Stereo Embers: The Podcast

“On Banjo” In sunny a San Diego high school somewhere in the 70s, while kids were listening to Aerosmith and Van Halen and Boston, Alison Brown was listening to bluegrass. She had started on guitar but gravitated to the banjo and by her teens, she was already pretty proficient on the instrument. She won first place at the Canadian National Banjo Championship, played a gig at the Grand Ole Opry and toured one summer with fiddler Stuart Duncan. After high school She headed to Harvard, knocked out an MBA at UCLA and then went to work as an Investment Banker. You know—the typical bluegrass story you hear all the time. Thinking music was a weekend thing, Brown had a nice balance going but then music decided to tip the scales. Alison Krauss flashed the bat signal for a banjo player and Brown answered the call, and gave up her Wall Street environs for a life in music. And what a life it has been. An internationally recognized virtuoso on banjo, Brown has played with Alison Krauss, Michelle Shocked, fronted her own