Post by fogcitygal on Mar 9, 2006 0:54:07 GMT -5
Here's a really good interview wiith Jerry Douglas talking about Alison and the band:
Voice like an angel
By Cathalena E. Burch
Arizona Daily Star
Tucson, Arizona - Published: 03.09.2006
Jerry Douglas wished he had had a camera on Grammy night last month. The celebrated dobro player would love to have captured for posterity the look on Alison Krauss's face when she won the Best Country Album Grammy.
"I've never seen her make that face before. She was really in shock," Douglas, a member of Krauss' band, Union Station, recalled last week from a concert stop in Missouri. The nod was the band's third of the evening; it also collected Best Country Performance by a Duo or Group With Vocal and Best Country Instrumental Performance for Douglas' self-penned "Unionhouse Branch."
That brought to 20 the number of Grammys Krauss has won since she started her professional career 20 years ago.
Douglas admits they weren't expecting the windfall, especially in the coveted Best Album category. They were up against powerful players in the genre, including the redhot Gretchen "Redneck Woman" Wilson, Brad Paisley and Faith Hill.
"Boy, did that make some waves," the 50-year-old veteran musician said with a laugh.
Douglas, a winner himself of the 2005 Academy of Country Music's Musician of the Year award, has a dozen Grammys, most of them acknowledgements of his expertise on the dobro — an acoustic guitar fitted with a metal resonator to create a loud, yet acoustic-rich sound. Some would even credit Douglas for the instrument's growing popularity, but he wouldn't go that far.
"I'm an ambassador for an instrument. I feel like when I don't have to explain what it is, then I'll feel like I'm successful," he said, admitting that he's made strides in that direction by contributing to more than 1,000 records by artists as diverse as Garth Brooks, Dolly Parton, Paul Simon and James Taylor.
"The cumulative effect of playing on all these records and getting out with Alison and the band, a lot of people know what it is. It's almost a household name," he said, half-kidding.
Krauss and her crew are on the road through this month, wrapping up the final leg of a tour they started back in November 2004. That was the month they released their heralded, now multi-Grammy-winning Rounder Records album "Lonely Runs Both Ways."
The album has sold platinum (1 million copies) and likely got a boost from Krauss' duet with country up-and-comer Paisley on the heart-wrenching, award-winning ballad "Whiskey Lullaby."
Paisley has always fancied Krauss' soft, yet husky voice, and he once wished aloud to a Tennessee newspaper reporter that he hoped "that's what the angels sound like."
It's a voice that Douglas first heard back when Krauss, a virtuoso fiddler who began playing when she was 5, signed her Rounder Records deal. Douglas was a member of the band brought in to back Krauss, and he remembers being struck by the fragile yet fearless sound coming from such a young girl.
"I knew definitely that she was really something, and she was going to leave a mark," he recalled.
Douglas played on Krauss' first record, 1987's "Too Late to Cry," and produced another of her records after that.
"She made a big splash and it's just been growing ever since," he said from a hotel room in Missouri last Thursday.
Douglas, a noted and in-demand studio musician, didn't join Union Station officially until 1998, when he signed on as a featured player. In some senses, he and his dobro, with its slightly sinewy, seductive and graceful sound, act as second lead vocal to Krauss. It's heard so clearly on songs such as the tender ballad "If I Didn't Know Any Better" and the midtempo "Restless" off "Lonely Runs Both Ways."
Douglas said he decided to join the group because he was tired of experiencing music mainly in the vacuum of a studio. He longed to hear the notes he played fuse with those from other musicians to create a blanket of sound.
"The chemistry of the band is one sound instead of five different people out there playing. There's a sound that only happens if everybody's playing at the same time," he said. "It's just a meeting in the air of the notes and the harmonics . . . that you can't get if you put it together one piece at a time. . . . All of the instruments ringing off of each other, bleeding into each other on the different microphones. It all comes out as one big sound instead of just pieces."
In their live shows, those sounds are in perfect harmony, perfect timing and perfect tone. Krauss wouldn't have it any other way.
"She's got great ears, and she hears things that no one else hears. And she's got a great mind for arranging," Douglas said, calling Krauss a perfectionist in the best kind of way.
"Her huge talent is not only in her unique voice and singing, but it's finding songs that fit her and that she can really get behind," he added. "She's not going to sing something if she's not sure about it. She won't commit to something unless she can go at it 150 percent. That's why it's successful."
When the band wraps up this month's dates, Douglas plans to go out on the road with his own band and play some of his original works, which crisscross genres from bluegrass to rock and pop. He expects a couple of the band members will work on side projects, and he suspects Krauss will slip in a Cox Family project during the hiatus. She's been producing the gospel group for the past several years.
But don't be surprised if before the year is out, Alison Krauss and Union Station — AKUS to their fans — are holding hands on another album.
"We'll probably do another AKUS record before the end of the year, or at least start one before the end of the year," Douglas said.
Alison Krauss and Union Station had another year to remember
Voice like an angel
By Cathalena E. Burch
Arizona Daily Star
Tucson, Arizona - Published: 03.09.2006
Jerry Douglas wished he had had a camera on Grammy night last month. The celebrated dobro player would love to have captured for posterity the look on Alison Krauss's face when she won the Best Country Album Grammy.
"I've never seen her make that face before. She was really in shock," Douglas, a member of Krauss' band, Union Station, recalled last week from a concert stop in Missouri. The nod was the band's third of the evening; it also collected Best Country Performance by a Duo or Group With Vocal and Best Country Instrumental Performance for Douglas' self-penned "Unionhouse Branch."
That brought to 20 the number of Grammys Krauss has won since she started her professional career 20 years ago.
Douglas admits they weren't expecting the windfall, especially in the coveted Best Album category. They were up against powerful players in the genre, including the redhot Gretchen "Redneck Woman" Wilson, Brad Paisley and Faith Hill.
"Boy, did that make some waves," the 50-year-old veteran musician said with a laugh.
Douglas, a winner himself of the 2005 Academy of Country Music's Musician of the Year award, has a dozen Grammys, most of them acknowledgements of his expertise on the dobro — an acoustic guitar fitted with a metal resonator to create a loud, yet acoustic-rich sound. Some would even credit Douglas for the instrument's growing popularity, but he wouldn't go that far.
"I'm an ambassador for an instrument. I feel like when I don't have to explain what it is, then I'll feel like I'm successful," he said, admitting that he's made strides in that direction by contributing to more than 1,000 records by artists as diverse as Garth Brooks, Dolly Parton, Paul Simon and James Taylor.
"The cumulative effect of playing on all these records and getting out with Alison and the band, a lot of people know what it is. It's almost a household name," he said, half-kidding.
Krauss and her crew are on the road through this month, wrapping up the final leg of a tour they started back in November 2004. That was the month they released their heralded, now multi-Grammy-winning Rounder Records album "Lonely Runs Both Ways."
The album has sold platinum (1 million copies) and likely got a boost from Krauss' duet with country up-and-comer Paisley on the heart-wrenching, award-winning ballad "Whiskey Lullaby."
Paisley has always fancied Krauss' soft, yet husky voice, and he once wished aloud to a Tennessee newspaper reporter that he hoped "that's what the angels sound like."
It's a voice that Douglas first heard back when Krauss, a virtuoso fiddler who began playing when she was 5, signed her Rounder Records deal. Douglas was a member of the band brought in to back Krauss, and he remembers being struck by the fragile yet fearless sound coming from such a young girl.
"I knew definitely that she was really something, and she was going to leave a mark," he recalled.
Douglas played on Krauss' first record, 1987's "Too Late to Cry," and produced another of her records after that.
"She made a big splash and it's just been growing ever since," he said from a hotel room in Missouri last Thursday.
Douglas, a noted and in-demand studio musician, didn't join Union Station officially until 1998, when he signed on as a featured player. In some senses, he and his dobro, with its slightly sinewy, seductive and graceful sound, act as second lead vocal to Krauss. It's heard so clearly on songs such as the tender ballad "If I Didn't Know Any Better" and the midtempo "Restless" off "Lonely Runs Both Ways."
Douglas said he decided to join the group because he was tired of experiencing music mainly in the vacuum of a studio. He longed to hear the notes he played fuse with those from other musicians to create a blanket of sound.
"The chemistry of the band is one sound instead of five different people out there playing. There's a sound that only happens if everybody's playing at the same time," he said. "It's just a meeting in the air of the notes and the harmonics . . . that you can't get if you put it together one piece at a time. . . . All of the instruments ringing off of each other, bleeding into each other on the different microphones. It all comes out as one big sound instead of just pieces."
In their live shows, those sounds are in perfect harmony, perfect timing and perfect tone. Krauss wouldn't have it any other way.
"She's got great ears, and she hears things that no one else hears. And she's got a great mind for arranging," Douglas said, calling Krauss a perfectionist in the best kind of way.
"Her huge talent is not only in her unique voice and singing, but it's finding songs that fit her and that she can really get behind," he added. "She's not going to sing something if she's not sure about it. She won't commit to something unless she can go at it 150 percent. That's why it's successful."
When the band wraps up this month's dates, Douglas plans to go out on the road with his own band and play some of his original works, which crisscross genres from bluegrass to rock and pop. He expects a couple of the band members will work on side projects, and he suspects Krauss will slip in a Cox Family project during the hiatus. She's been producing the gospel group for the past several years.
But don't be surprised if before the year is out, Alison Krauss and Union Station — AKUS to their fans — are holding hands on another album.
"We'll probably do another AKUS record before the end of the year, or at least start one before the end of the year," Douglas said.
Alison Krauss and Union Station had another year to remember
?