NASHVILLE
-- With her new album, "The Song of the Banjo" (officially out Oct. 9 on
Compass Records), GRAMMY Award-winning musician-composer-producer-entrepreneur
Alison Brown plants another flag in her
ongoing journey of sonic exploration.
Alison
Brown will perform at the City Winery on Oct. 7. Tickets, which range from $15 and
$25, are available by calling (615) 324-1010. Along with her Compass Records
co-founder, husband, bassist and co-producer Garry West, Brown has assembled an
all-star cast for the album including Indigo Girls, Keb’ Mo’, Colin Hay, ukulele virtuoso Jake Shimabukuro, as well as some of
acoustic music’s most adventurous session players, including legendary drummer
Steve Gadd, fiddler Stuart Duncan, Dobro player 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,
including the melodic, pop-flavored title piece that opens the set, as well the
gravity-defying piano/banjo duet, “Musette for the Last Fret.” Then there are
her trademark compositions written in Cinemascope - grandly sweeping melodies
like “Long Time Gone” and the Celtic-tinged "Airish." "The Moon
in Molly’s Eyes" brings in bossa nova, with lush strings by Andrea Zonn.
“Stuff Happens,” written by Brown and West, turned into an accidental tribute to Gadd’s old
band of studio aces, Stuff, which set the bar for ‘70s pop-funk-jazz fusion.
Brown’s
choices for cover songs are even more surprising, from her bouncy take on
Orleans’ soft-rocker “Dance With Me” to Cyndi Lauper’s hauntingly beautiful
“Time After Time” to 1980’s instrumental chart-topper Chuck Mangione’s “Feel So
Good,” featuring Shimabukuro’s tenor uke and the drumming of Gadd, a boyhood friend
of Mangione. In Brown’s masterful hands, all three sound as if they were
written for the banjo. “Time After Time” is particularly stunning. “It just
lays out so beautifully on the banjo,” she says, “and I figure if it was good
enough for Miles Davis, it’s good enough for me.” Brown’s unique cover versions
work two very different kinds of magic, revitalizing these 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. The banjo is complex, 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.”
Brown and West keep those surprises coming, as Colin Hay
wryly sings Dionne Warwick’s 1970 Bacharach/David hit, “I’ll Never Fall in Love
Again” accompanied by Brown on her custom-built wooden banjola. Keb’ Mo’s
Americana-soul version of Marvin Gaye’s seminal “What’s Going On” is another
unexpected pleasure. The bonus track, recorded after the album was finished and
rush-released as a free-standing single, will be available on the CD’s Deluxe
Edition. Along with Keb’s warm vocals, the song features instrumental sparks
between Duncan and Brown, as well as an explosive piano solo by Joe Davidian.
But it’s Brown’s understated backup and exploratory solo on low banjo that
quietly steals the show.
For those
who came of age in the ‘70s and ‘80s, Brown’s re-invention of these familiar
songs makes them sound brand new. For younger listeners hearing them for the
first time, her versions may well set the new standard. That’s all part of the
alternative banjo universe that Alison Brown occupies so beautifully on "The
Song of the Banjo:, reaching into the past as she looks to the future, creating
an album for people who didn’t know how much they liked the banjo, while giving
banjo fans new reasons to love the instrument.
“It’s amazing
to me how much the banjo changed in the 20th Century,” Brown says. “And here we
are in the dawn of the 21st; who knows where it may go?”
For one answer to that question, look no further than The
Song of the Banjo.
