The Cutting Edge

were encouraged by supportive parents in their childhood musical
pursuits. First taking up violin, Alison gravitated to fiddle after
discovering bluegrass, and it was her prowess as a player that
spurred Rounder to sign her at age 14. What might not have been
so evident when Krauss was that age certainly was by the time her
solo debut was released: She had a magnificent, crystalline voice
and an advanced sense of a song’s narrative and emotional arc. Hers
was neither a high lonesome bluegrass voice nor a rural, country
voice nor a wispy pop voice, but something almost beyond categorizing—ethereal,
airy, fragile, but sturdy, it could put the hurt in
a heartbreaker like no one else’s.
Her 1989 album, Two Highways, introduced her band,
Union Station. Its current longstanding members include guitarist
Dan Tyminski (who gained considerable attention for his
role as George Clooney’s singing voice in O Brother, Where Are
Thou, notably for his keening version of “I Am a Man of
Constant Sorrow” on the soundtrack), bassist Barry Bales, Ron
Block on banjo and guitar (his 2001 solo debut, Faraway Land,
is an overlooked gem), and progressive dobro master Jerry
Douglas, the only musician who remains from the original
Union Station lineup. No matter who’s backing her, though,
Krauss sticks to her expansive definition not merely of bluegrass
but of all music (maybe too expansive when it includes covering
Todd Rundgren, but if you buy the premise you buy the bit, as
Johnny Carson once noted). In addition to traditional tunes and
originals, Krauss draws material from contemporaries such as
Shawn Colvin and Karla Bonoff, and has championed promising
new songwriters such as Robert Lee Castleman, now a regular
contributor to the Krauss songbook, with two of his most penetrating
numbers, “Let Me Touch You For Awhile” and “The
Lucky One,” featured on New Favorite—the most essential of
several potent Krauss long-players. A single-disc retrospective
of the first five albums, 1995’s Now That I’ve Found You: A
Collection, sold five million copies—an unprecedented number
in bluegrass history—and is a must-own retrospective of the
artist’s formative work, populated as it is with a lovely cover of
Lennon-McCartney’s “I Will,” a lilting treatment of the
Foundations’ 1968 pop hit “Baby, Now That I’ve Found You,”
and a funky, bluesy take on Little Feat’s “Oh Atlanta.”
Krauss was at the forefront of another unparalleled development
in bluegrass history. On her third album, she began producing
herself and in doing so opened the door for other female
artists-as-producers in country and bluegrass. She works at highend
Nashville studios (Seventeen Grand is a long-time favorite)
50 THE ABSOLUTE SOUND ■ SEPTEMBER 2006