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ACL Fest review: Alison Krauss
Musical transcendence can be hard to find at a festival like ACL, where for many, listening is secondary to coming, going, deciding how long to stay and where to go next, discussing the previous band, determining group requirements for beer and food, and trying, via various forms of technology and occasional waving and screaming, to track down friends who disappeared hours ago. Those looking to be transported may struggle to focus on the musicians alone amid the hurly-burly. However, a large crowd at the Bud Light stage actually grew astonishingly still and surprisingly quiet for Alison Krauss and Union Station’s magnificent 4 p.m. set. A hush fell the minute Krauss began to sing the opening bar of the heart-wrenching new song “Paper Airplane,” from her first album with Union Station since the smashing success of her 2007 Raising Sand collaboration with Robert Plant.
Krauss has one of the loveliest soprano voices going, with a crystalline tone and irreproachable pitch, and her phrasing is marvelously liquid and understated. She has probably never sung an unnecessary note in her life. She brings the same economical expressiveness to her fiddle playing, and she’s backed by one of the best bands around, featuring Jerry Douglas (dobro, lap steel, vocals), Dan Tyminski (guitar, mandolin, lead vocal), Ron Block (banjo, guitar) and Barry Bales (bass, vocals). Basically, if any one of them comes to town, no matter who else he’s playing with, go see him.
A rollicking bluegrass tune had heads bopping, while a yearning older number, “Let Me Touch You for Awhile,” held the crowd transfixed. Wearing a long, flowing, fuschia-print gown with bell sleeves, Krauss was funny and engaging between songs. She joked about one of the standards out in the audience, an inflatable toy on a long pole.
“It’s not every day you see a unicorn on a stick,” Krauss said. “What is that, a paint roller? Is that so you can get into those hard-to-reach places?”
That quote may not be exact, because it was raining too hard at that point to take notes. In honor of the precipitation, the band pulled out a terrific oldie, bluegrass legend Del McCoury’s “Rain Please Go Away,” which Tyminski sang beautifully, and hopefully he wasn’t too puzzled by people shouting “Noooooo!” at the chorus.
One of the most moving numbers was the desolate “Ghost in This House,” but in the middle of Krauss’ depiction of the loneliness that haunts the survivor of a bad break-up, a roar of happy applause went up in one section of the audience. It turned out someone had proposed to his girlfriend. I’m no marriage counselor, but I’m thinking he should have waited for the next number, the sweet and hopeful “Baby, Now That I’ve Found You.” At least he didn’t do it during “I Am A Man of Constant Sorrow,” which Tyminski sang with stirring conviction, reprising his appearance on the O Brother Where Art Thou soundtrack.
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