CT-born bluegrass star has hit album with Steve Martin, gig at Kate

Bluegrass has always been a music by and for the masses. One of the pioneers of the feel-good fast-pickin’ genre in the 1940s, Bill Monroe, is credited with saying “Bluegrass has brought more people together and made more friends than any music in the world.” Alison Brown is one of the players who is keeping bluegrass alive, accessible and friendly despite a lot of competition from other down-home popular music genres.

Brown, a Hartford native who now lives in Nashville, has been at the forefront of contemporary bluegrass. She records prolifically, tours often, runs a successful music label and works closely with other bluegrass stars. She returns to the Katharine Hepburn Cultural Arts Center in Old Saybrook with her touring band on Jan. 10.

Brown’s most recent album “Safe, Sensible and Sane” is a collaboration with actor/comedian/playwright Steve Martin. Martin is well known for his banjo playing, which he has often incorporated into his live comedy performances but also has demonstrated in straightforward music concerts and in the Broadway bluegrass musical he wrote, “Bright Star.” “Safe, Sensible and Sane” was released in October and instantly hit the top of the Billboard bluegrass charts.

Besides Martin, “Safe, Sensible and Sane” features Tim O’Brien, Sam Bush, Stuart Duncan, Molly Tuttle and Sierra Hull and and the Boston bluegrass band Della Mae, as well as artists not usually thought of in terms of bluegrass such as Jackson Browne, Jeff Hanna of Nitty Gritty Dirt Band, singer/songwriters Sarah Jarosz, Aoife O’Donovan, Jason Mraz and country star Vince Gill. In all of her projects, Brown is committed to exploring the sheer variety of what can be done in the bluegrass realm and that openness is apparent in the eclectic lineup of the album.

Brown said she has “always been drawn to the more progressive side of bluegrass,” citing such innovators as Tony Trishka (who played The Kate just last month), Dave Grusin, Bill Keith, Béla Fleck and YouTube sensation Liesl Francisco. She wants to challenge the “hayseed connotations” that have dogged the bluegrass style. One way is with ingenious cover versions of pop songs like Cyndi Lauper’s “Time After Time,” which Brown performs in the style of Earl Scruggs. “I love to take songs and find ways to hear them differently. I think it’s really cool.” She mentions her mashup of George Harrison’s “Here Comes the Sun” and Antônio Carlos Jobim’s “Waters of March,” renamed “Sun and Water” and found on her 2023 album “On Banjo.” “For someone who doesn’t know the instrument, you’re showing them the potential and for those who do know it you’re bringing it forward.”

“Our band is not unwilling to push the envelope,” Brown said. She finds that “our music tends to straddle the fence between bluegrass lovers and other audiences.”

She feels that she is continually educating listeners about this freeing and frolicsome, yet precise, musical form. “I’ve played for so long that it’s clear to me what the melody is but for a lot of people, they just hear a lot of notes. When I play, I am trying to find a strong melody that will stay with people. Steve Martin feels the same way.”

Brown said she will be playing songs from the album she did with Martin when she plays The Kate.

“It’s amazing the reach bluegrass music has,” Brown said. She can get very specific about that observation. “It seems to attract authors and aircraft pilots. It’s amazing how times I’ve been on a plane and the pilot sees my banjo, since I always carry it on board with me, and tells me they play banjo, too.”

Brown was born at Saint Francis Hospital in Hartford, though her family moved to La Jolla, California when she was 12 years old. Shortly after, she became enamored with bluegrass. She said when she was a child, her parents succumbed to what is amusingly known as “The Great Folk Scare,” the era when folk acts like Pete Seeger, Peter Paul & Mary and the young Bob Dylan ruled the radio and the coffeehouses. “My parents got into the guitar. The instructor brought over some records by Earl Scruggs to play for them.” Brown was smitten by the exhilarating upbeat sound of Scruggs’ signature three-fingered banjo picking style.

Brown got involved with the thriving bluegrass scene in Southern California, the same scene that Martin had been part of when he was in high school a couple of decades earlier. “Some people grew up with the traditions and others were drawn to it without knowing anything about bluegrass before.”

Now based in Nashville, Brown runs the Compass Records label with her husband Garry West, who also plays bass in her band. Compass has released around a thousand albums in its 30-year existence, not just bluegrass but jazz, folk, Irish, Cajun, pop and other sounds. The label also recently reissued Brown’s debut album “Simple Pleasures” from 1990, which has her playing with Alison Krauss (whose band Brown had been a member of since 1987) and Dave Grusin.

Now in her 60s, Brown has lived in the southern U.S. longer than she’s lived anywhere else, but Connecticut visits are particularly special and not just because she still has relatives living in the state. Connecticut is where she first experienced the music that changed her life.

“The first bluegrass player I ever saw was at the Boothe Museum in Stratford,” she said. “It was Louisa Branscomb, one of the few female banjo players at the time. It was inspiring.”

Alison Brown performs on Jan. 10 at 8 p.m. at The Katharine Hepburn Cultural Arts Center, 300 Main St., Old Saybrook. $42. thekate.org.