Alison Krauss & Union Station Live

Artists: Alison Krauss & Union Station
Venue: The Mermaid
Town: London
Date: 12th May
Website: http://alisonkrauss.com/

The awards won by Alison Krauss are extensive: 26 Grammys (the most awarded singer), 14 International Bluegrass Music Awards and 8 Country Music Association Awards and as this performance was being broadcast live as part of the BBC Radio 2 In Concert series I was expecting a slick, timed to the last minute performance yet there was enough roughness around the edges to make this one of the best country performances that I have seen.

I was not expecting an opening act but as we sat in the 600 set theatre (after a queuing round the building and then being kept in a pretty nice holding pen - it had a bar) we could listen to Jo Whiley's interview with James Vincent McMorrow and the couple of tracks he played were enough to make him high on my list of must sees at this years Cambridge Folk Festival. As the vast majority of people had won tickets through either the BBC or the Alison Krauss fan club being told to be loud because we were on radio seemed a little unnecessary.

The set comprised of a mix of classics such as 'Baby, Now That I Found You' and 'Gravity' with more traditional style bluegrass material like 'Sawing On The Strings' and tracks from the latest release 'Paper Airplane' including the gorgeous title track which she opened this performance with and 'Miles To Go'.

If you were seeing them for the first time and didn't know their name you would be hard pushed to identify Krauss as the band leader. For much of the set she shared lead vocals with Dan Tyminski (the voice of George Clooney in the Coen Brothers film 'Oh Brother, where art thou?' and possessor of the ability to wiggle his scalp - which is quite unnerving) and she was 'just' the fiddle player. Dobro legend Jerry Douglas was the only person to get stage time on their own and after announcing that Krauss would be guesting on the new series of 'The Transatlantic Session' to be broadcast in September he seemed to improvise a track that gave me goose bumps. Yet, every so often - most notably on the peerless 'Ghost In This House' Krauss propels her voice to places few could follow. For me it was this track that underlined why she has won so many awards and why her return to Union Station after a break of seven years.

If the set was supposed to finish at 10:00 pm then they over ran by a good 15 minutes which meant that the radio audience missed being introduced to bass player Barry Bales (Tyminski, Douglas and guitarist / banjo player Ron Block all had intros.), hearing Tyminski singing 'Man Of Constant Sorrow' and the band gathered around a single microphone for the encore 'A Living Prayer'.

John 'The Jacket' Hawes