John Pennell

When another group turned out to be using the name Silver Rail, Pennell renamed the band Union Station. He wrote six of the ten songs on Krauss’s first album, Too Late to Cry (Rounder, 1987), recorded at the Cowboy Arms Hotel & Recording Spa in Nashville: the title song, “Foolish Heart,” “If I Give My Heart,” “In Your Eyes,” “Don’t Follow Me” and “On the Borderline.” On Two Highways (Rounder, 1989), credited to Alison Krauss & Union Station, he played bass alongside Krauss on fiddle, Jeff White on guitar and Mike Harman on banjo, with Jerry Douglas on Dobro and Brent Truitt on mandolin, and wrote “Love You in Vain,” “Here Comes Goodbye” and “As Lovely as You.” He had left the band by the time Every Time You Say Goodbye came out in 1992, but its title song was his.

His songs went on to other bands. He wrote “Carry Me Across the Mountain” with Jeff White and Billy Smith, the title song of Dan Tyminski’s album Carry Me Across the Mountain (Doobie Shea, 2000). In March 1999 he played bass on Jimmy Bowen & Santa Fe’s The Chain Gang (Copper Creek), which included three songs he wrote or co-wrote, “I Wonder,” “Can’t Let This One Get Away” (with Harley Allen) and “Right on Time” (with Jeff White). With Chris Jones he wrote “Fork in the Road,” the title song of the Infamous Stringdusters’ album Fork in the Road (Sugar Hill, 2007), which won the IBMA’s Song of the Year award in 2007. That year he was also playing bass in the Charlie Sizemore Band, with Sizemore, Danny Barnes, Matt DeSpain and Wayne Fields.