What did world-class banjo picker Alison Brown do today?
“Receivables and payables. The dry stuff. If you don’t have a handle on it, you can’t run a business.”
This year marks the 10th anniversary of Compass, the label Brown co-founded with her husband Garry West. Does she recall howling at the moon that night ten years ago when the first Compass release appeared?
“Not really. On an album’s street date you’re already a quarter ahead, mentally.”
A quarter ahead? Who am I talking to? Fox News business anchor Neil Cavuto? Only if a peculiarly efficacious dose of helium has turned his bark-and-whine into a dulcet telephone voice, the kind you imagine coming out of a spun-sugar Christmas tree angel—a miraculous dose of helium, lulling Cavuto’s choppy blowhard syntax into a fluid, witty, lyrical scroll. Brown speaks with self-possession devoid of easy sentimentality (one doubts that “spun-sugar” as an adjective would ever pass her lips.)
Anyone writing about Alison Brown gets caught up in the delusion that she’s a manticore or gryphon—only with the hands of a bluegrass genius and the head of an accountant. It’s because she has so many slashes (label owner/former banjo prodigy turned virtuoso/mom/music professor/producer/Grammy winner/ Harvard MBA) that it’s hard to get your mind around all of it at once, especially if you’re a creature as easily stunned and confused as a music writer.
No one knows what to call her music, either, not even Brown. It’s “blue-jazz pop-grass,” with a translucent overlying quality Brown identifies as distinctly feminine. She jokingly suggests “Pussy Music” (in homage to David Grisman’s “Dawg Music”) and takes it back at once.
Musical, business vision
The title of Brown’s new CD, Stolen Moments, refers to the challenge of being both a parent and a musician, but there’s something lurking in there about the tension-slash-fruitfulness of the music-slash-business … how the music steals into the business and the business steals into the music.
“It’s hard to take a bottom-line approach when you’re an artist,” says Brown. “It’s important to put out smaller records. We’re not just looking for a return on the investment.”
Compass’ business decision to sign more Celtic artists has had an effect on Brown’s musical thinking and playing, as Stolen Moments makes gracefully clear.
Clear. Maybe that’s the word for Alison Brown—her business vision, her chilled-out, clang-free banjo tone, her musical arrangements, her production style, even her telephone voice. When you brush away the supposed contradictions, paradoxes and impossibilities, it’s all just as clear as a bell.