Alison Brown Simple Pleasures (CD)

(Compass) 15 tracks, digisleeve

Compass Records is reissuing Alison Brown's debut album, which has been out of print in all formats since the early 2000s, in a newly mixed and remastered version with three bonus tracks: A welcome and long-awaited step, because in 1990 “Simple Pleasures”, released by Vanguard, was nominated for a Grammy and made the musician from Hartford, Connecticut, one of the new pioneers of banjo and bluegrass (in 1991 she was the first woman to win the Bluegrass Music Association's “Banjo Player of the Year” award). The album was produced by the luminary David Grisman in 1989, who recorded it at his Dawg Studio in Marin, California, with a top-class line-up that included Grisman himself (mandolin), Alison Krauss on fiddle, Mike Marshall (guitar, fiddle and mandolin), Matt Eakle (flute), Joe Craven (drums) and Jim Kerwin (double bass). The songs composed by Brown include some of his best-known compositions, such as “Mambo Banjo”, “Leaving Cottondale” and “Weetabix”. For this reissue, which also includes notes from the musician himself, Marshall and sound engineer Dave Dennison, the original 1-inch multitrack tapes were transferred to a high resolution of 192 kHz/36 bits and then remixed and remastered by Matt Coles at Compass Sound Studio in Nashville. The three demos added as bonus material were recorded at Fantasy Studios in Berkeley in 1988 and performed by Alison Brown with Grisman on mandolin, Marshall on guitar, Todd Phillips on upright bass and Richard Greene (also a producer) on violin.