**1/2 Allison Brown

FAIR WEATHER

(Compass)

There's no way banjo player Allison Brown could have gone too far wrong on Fair Weather. She's got the cream of the newgrass crop delivering impeccably picked goods, including mandolin players Sam Bush and Mike Marshall, fiddle player Darol Anger, guitarist Tony Rice, dobro player Jerry Douglas, and fellow banjo master Béla Fleck, as well as Vince Gill, who contributes vocals on the title track. Most of those folks have defined and refined bluegrass sounds for decades now, and Brown uses them to revisit the old ways and explore the new. "Late on Arrival" is what jazz players would call a cutting session, an up-tempo instrumental featuring Brown's excellent playing alongside Bush. And several other cuts have a traditional feel.

But Brown, whose varied résumé includes a stint playing with Allison Krauss's Union Station and another working at Smith Barney, also veers into a sunny, forgettable sort of popgrass on a handful of tunes. Bush sings a grassified version of Elvis Costello's "Every Day I Write the Book." The other cover, sung by mandolinist Tim O-Brien, is Fred Neil's folk evergreen "Everybody's Talkin'." The result feels about as hillbilly as the melon plate at a country B&B.

-- Bill Kisliuk