Quit Your Day Job

In her senior year of high school, Alison H. Brown ’84 faced a decision of ivy proportions: Harvard or Yale. She didn’t compare professors, student politics or dorms. She didn’t scan course catalogs. Instead, she pored over the club listings in Bluegrass Unlimited magazine. Unimpressed by New Haven’s sparse offerings, Brown packed her bags and her Mayfair banjo for Cambridge’s thriving bluegrass scene.

Brown, now a Grammy award-winning artist and CEO of her own label, took a roundabout path to banjo stardom. After pre-med flirtation at Harvard, there was an MBA and a stint as an investment banker at Smith Barney. Ultimately, she traded in stocks and bonds for three-finger picking and shows at the Grand Ole Opry.

Brown was eight years old when her parents, both lawyers, took up six-string guitar. She begged for lessons of her own, but fell in love with the plucky sounding banjo two years later, after their teacher introduced her to banjo great Earl Scruggs.

The real learning started after the family’s move to San Diego, Calif., the next year. “Banjo is really an oral tradition; you learn by jamming, not by formal lessons,” she says.

As a teenager, Brown hung out at the local Shakey’s pizza, where the San Diego Bluegrass Club held its monthly meetings. Inspired by her fellow banjo fanatics, Brown began to play more and more often, jamming in parking lots. She even mastered the difficult three-finger style of her first inspiration, Earl Scruggs, using metal picks on the index and middle fingers and a plastic thumb pick for a unique sound.

It was at Shakey’s that she met teenage friend Stuart Duncan, now a member of the famous Nashville Bluegrass Band. Barely 15 years old, the two hit the regional competition circuit during summer vacations and recorded an album, Pre-Sequel. In 1978, with Duncan’s father acting as escort and transport, the two teens criss-crossed the continent. Brown won the Canadian National Banjo Championship and played at Nashville’s Grand Ole Opry.

Her busy tour schedule apparently didn’t hurt her grades. She got in to Harvard.

Brown quickly learned the move to Cambridge didn’t have to mean abandoning her first love. She spent her first night at Paine Hall watching the Boston Bluegrass festival. And across the hall from her room in Hurlbut, she found West Virginian bluegrass aficionado William W. Carter ’84. The two would soon spend every Saturday morning spinning folk records on their WHRB show, “Living Traditions in Bluegrass.” Brown still visits the station when she comes to Cambridge and has been interviewed on the “Hillbilly at Harvard” show.

Initially pre-med, Brown dropped her plans to be a doctor along with her organic chemistry class. “I guess I knew all along that it wasn’t the right thing for me, but at the time I thought medical school was my logical path,” she says. The Lowell House resident eventually graduated with a degree in History and Literature, only to face the question with which so many humanities majors grapple: business school or law school?

She chose the UCLA business program, and at 24 headed to San Francisco to work for Smith Barney as an investment banker. Long days crunching numbers couldn’t keep Brown away from bluegrass, though—she snuck copies of Bluegrass Unlimited behind The Bond Trader magazine. Friends remember her driving straight from the office to bluegrass clubs, business suit and all.

After two years, Brown realized stocks just weren’t her thing. “I didn’t love taxes and bonds,” she says. “You make money, but you sell your soul.” She allowed herself six months off work to compose and play music.

Needless to say, her parents weren’t pleased. Brown jokes that they once told her that she could be a successful lawyer or doctor and talk about the banjo at dinner parties. Despite any reservations they had, though, their daughter had the musician’s bug.

Brown admits that she was a little scared. “I had no idea how I was going to get from where I was to playing nationally,” she says. But she knew she had to try. Frustrated by six fruitless months, Brown began readying her resumé for the business world. “But things kept conspiring to keep me away from ‘real’ jobs,” she laughs—namely, rising bluegrass star Alison Krauss asking Brown to join her band, Union Station.

That was only the beginning. In 1990, two years after she quit Smith Barney, Brown landed a record contract with Vanguard. A year later, soon after the release of her first solo album, Brown became the first and only woman ever named the International Bluegrass Music Association Instrumentalist of the Year.

After three years plucking the banjo with Krauss, Brown joined Michelle Shocked on tour. There she met bassist Garry West, who was impressed by more than her banjo skills. The two clicked instantly, and have been inseparable since. In 1995, the couple decided that Brown’s background in business and West’s in record management, combined with their shared love of music, would converge quite nicely into their own record label. Compass Records was born, and in 1998, the two cemented their partnership in marriage. Their daughter Hannah is now eight months old. West says that the name of their record company is inspired by the idea of music pointing in many different directions. Compass Records’ artists are a motley mix, with styles ranging from that of jazz bassist Victor Wooten to Celtic phenomenon Kate Rusby to British pop artist Bill Jones. West and Brown have even released an album of music played on the North Australian didgeridoo.

“We’re almost the opposite of a major label,” Brown says. “Big corporations are focused on what youths want and finding an artist that fits. We’re artistically driven and geared mainly to the adult audience, 25-75. We’re a little upside down.”

While other labels flounder in today’s dismal economy,  Compass’ ship sails away with profit on 95 percent of its releases. Brown emphasizes that though her band records through Compass, it’s not a vanity label. Indeed, the Compass website doesn’t even advertise Brown’s records on its homepage.

Though she’s released seven solo albums, Brown mainly records and plays with her band. The Alison Brown Quartet consists of keyboardist John R. Burr, West on bass and drummer Kendrick Freeman. Critics praise the group’s interesting twist on bluegrass music, bringing in jazz, world rhythms, folk and classical. “In Brown’s hands, the banjo is capable of fluid musical phrases of boundless beauty,” Billboard Magazine writes.

Brown’s talents have brought her all over the place, with appearances on TNN’s “Prime Time Country” and “CBS Sunday morning” and at Carnegie Hall. The Quartet has toured Europe, Japan and even the Middle East.

Though they were skeptical of their daughter’s music career at first, Brown says her parents have definitely accepted it. Perhaps it was the two trips to Radio City Music Hall to see their daughter on the Grammy acceptance podium. Brown took home the 2001 “Best Country Instrumental” award for her song “Leaving Cottondale.” Brown’s mom even chose her daughter’s dress, a strapless number she found on the clearance rack at Sak’s.

With over a hundred albums under their belt, Compass is setting the standard for grassroots labels worldwide. By all accounts an efficient, well-run business, the only thing cluttering Compass’ offices are Hannah’s Teletubbies. At Smith Barney, Brown worked in a 20th-story office overlooking San Francisco’s East Bay. Compass operates out of a pink cottage with a wraparound porch in Nashville, slightly off Music Row. Compass employee Brad Martin calls the office a “casual atmosphere,” full of coaches, TV sets and Hannah’s diapers.

“People tend to be really interested that I’m an over-educated banjo player,” Brown admits. Especially nine-to-fivers who secretly harbor artistic ambitions? She shrugs. “Everyone has something in their fantasies that they’d like to be doing.”