Brown's "Simple Pleasures" debut sees light of day again

The album was produced by acoustic music icon and frequent Jerry Garcia collaborator David Grisman and recorded at Dawg Studio in Marin, Cal. with an all-star cast of musicians, including Alison Krauss (fiddle), Grisman (mandolin), Mike Marshall (guitar, fiddle, mandolin), Matt Eakle (flute), Joe Craven (percussion) and Jim Kerwin (bass).

Brown wrote all the music on the album, which includes the first recorded versions of some of her most well-known compositions: "Mambo Banjo," "Leaving Cottondale," "Wolf Moon" and "Weetabix." The reissue includes liner notes from Marshall, recording engineer Dave Dennison and Brown. The CD and vinyl download code versions also include three bonus tracks of never-before-released demos, recorded at Fantasy Studios in Berkeley, Cal. in 1988. The demos were produced by Richard Greene, who also played fiddle on the sessions, and feature Grisman (mandolin), Marshall (guitar) and Todd Phillips (bass).

"Simple Pleasures" as first released on Vanguard Records in 1990, but has been unavailable on all formats since the early 2000s. For the 2024 reissue, the original tapes were remixed by Matt Coles at Compass Sound Studio in Nashville.

In his liner notes for the reissue, Marshall wrote: "It is SO fun to revisit this first album of Alison's and to remember how she put her own stamp on the acoustic music scene back in the early 90s both as a composer and monster instrumentalist. It was refreshing and very much needed to have a woman showing us guys what was what and, in the process, paving the way for the next generation of virtuoso female bluegrass pickers."

Brown is a GRAMMY-winning musician, GRAMMY-nominated producer, and co-founder of Compass Records Group. She has released 12 solo albums including the GRAMMY-winning "Fair Weather" and 2023's "On Banjo." She is also a frequent collaborator with Steve Martin with whom she has released two bluegrass chart-topping singles: "Foggy Morning Breaking" (2023) and "Bluegrass Radio" (2024). Brown also fronts The Alison Brown Quintet.