Alison Krauss makes her mark

How can you spot an Alison Krauss fan? Not very easily. There are a whole lot of them — enough to have kept the 24-year-old bluegrass diva’s platinum album, Now That I’ve Found You: A Collection, in the top 10 of the country charts for 31 weeks (it’s the only bluegrass album to crack the Pop chart’s top 15). But numbers alone don’t reflect the scope of Krauss’ popularity. Take, for example, the crowd at her outdoor concert at New York City’s Lincoln Center one steamy night this past August. The predominantly young, elegant, Banana Republic-clad crowd sits quietly as Krauss and her band play on. They sip Chablis. They applaud vigorously, yet respectfully. One month later, at a bluegrass festival on the New Jersey-Delaware border, the ambiance is a bit…looser. A nearly toothless woman, spilling out of a ”Gone Pickin”’ tank top, dances at the lip of the stage while the crowd cheers raucously. One 60ish man in a T-shirt and shorts, sprawled on a lawn chair, opens the cooler at his side, tosses a beer to a friend two rows back, then bellows, ”Let’s hear more blues!”

Thanks to Krauss, the world is hearing more blues — bluegrass, that is — and the music has never been hotter. The lead singer and fiddler for Union Station doesn’t produce the classic high-lonesome sound of veteran fiddler Bill Monroe, who has dominated the genre since its birth in the Kentucky hills in the late ’30s. But Krauss’ pop-rock-influenced style — some call it newgrass — is authentic enough to win over hardcore bluegrass fans, accessible enough for the urban Tower Records set, and strong enough to have earned her three Grammys and four Country Music Association Awards nominations, including best female vocalist.

Krauss’ prowess as a fiddler is as impressive as her pure, piercing voice, which has been compared to Dolly Parton’s. ”Bluegrass is pretty simple,” says Bill Monroe, 84. ”You just got to hit the high notes and put some blues in it and you got bluegrass. But not everyone can do it. Alison can do it.” Adds a beaming Roy Cox, 72, who attended the New Jersey festival and has followed her career for 10 years: ”She plays so aggressive, and she’s a girl! Before her, this kind of music was dying. She really brought bluegrass out of the barnyard.”

Sitting in her tour bus after the New Jersey show, eating her favorite foods — candy corn and Tijuana Mama spicy pickled sausages washed down with chocolate milk — Krauss roundly dismisses the compliment when it is repeated. ”I don’t want to take bluegrass out of the barnyard, I want it to stay there,” cracks the plain-spoken Krauss, who may sing like an angel but who is as wry and down-to-earth off stage as the hardscrabble circuit she has traveled with Union Station for the past decade.

Krauss is less certain about, and occasionally stressed out by, her sudden mainstream fame. She recently spent a week in a Chicago headache clinic, hoping that doctors could determine the cause of the recurring migraines that have plagued her for the past few months. ”I never thought this would be my career,” she says. ”I’ve always loved to play bluegrass and festivals. But I didn’t figure this would be my job. Now all I do is work. I barely have time to water the flowers in my yard.”

Which can be found in the back of her newly restored home in Franklin, Tenn., just outside Nashville — and just two blocks from the source of Krauss’ greatest comfort, her only sibling, Viktor, 25, a bass player with Lyle Lovett’s Large Band. With Viktor, she can be herself. ”We have a ball together,” says Krauss, employing her highest compliment. The two Rollerblade Franklin’s deserted streets as late as 2 a.m. or indulge in their shared passion for ’70s groups such as Foreigner and Bad Company. When she spotted Foreigner’s Lou Gramm at an airport recently, she ran to a phone to call Viktor. ”I said, ‘Who’s the coolest person I could have run into?’ He goes, ‘Lou Gramm!”’ Normally, however, Krauss takes show business in stride. ”Alison’s never been after the success story,” says Viktor. ”She doesn’t give in to the latest trend. That’s why I think she’ll be around a lot longer than others.”

Krauss credits her level head to parents Fred, 53, a real estate agent, and Louise, 50, a freelance illustrator, who continue to live in Krauss’ hometown of Champaign, Ill. They ”took raising kids very seriously,” says the singer, ”but we were never stuffy. We were pig kids — rolling around getting dirty. We had a ball.” They were also encouraged, at their mother’s insistence, to learn something new every day. ”We’d go to a Sunbeam bread factory to see how bread was made,” recalls Louise Krauss. ”We went to a Coca-Cola bottling plant. We went to a doctor to see how a stethoscope worked. Another day we would get on a bus and just ride it the whole route.”

When she was 5, Krauss started taking violin lessons. By the time she was 8, her mother had entered young Alison in an adult fiddling contest; she came in fourth. When she was 12, a bluegrass outfit, Silver Rail, allowed the prodigy to audition for the band; she was accepted, and later Rail became Union Station. The small Massachusetts-based label Rounder Records signed Krauss at 14, releasing her album Too Late to Cry in 1987. The next year, she fronted Union Station’s first album, Two Highways. At only 16 — before she even left high school — she was on the road, her parents serving as chaperons. It was strictly low budget, with everyone sharing one hotel room (Krauss got the cot; the four guys in the band doubled up in the two beds), but typically, Krauss remembers those days with enthusiasm. ”It was the best time,” she says. ”Especially in the motel rooms — people would be farting and stuff. We had a ball.”

Clearly, Krauss prefers being one of the guys, which is a good thing, since she spends much of her time with seven of them: She and the four current members of Union Station (mandolin player Adam Steffey, 29; bass player Barry Bales, 26; guitarist Dan Tyminski, 27; and banjo and guitar player Ron Block, 31) travel to 125 gigs a year in a leased bus with their manager, soundman, and driver. ”They make fun of my voice and the stuff I eat,” she says. And they tease her by calling her Flower, after an ardent fan pronounced Krauss ”the Flower of Bluegrass.” But ”they don’t treat me differently just because I don’t have chest hair,” she insists.

As a result of the band’s mainstream success (punctuated by appearances on The Tonight Show and Late Show With David Letterman this summer), Krauss has received offers from nearly every major label. She fully intends to remain faithful to the indie that discovered her. ”If I were to leave [Rounder] it would mean something was wrong, or someone’s not doing a good job, or not believing in you,” she says. ”And nothing’s wrong, you know?”

Nothing is wrong — except, perhaps, her losing battle to remain anonymous. Krauss gobbles the last of her candy corn and guiltily considers the fans lined up for autographs outside the bus. ”I need a little time after the show,” Krauss says softly. ”But I feel bad about making them wait.” A few minutes later, she climbs out of the bus. Before long she’s joking with her fans and posing for pictures. Despite her reservations, she seems to be having a ball.