Alison Brown was born in Hartford, Connecticut in August 1962, took up guitar at eight and banjo at ten, met fiddler Stuart Duncan at 12, and in the summer of 1978 toured festival contests with Duncan and his father, winning the Canadian National Banjo Championship and earning a night on the Grand Ole Opry at 16. Then she detoured: history and literature at Harvard, an MBA from UCLA, and two years in corporate finance at Smith Barney in San Francisco.

This episode argues that the corporate years were strategic armor rather than retreat. The hosts follow her 1987 return via Alison Krauss and Union Station, the Grammy-winning album I've Got That Old Feeling, her solo debut Simple Pleasures, and the 1991 IBMA Banjo Player of the Year award that made her the first woman to win an IBMA instrumental honor. They then explore how she forced a five- ...