Champaign, IL · bluegrass · americana

Alison Krauss & Union Station

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The most awarded voice in bluegrass — crystalline, patient, and backed by the tightest band the genre ever produced.

Alison Krauss signed to Rounder Records as a teenager, releasing her solo debut, Too Late to Cry, at sixteen in 1987. She soon assembled Union Station's original lineup, with guitarist Jeff White, bassist John Pennell and banjo player Mike Harman, and the band's 1989 debut, Two Highways, mixed original songs with traditional tunes and a cover of the Allman Brothers' "Midnight Rider".

By 1992 White, Pennell and Harman had all left, leaving Krauss the band's only founding member. That year's Every Time You Say Goodbye introduced guitarist Tim Stafford, banjoist Ron Block, mandolinist Adam Steffey and bassist Barry Bales, and won a Grammy for Best Bluegrass Album. Stafford departed soon after and was replaced by Dan Tyminski, previously of the Lonesome River Band.

The band's long-running lineup has included Jerry Douglas on dobro, who joined in 1998 after Steffey's departure, alongside Block and Bales, with Tyminski singing lead on the more traditional numbers. So Long So Wrong, released the year before Douglas joined, won a further Grammy, and its track "It Doesn't Matter" later turned up on the soundtrack to Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

Their sound is bluegrass played with unusual restraint, precise and quiet, with arrangements that leave space around Krauss's clear soprano. Alongside traditional material they have drawn heavily on contemporary songwriters, pushing the group toward country and folk.

New Favorite, from 2001, and its single "The Lucky One" both won Grammys, and Lonely Runs Both Ways followed in 2004. Krauss is among the most decorated artists in the genre, and the group's work on the O Brother, Where Art Thou? soundtrack brought them a much wider audience.

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