TO Alison Krauss, her latest project is “like stepping into an old pair of shoes”.
The singer blessed with a sweet soprano has returned to the music that first got her noticed as a teenager — bluegrass.
She describes it as her “calling”.
With fiddle in hand and THAT voice, she’s releasing her first album with virtuoso band Union Station since 2011’s Paper Airplane.
Called Arcadia, it evokes the simpler times of a bygone, pre-digital America while, on an emotional level, still managing to connect with us 21st-Century listeners.
You may know Krauss for her high-profile collaborations with Led Zeppelin’s Robert Plant but, as she proudly admits, bluegrass runs deepest in her veins.
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That said, working with Plant, a freewheeling spirit if ever there was one, has had a profound effect on her latest endeavours.
“You can’t help but bring it with you,” she says. “Robert is a very inspiring person to be around. There’s only one of him.
“He never stops hearing and sharing music. He’s very much a collaborator.
“[In the studio], Robert likes to capture the moment and that hasn’t been the way I’ve recorded through the years. A lot of bluegrass people are sticklers for this and that!”
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During the 14-year gap between Union Station albums, Krauss also released her solo album Windy City, a collection of classic songs by the likes of Brenda Lee and Willie Nelson.
But she has never lost touch with her roots — even if working with Union Station, the band she first recorded with aged 16, “feels like a wonderful homecoming”.
Speaking to me via video call from her home in Nashville, aka Music City, Krauss, 53, says: “I have a number of boxes behind my desk filled with cassettes and CDs — tunes I’ve collected over the last 40 years for when the time is right.”
Some, she reports, have ended up on Arcadia, a labour of love for her and the current incarnation of Union Station.
Back are long-time members Jerry Douglas (dobro, lap steel), Ron Block (banjo, guitar) and Barry Bales (bass), all considered best in class in the roots music world.
“With them, you know it will be great but it is always a surprise,” she says. “Jerry plays some melody and it is like he is standing on the edge of a cliff. You don’t know where he’ll go.” In a major development, however, Krauss has a new co-lead vocalist, Russell Moore, who has replaced Dan Tyminski.
Moore is the frontman of bluegrass outfit IIIrd Tyme Out and comes with a remarkable pedigree as the most awarded male singer in the history of the International Bluegrass Music Association.
Krauss is thrilled with the new arrival and says: “When Dan left to concentrate on his own group, I thought, ‘Well, there’s one guy’.”
She first saw Moore perform BEFORE she “knew any of the other guys”, when she was still in her teens and just beginning her own music journey.
Tragic tales
“I think it was ’85,” she says. “We were at the Kentucky Fried Chicken Bluegrass Festival and everybody was going crazy about Russell.
“He was 21, and I didn’t know who he was, but when he got up and sang, it was unbelievable.”
Such is her abiding admiration for Moore that Krauss has developed a new obsession.
She laughs before admitting: “Lately, just about every day, I’ve been going on YouTube and finding old clips of Russell. I’m watching him, thinking, ‘This is insane!’.”
When it came to suggesting Moore as Union Station’s latest recruit, Krauss was greeted with a resounding “Yes!” from the rest of the band, but she still wasn’t sure he’d accept the invitation.
She says: “Russell has his own thing going. When we tour, it’s six months away, but thankfully he agreed and everybody was so pleased. I remember Ron [Block] giggling like a little girl when he first saw Russell in the studio.
“He just stands there and sings with his hands in his pockets, and he kills it.”
Moore began by tackling Granite Mills, a traditional song which recounts a devastating 1874 fire in Fall River, Massachusetts, which killed 23 mill workers, many of them children.
“It was amazing to hear his voice on a tune like that,” says Krauss. “He’s from a different part of the country [Georgia] and you can hear those different pronunciations. When we’re on stage, I think people will be excited to hear his take on songs we’ve recorded through the years.”
With Krauss joining in on rousing fiddle, Granite Mills is just one example of how this group of like-minds is keeping the bluegrass flame burning.
For Krauss, it’s an important mission — with authenticity a top priority. If many of the songs on Arcadia are the work of contemporary songwriters, the arrangements are in keeping with tradition.
“My favourite thing is to find the songs,” she says. “It’s incredible to discover things you connect with.
“I don’t like to do anything that isn’t a truthful reflection of myself. You can tell someone else’s story but if it starts to feel fake, I don’t want to do it.”
During a tough time in history, he painted such idyllic lives to encourage people. Who wouldn’t want to live in those stories?
Alison Krauss
If keeping it real is the key, it also has to be said that many of the tracks on Arcadia are tragic tales.
“I’ve always been drawn to sad songs,” confesses Krauss, before drawing my attention to a particularly dark number called The Hangman, another featuring stirring lead vocals from Moore.
It is based on a poem written in 1951 by Maurice Ogden and tells the macabre story of a hangman who executes every citizen of a town, one by one.
Krauss was inspired by Renegade, the Seventies hit for hard rockers Styx, which has lyrics about an outlaw about to be hanged.
She says: “I’d always wished there was a bluegrass song with that theme so I typed ‘hangman’ into Google and this poem popped up. It was a magical moment for me.”
So what of the songs on which Krauss takes lead with a voice that has rarely sounded better?
One is traditional Civil War ballad Richmond On The James, the sad tale of a dying “soldier boy” who “lay gasping on the field”.
It reminds Krauss of how young the combatants were. “They were just innocent kids,” she says, “They had such passion, and they were excited to be of service and to be heroes.”
She well remembers what it was like recording the song: “That one was hard to get through — you get choked up and then you’re wasted for the day.
“You can’t even go back in and sing because your throat has clenched up from getting sad.”
Arcadia is bookended by songs written by Mississippi-raised, Nashville-based Jeremy Lister and sung by Krauss.
The opening track Looks Like The End Of The Road is, she says, “very much a beginning” while the closing There’s A Light Up Ahead “offers hope”.
Krauss explains: “Jeremy works for a publishing company here in Nashville and puts out music on a semi-regular basis.
“During Covid, I heard Looks Like The End Of The Road. Within the first half of the first verse, I thought, ‘Oh my God! That sounds like the start of our album’.
‘Out of my mind’
“Within days, I wrote to the guys and said, ‘Hey, I think we’re ready to roll’.”
Another captivating effort is The Wrong Way, one of two (with Forever) written by RL Castleman.
Krauss says: “RL doesn’t write with many people but he came over and played that to me. I was like, ‘Holy moly! RL is really going deep! He’s contemplating the meaning of life’.
“RL’s an incredible poet. He’s written so much of the stuff we’ve done.” Another key influence on Krauss were the paintings of Norman Rockwell, best known for his sentimental images of American life.
Though completed during World War Two, one of his best-known works is Freedom From Want, which depicts a clean-cut family enjoying their Thanksgiving dinner.
Krauss says: “He created a fantasy. During a tough time in history, he painted such idyllic lives to encourage people. Who wouldn’t want to live in those stories?
“Bluegrass songs are like that so I wanted to imitate that whole look,” she adds in reference to the cheery, retro-styled Arcadia cover photo of her and the band.
The mention of Rockwell takes Krauss back to her childhood. “My mom is a painter,” she says. “She would paint at night because it was quiet and she wouldn’t be interrupted.
“I remember the smell of turpentine.
“The things she painted were full of wonder but were quite intimidating to my brother and myself, just because they were so amazing.
“She had a Norman Rockwell book that we, as kids, looked through. I couldn’t believe they were paintings and she explained to me that he was just that great.”
Growing up in Champaign, Illinois, Krauss also became steeped in bluegrass history — its Appalachian roots and its trailblazers such as Bill Monroe and Ralph Stanley.
It’s about recording American history, and where would we be without it?
Alison Krauss
“You had the coalminers and the farmers going out singing,” she says. “Early on, I got to have conversations with big names of this genre. It was so moving.”
Krauss recalls talking to Charlie Louvin, who with his brother Ira came to fame in the Fifties as The Louvin Brothers, singing country, bluegrass and gospel.
“Charlie told me the true stories behind some of his songs and I was just out of my mind.
“It was amazing to hear about his life. He’s gone now but the story of his mother will live with me for ever.
“He told me about a song called Mama’s Angels. As a child, he really did hear her in the living room praying when he was trying to go to sleep.”
Before we go our separate ways, I ask Krauss about her reunion with the founders of Rounder Records who first signed her when she was 14.
They’ve started a new label called Down The Road Records and it seemed like “the perfect fit” for Arcadia.
“I was thrilled,” says Krauss. “They’re real evangelists of folk and bluegrass and I love being where that is.
“We have similar feelings about this kind of music, what it means to remember America in a certain period of time.
“Ken Irwin was here. He was the one that I got to know as a kid and he was talking about all this stuff they did — like hitchhiking across the country and sleeping in cardboard boxes so he could go to the Grand Ole Opry.
“When I started out, Tony Rice, Boone Creek, Ralph Stanley, Larry Sparks and Rhonda Vincent were big influences on me. Most of them were on Rounder!
“Where would this music be now without Rounder Records being animals and getting it out to people?
“Years and years ago, they played me this hog-calling record. It was the sound of farmers calling their pigs back!
“It’s about recording American history, and where would we be without it?
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ARCADIA
ALISON KRAUSS & UNION STATION
★★★★★
