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Alison Krauss: “I’m no poet”
Alison Krauss has more Grammys than any other woman in history. Twenty-seven from 42 nominations, to be precise.
They recognise the bluegrass singer for her work with Union Station, as a solo artist, as a contributor to O Brother, Where Art Thou? and as Robert Plant’s foil on Raising Sand.
Earlier this year, it looked like she would be overtaken by Beyonce – who went into the Grammys with nine nominations on top of her 22 previous wins.
As you might have heard, though, Adele denied her the title, beating Beyonce in multiple categories.
You might expect Krauss to be relieved – but she says she’d have been honoured to hand over the crown.
“All I know is Beyonce is one of the most beautiful, talented, amazing people I’ve ever seen in my life,” says the star.
“If she gets my title, it is well-deserved. She’s much more deserving than I could ever be! She’s amazing.”
Despite that, Krauss looks set to extend her lead over Beyonce, given the rapturous response to Windy City, her first solo album in 18 years.
Recorded with Nashville stalwart Buddy “Ears” Cannon, it delves into the roots of bluegrass, resurrecting and reinterpreting songs that (largely) predate Krauss’s birthdate in 1971.
“I wanted to record songs that were older than me,” she says. “There’s something about being a generation separated from the song you’re singing. It’s an extra step of romance.”
A list of candidates was quickly drawn up, rarities and standards alike – from Glen Campell’s Gentle On My Mind, to Willie Nelson’s I Never Cared For You.
“We didn’t go in with any rules,” says Krauss. “It was really whatever we liked and once we got everything together, we stopped. We didn’t keep looking.”
Not that the finalised tracklisting was without its issues. At least one person warned her off covering Brenda Lee’s Losing You.
“My son was saying, ‘Mom, you oughta leave these Brenda Lee songs alone!'” she laughs.
“Even I remember driving around going, ‘Man, how am I going to do this?’
“But I felt like my emotions were tied to [Losing You]. I’m certainly not going to try to compare myself to the one and only. That would be crazy. You don’t get any better than that. Nobody has and nobody will.”
Her fans would beg to differ. In a world of hyperbole, Alison Krauss’s voice is truly exceptional: An exquisite, ethereal sound that improves any music it alights upon.
Vocal problems
But in the middle of the sessions for Windy City, it suddenly abandoned her.
“I had something called dysphonia – which is just a fancy word for hoarse,” she explains.
“What would happen is the muscles around my voice box would tighten up, and it was like singing through a little straw. It sounded terrible.”
Often, Krauss would arrive at the studio ready for a day’s work, only to send the musicians home before the first coffee break.
“I’ve never worked less on something for so long,” she jokes – but for someone whose voice is their career, the situation was infuriating.
“I didn’t feel like it was permanent because my musical hero growing up, Tony Rice, had the same issue – but it was incredibly annoying.”
She eventually turned things around after seeking out vocal coach Ron Browning, whose lessons were “like getting a shot in the arm”. After that, the album flowed relatively quickly.
BBC