ShareThisBy WAYNE BLEDSOE
Scripps Howard News Service
Tuesday, June 12, 2007
It's been a long time since Alison Krauss hopped the fence from prodigy to adult star, but the emotional connection she has to the music she fell in love with as a child has never been stronger.
"I feel like when I get out the records that I listened to as a younger person I go, 'Oh my gosh!' Before, you just like it and you don't know why. Now I just can't even deal with it," says Krauss.
Krauss says that's why she's having a tough time coming to terms with going on tour with acoustic music star Tony Rice, and performing with him.
She first heard Rice when she was 12 years old. She remembers the moment clearly: She and bassist/songwriter John Pennell were on the way to play music, and Pennell put a tape of Rice's music on.
"We stopped at Burger King, getting bacon double cheeseburgers, and he played me 'John Hardy.' And I never even knew there were words to that song at that point. I'd only heard it as a banjo tune."
Krauss fell in love with Rice's music.
Rice was already a legend in the flat-pick-guitar world when Krauss heard him in 1982 or '83. He and Ricky Skaggs had performed with J.D. Crowe and the New South, and Rice had become a star of both hard-core bluegrass music and progressive acoustic music.
A few years later, Krauss was herself becoming legendary as both a fiddler and a vocalist. She released her first album, "Too Late to Cry," at the age of 16. Eight years later, "Now That I've Found You: A Collection," a sort of combination of retrospective, rare tracks and new songs, turned Krauss into an international star.
"It's so funny; we put that together and I thought, 'Nobody will want this,' " says Krauss.
Spurred on by the country hit "When You Say Nothing at All," and with adult contemporary radio embracing the title cut, the disc sold more than 2 million copies.
Krauss also took her share of jabs from bluegrass purists during the time. Many were none too happy to see their new queen explore other styles of music. However, she and her band Union Station have paid little attention to musical barriers.
"Really, my duty is to follow what grabs me," she says. "Music is an emotional experience, and if we don't follow what moves us, the music will not have the integrity that it's supposed to have."
Krauss' latest disc, "A Hundred Miles or More: A Collection," is a similar project to "Now That I've Found You," but Krauss thinks, overall, a better one. It includes duets with John Waite (a Krauss favorite from the 1980s).
That follows her producing the album "Like Red on a Rose" for Alan Jackson.
She says being able to work with artists whom she admired as a child has been "unbelievable."
"This thing with Tony, if I even talked about it or thought about it for very long, I was just a mess. And his records and who I have imagined him to be through what he chooses to sing for so many years -- it's so much who I am as a person, besides musically. It's so connected to who I was as a young girl and who I am now; it's so much a part of my existence that I cannot believe that we get to spend this time together."
