If Alison Krauss wants to remember where she was or how she was feeling at any point in the last quarter-century, she might throw on one of her own albums.
It doesn’t matter that the 26-time Grammy-winning singer and bluegrass ambassador rarely writes her own material.
She started listening and relating to traditional American music at the age of 7, and since the mid-’80s, when the then-teenage Illinois fiddle prodigy joined the band Union Station and began making records, she’s sought songs with personal resonance, not just pretty melodies.
“You get drawn to whatever is going on with yourself at the time,” Krauss says by phone. She and Union Station perform tonight at Mountain Park in Holyoke, Wednesday at Ives Park in Danbury and Aug. 6 at Mohegan Sun in Uncasville.
“I don’t want to record a song unless I feel like I have to do it I have to say those things,” she adds. “If you compromise that and do something because its clever, or you think it’s sweet at the time, I find it doesn’t keep its passion through the years. When you’re singing it, it doesn’t change with you.”
Years from now, when Krauss looks back at her latest, “Paper Airplane,” which came out in April, she may remember a time of great “trial.” That’s the word she often uses when explaining the theme of the record, her first with Union Station since 2004.
“Paper Airplane” arrives nearly four years after “Raising Sand,” Krauss’ acclaimed 2007 collaboration with former Led Zeppelin singer Robert Plant. That album a stunning collection of swampy country, blues and rock tunes recorded by producer T-Bone Burnett earned five Grammys, including Album of the Year.
The duo tried to cut a sequel, and while Krauss says the music was as strong as the first time, something wasn’t right.
“It needed a different identity,” she says. “We felt like it was too much of a continuation of the last one.”
Krauss and Plant scrapped those sessions, and at one point it seemed she might do the same with “Paper Airplane.” Early in the recording process, Krauss began suffering daily migraines, and as eager as she was to reconnect with Union Station and finish the record, she had to take a breather.
“This really wasn’t about the songs not being there,” Krauss says, dismissing the idea that she lacked inspiration. “I read an article where that was kind of what the heading of the article was, and I remember getting ticked off. That’s a real misinterpretation.”
“For me, you get a gut reaction to things things feel good,” she says. “I’m pretty black-and-white on what I like and what I don’t like, and because I was physically not well, I had a real hard time judging. So we took a step back because of those migraines. I couldn’t focus like I was supposed to.”
Krauss also has said that “Paper Airplane” came at a difficult time in her personal life. Given all the headaches, both literal and figurative, it’s not surprising the record sounds the way it does. The songs have a somber feel, leaning more toward folk than plucky bluegrass. As always, the band’s playing is virtuosic, and Krauss sings with the natural, unassailable beauty of a prairie sunset.
Sonically, “Paper Airplane” is nothing like “Raising Sand,” but Krauss says it was informed by her work with Plant. Whereas she once strove for perfect takes, she’s learned from rock’s “Golden God” to be more spontaneous and capture moments as they come.
“You get away from that as you get in the studio and you go through these stages in your life as a musician,” says Krauss, who turned 40 on Saturday. “You try to figure out why something is so effective: ‘Why is this vocal from so-and-so so effective?’ You think it’s because it’s perfect in its performance, when really it’s perfect in its emotion within that performance. And because you’re too young to realize what’s speaking to you, you try to get it technically.”
“It took too long to figure that out,” she adds. “But I thought it was one of the most valuable lessons if not the most valuable lesson that I can remember in my recording life.”
ALISON KRAUSS & UNION STATION perform with Jerry Douglas tonight at 7 at Mountain Park in Holyoke, Mass. Tickets are $55 and $75.
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