Season 9 Episode 2 - Alison Brown

Founded in 1994 alongside her husband and producer Garry West, Brown’s Compass Records has been hailed by Billboard as “one of the greatest independent labels of the last decade,” and the idea all started out on a napkin that Brown sketched her plans on while on tour with 2x GRAMMY nominee Michelle Shocked after she quit her career in investment banking to pursue music.

Compass Records celebrates its 30-year anniversary this year.

At the time, there weren’t many female leaders in the music industry, but Brown was used to defying the odds. As her ultra-feminist mother taught her, she had to be so good she couldn’t be denied, and before launching the label, she had already become the first woman to win an IBMA in an instrumental category and the first female 5-string banjoist to be inducted into the American Banjo Hall of Fame.