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Alison Brown

Special Consensus – Long I Ride

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LongIRideSpecial Consensus has announced their new album celebrating 40 years.

Long I Ride celebrates Special Consensus’ 40th anniversary as a band with an engaging set of songs and guest collaborations that is certain to garner more acclaim. The title track, written by former band member Robbie Fulks, showcases each of the three vocalists in the group including newcomer/mandolinist Nick Dumas. Bluegrass favourites Della Mae join the band for a fresh take on the Larry Cordle classic “Highway 40 Blues” and label mates Rob Ickes and Trey Hensley, together with producer/banjoist Alison Brown, deliver a blistering version of the Josh Graves penned standard “Fireball.” Other stand outs include a bluegrass version of Stoney LaRue’s “First One to Know” featuring a guest vocal appearance from Mountain Faith’s Summer McMahan and a western swing tinged Joe Newberry original “Baby I’m Blue” featuring the twin fiddles of Buddy Spicher and Matt Combs. Long I Ride follows on the heels of Special Consensus’ guest laden, multi-award winning album Country Boy: A Bluegrass Tribute to John Denver.

The band was founded in 1975 by banjoist (and former IBMA President) Greg Cahill and has since then become the breeding ground for some of the best new talent in bluegrass. The current lineup features Rick Faris (guitar, vocals), Nick Dumas (mandolin, vocals), Dan Eubanks (bass, vocals) and banjoist/founder Greg Cahill.

Track Listing:

1. Long I Ride
2. Life Stories
3. Highway 40 Blues
4. New Shenandoah		 5. First One to Know
6. Fireball
7. Where the Wild River Rolls
8. Jesus is My Rock		 9. Baby I’m Blue
10. Time for Movin’ On

Tour Dates:

6/11 – Culver City, CA – Boulevard Music
6/12 – National City, CA – Sweetwater Union High
6/13 – Las Vegas, NV – Starbright Theater
6/26 – Mundelein, IL – Village of Mundelein
7/07 – Countryside, IL – Countryside Park
7/12 – Libertyville, IL – Independence Grove		 7/14 – Arlington Heights, IL – Harmony Park @ Harmony Park
7/31 – Elkins, WV – Davis & Elkins College
8/10 – Red Lodge, MT – Bull & Bear
8/11 – Cody, WY – City Park
8/12 – Carbondale, CO – Steve’s Guitars
8/19 – Three Lakes, WI – Three Lakes Cntr. for Arts		  8/21 – Long Grove, IL – Fountain Square
8/25 – Lakeside, OH – Hoover Auditorium
10/14 – Nashville, TN – The Station Inn
10/15 – Delphi, IN – Delphi Opera House
11/18 – Shepherdsville, KY – Friday Night Bluegrass

Alison Brown on Mountain Stage

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Alison Brown is a Harvard university graduate and a Grammy winner who moved her career focus from investment banking to music.

Alison came to our attention when she joined Alison Krauss’ Union Station and went of to become  bandleader for Michelle Shocked.  Alison Brown now heads her own acoustic-jazz band in her third appearance on Mountain Stage.  She is joined by John Burr on piano, Larry Atamanuik on drums and her husband Gary West on bass.

Visit Alison Brown on the Mountain Stage

Bluegrass Sisterhood – Wall St. Journal

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SisterhoodAlison Brown, Dale Ann Bradley, and Missy Raines were all recently featured in Barry Mazor’s The Sisterhood of Bluegrass article for The Wall Street Journal. The article focuses on the tradition of women in bluegrass and how each Alison, Dale Ann, and Missy came to playing their own version of bluegrass but by taking very different paths. Compass Records’ 15-year anniversary and the new albums from Alison, Dale Ann, and Missy are also highlighted.

  • The full article online by clicking here.
  • Click here to sample tracks from Alison Brown’s new album, The Company You Keep.
  • Click here to sample tracks from Dale Ann Bradley’s new album, Don’t Turn Your Back.
  • Click here to sample tracks from Missy Raines’ new album, Inside Out.

Alison Brown in Space

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alisonbrownAlison Brown’s new album, The Company You Keep, traveled into space this week with astronaut John Grunsfeld aboard space shuttle Atlantis.

Grammy-award winning banjoist Alison Brown is a big hit with astronauts. Mission Specialist John Grunsfeld chose to take a physical copy (an interesting fun fact as most astronauts carry only iPods during missions) of her new album on today’s final Hubble repair visit after fellow astronaut Marsha Ivins hipped him to Brown’s signature hybrid banjo sound a few space missions back.

Grunsfeld couldn’t get Brown’s tunes out of his head, so he saved up his first listen of The Company You Keep for orbit. This is the fourth time Brown’s music has journeyed into space as Mission Control has chosen 3 of her tunes as wake-up calls for the astronauts on past shuttle missions.

Click here to listen to samples from The Company You Keep.

Alison Brown CD – Number 10 on Billboard

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Compass Records released Alison Brown’s new CD, The Company You Keep, on 7th April 7th and it debuted at #8 on the Billboard Bluegrass Chart this week.

Brown is a GRAMMY award winning banjo player and co-founder of Compass Records. The Company You Keep is her tenth album and was released in tandem with Compass Records’ 15-year anniversary.

The Company You Keep – Alison Brown

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alisonbrownCompass Records announces Alison Brown CD will be released on April 7, 2009 and will ship that week or before.

The title of Alison Brown’s new studio release The Company You Keep was originally inspired by the words of Spanish novelist Miguel de Cervantes (Don Quixote): Tell me the company you keep and I’ll tell you what you are. But it wasn’t until the project began to develop that she realized the title actually held two separate, but equally important, meanings for her and for her music.

I’ve been writing, recording and performing my own tunes for nearly 20 years now, and as I thought about the progression of my sound – our band sound – I began to think about what a collaborative effort this musical journey has been. After 15 years of recording, performing and philosophizing about music with (pianist) John R Burr and (bassist) Garry West, I really wanted to draw that collaborative spirit to the forefront on this album. Alison Brown

The Company You Keep features the musicians she has spent most of the past 15 years performing with: John R. Burr (piano), Garry West (bass), David Grisman Quintet alum Joe Craven (fiddle/mandolin/percussion) and Larry Atamanuik (drums) alongside guests John Doyle (guitar), Stuart Duncan (fiddle) and Kenny Malone (drums) on a set of engaging, upbeat and melodic tunes, many of which were co-written by Brown and Burr.

Alison Brown Quartet – ‘Evergreen’ CD Release

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Alison and the band went into the Compass studio to record some of their favorite tunes from their Winter’s Eve holiday program and the result is Evergreen. This 10-track collection (expanded and repackaged from the 2007 EP version) includes fun and imaginative re-workings of holiday classics with that distinctive Alison Brown Quartet sound. Fiddler/mandolinist Joe Craven is the special guest throughout and singers from the University School of Nashville joins the band on 2 tracks.

You can hear samples of the new CD at Compass Records
Submitted from Compass Records