of also as kindred musical spirits."
Brown called in a dream team of kindred spirits for "On Banjo."
"I really wanted to write a record of new material, and I find that the hardest thing for me to do is write a straight-ahead, bluegrass tune. For some reason, it's much easier to kind of look in other directions for inspiration -- incorporating some elements of swing-era jazz sound comes very naturally for the banjo, I think because of its roots, really, in jazz," she says.
Israeli jazz clarinetist Anat Cohen, who will perform at Jazz in Bloom next month in Fayetteville, joins Brown for a Brazilian choro called "Brazil and Beyond." Other special guests on the album include Duncan, with whom she still often plays. Brown plays duets with mandolinist Sierra Hull and classical guitarist Sharon Isbin. Then she texted her "wild and crazy" banjoist buddy, Steve Martin, for their song, "Foggy Morning Breaking," before getting together to play it on the album.
"One of the things that I've found living in Nashville all these years and being a part of this community is that people are so incredibly generous with their time," she says. "Usually, you just need to ask somebody and they say, 'Sure, I would love to do that.' And it's still kind of surprising, but that's really how people roll here in Nashville. People will leave their ego at the door and come in and try to do the best that they can for you."
Alison Brown says shes hoping for May flowers at this years FreshGrass Festival at the Momentary in Bentonville. Shes set to perform at 3:45 p.m. Saturday, May 20 in the Tulip Barn. She just released "On Banjo" on May 5 featuring special guests Steve Martin, Anat Cohen, Sierra Hull, Sharon Isbin and her life-long collaborator, Stuart Duncan. (Courtesy Photo/Russ Harrington)
Alison Browns "On Banjo," released May 5 on her Compass Records label, explores banjos early foothold in jazz and its foundation in bluegrass over the course of 10 intricately composed songs featuring a slew of special guests including Sharon Isbin, Anat Cohen, and Sierra Hull, as well as banjo player/comedian/actor Steve Martin, multi- cultural chamber group Kronos Quartet, childhood pal and fiddle stalwart Stuart Duncan, and the supremely talented members of her touring quintet. (Courtesy Image)