Alison Brown grew up in a family of lawyers, and had she not been influenced by music at an early age, she might have ended up becoming a lawyer, too. After moving with her family to La Jolla, California, when she was 11, she immersed herself in banjo playing and developed a burgeoning talent. By the time she was 14, Brown was playing publicly, and by 15, she had won the Canadian National Five-String Banjo Championship. In 1980, Brown carried her passion for playing the banjo with her to Cambridge, Massachusetts, where she earned degrees in history and literature from Harvard University. She spent her extracurricular time traveling the bluegrass circuit in New England, and continued to develop herself as an artist