Allison de Groot: Clawing Her Way to the Steve Martin Prize

It should come as no surprise that one of the 2024 Steve Martin Banjo Prize winners comes from that hotbed of roots music...Winnipeg, Manitoba.

Wait. What? You mean Canada?

Allison de Groot, the accomplished and acclaimed clawhammer banjoist who won her instrument’s highest recognition last year, has taken her own unique path to a life in acoustic music.

“There's a really good music scene there,” she explains. “I got into it because I heard a recording of a band from Winnipeg called The Duhks. And my oldest brother went to high school with the guitar player, so when I was

about 16, he came home with the CD, and I heard Leonard Podolak playing the banjo on that recording. And it's definitely one of those moments that I’ll never forget. I thought, Oh my God, what is that? I have to learn how to do that!”

De Groot’s first attempts to learn the three-finger bluegrass banjo weren’t very successful, but with the help of a local teacher, she figured out how to play clawhammer style.

“I basically was just playing banjo all the time in Winnipeg, and I did a degree in visual art at the University of Manitoba,” says de Groot. She worked in her field and soon joined a band. “We did pretty well, and we toured a ton in Europe and all the major Canadian folk festivals. And then I started getting more into music and realized that I really wanted to be surrounded by people who were also into American roots music.”

That quest led her to Berklee College of Music in Boston, where she found like-minded classmates and an atmosphere that satisfied her urge to go deeper into music. Bruce Molsky, a renowned old-time musician on the faculty, became a major influence and a musical collaborator.

“I did go to music school, but I also feel like I sort of found all these

ways to make it not feel like music school,” de Groot recalls. “Like in the lessons with Bruce, we would just sit and play banjo and fiddle. I hadn't played with a lot of really strong old-time players, and his drive and his groove are just so powerful. We were friends pretty quickly and just played a lot of music. He pushed me to step up my banjo playing. That was definitely a formative time for me.”

After completing her studies at Berklee, de Groot toured before the pandemic with Molskly’s Mountain Drifters, the ensemble created by her former teacher. Now de Groot performs extensively with fiddler Tatiana Hargreaves. Their recording of Alice Gerrard’s song “Beaufort County Jail” made Rolling Stone’s list of “10 Best Country and Americana Songs to Hear.”

“We play a lot of just straight-ahead tunes,” de Groot says of her shows with Hargreaves. “We're so used to playing with each other at this point that it just kind of feels very natural to go between traditional and original music and then have moments of improvisation. It all just kind of flows together.”

While some clawhammer banjo players are faithful to a particular style, de Groot says she does not identify with any single school of banjo playing.

“I've been influenced by so many different styles that I'm not really anything in particular,” de Groot explains. “When I was first learning, I learned a lot of tunes from Manitoba that aren't fiddle tunes adapted to clawhammer. Clawhammer is not normally part of that tradition. My style is definitely influenced by adapting fiddle tunes to clawhammer in a way that makes sense to me.”

De Groot also pays attention to the banjo’s history of facilitating dance and movement. That led to a unique performing partnership with Nic Gareiss, a rhythmic dancer who accompanies her clawhammer playing with percussive dancing. The performance is reminiscent of John Hartford’s dancing during his performances, right down to the sheet of plywood placed on the stage to get the right sound.

“Playing with Nic Gareiss is so fun,” says de Groot. “Just to hear the rhythms of the banjo against the rhythms that he's making. It feels very spontaneous. It’s all about the rhythm and connection. You just kind of never know where it's going to end up, which is really fun.”

In addition to performing, de Groot has begun teaching online lessons for ArtistWorks. Last August, she spent a week recording materials for a course that she designed. Students can also submit videos so de Groot can comment on their progress.

“The thing I'm most excited about is that there's a ton of backing tracks,” says de Groot. “So that’s a way for people who don't have access to jams to play along to backing tracks and learn the tunes.”

De Groot now lives in Nashville (though she still spends a lot of time in Canada), where the vibrant music scene energizes her, and she is an in-demand clawhammer player. She’s done session work for Tim O’Brien, Lindsay Lou, Sierra Hull, and Brittany Haas. After years of touring, de Groot says it’s wonderful to make music with such accomplished musicians and then sleep in her bed at night. She’s grateful for the old friends she’s made through her years on the road and the community of artists she discovers in her adopted hometown.

“I feel really good about my balance that I have right now. My hope is just

that I can keep being fulfilled in that way and having strong friendships and a community that are based around music.”