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Alison Krauss

Musician · b. 1971 · Decatur, Illinois · alisonkrauss.com · Also a recording artist
Best known for Lead Vocals Fiddle Harmony Vocals

Alison Krauss is the fiddler and singer who, more than any performer of her generation, carried bluegrass into the American mainstream while keeping its acoustic heart intact. A child fiddle champion who formed Union Station in her teens, she paired a crystalline soprano with immaculate taste in material and arrangement, and her involvement in the O Brother, Where Art Thou? phenomenon and the Raising Sand project with Robert Plant made her a household name. With twenty-seven Grammy Awards she stands among the most-decorated artists in the ceremony’s history and for years held the record for the most Grammy wins by any woman.

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  • Born July 23, 1971, in Decatur, Illinois, and raised in nearby Champaign, she began classical violin at age five before the fiddle contest circuit pulled her toward traditional music. By eight she was competing locally, and in 1984, at thirteen, she won the fiddle championship at the Walnut Valley Festival in Winfield, Kansas, absorbing the Texas long-bow style even as bluegrass became her focus.
  • Rounder Records co-founder Ken Irwin signed her before she turned fifteen, and her debut, Too Late to Cry (Rounder, 1987), was cut with the backing musicians who would become Union Station—the band she has fronted ever since their first album together, Two Highways (Rounder, 1989).
  • Her second solo record, I’ve Got That Old Feeling (Rounder, 1990), earned her first Grammy Award, for Best Bluegrass Recording, at the 1991 ceremony—making her, at nineteen, one of the youngest winners in the field and announcing a prodigy who could sing as arrestingly as she played.
  • Union Station coalesced into one of the most polished bands in acoustic music, its long-running core comprising Barry Bales on bass (from 1990), Ron Block on banjo and guitar (from 1991), Dan Tyminski on guitar, mandolin, and lead vocals, and dobro master Jerry Douglas (from 1998); mandolinist Adam Steffey and songwriter-bassist John Pennell were pivotal in the earlier years.
  • Now That I’ve Found You: A Collection (Rounder, 1995) was the commercial breakthrough, eventually going double platinum. Its reading of Keith Whitley’s “When You Say Nothing at All” crossed to country radio and won her the 1995 CMA Single of the Year, a rare feat for a bluegrass act, alongside the title cut, “Baby, Now That I’ve Found You.”
  • In 1993 she joined the Grand Ole Opry at twenty-one, then its youngest cast member, cementing her standing in the Nashville establishment even as she recorded for an independent bluegrass label.
  • So Long So Wrong (Rounder, 1997), a bolder, moodier Union Station album, won the Grammy for Best Bluegrass Album, while her 1999 solo turn Forget About It leaned toward country-pop and yielded the aching “Stay.”
  • Her contributions to the O Brother, Where Art Thou? soundtrack (Mercury, 2000)—the haunting a cappella-rooted “Down to the River to Pray” and “I’ll Fly Away” with Gillian Welch—helped drive a multi-platinum, roots-music sensation. Produced by T Bone Burnett, the album won the Grammy for Album of the Year in 2002.
  • New Favorite (Rounder, 2001) and the Grammy-winning double Alison Krauss + Union Station Live (2002) showcased Tyminski’s lead singing—he was the voice of George Clooney’s “Man of Constant Sorrow”—alongside her own, while Lonely Runs Both Ways (Rounder, 2004) returned the band to warm, traditional-leaning ground.
  • Her boldest crossover came with Raising Sand (Rounder, 2007), an eerie, atmospheric duets album with Led Zeppelin’s Robert Plant, again produced by Burnett. At the 2009 Grammys it swept all five categories it was nominated in, including Album of the Year and Record of the Year for “Please Read the Letter.”
  • She reunited Union Station for Paper Airplane (Rounder, 2011), then explored vintage country pop on the solo Windy City (Capitol, 2017), her first solo album in nearly two decades. A second Plant collaboration, Raise the Roof (2021), reprised the Raising Sand chemistry and drew further Grammy nominations.
  • In 2025 she released Arcadia, her first album with Union Station in fourteen years, with Russell Moore stepping in on lead vocals—evidence that the band remains a working, evolving unit rather than a nostalgia act.
  • The industry honored her early and often: she was IBMA Female Vocalist of the Year four times (1990, 1991, 1993, and 1994) and an IBMA Entertainer of the Year, and in 2021 she and Union Station were inducted into the Bluegrass Music Hall of Fame.
  • Her twenty-seven Grammy Awards place her among the most-awarded figures in the ceremony’s history and for years made her the woman with the most Grammy wins. More than the trophies, her legacy is a template—impeccable song selection, restraint, and a singer’s ear for arrangement—that reshaped how a new generation understood what bluegrass could sound like and how far it could reach.

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