Country Comfortable

“Do you mind if there are curlers in my hair while we talk?”

Alison Krauss, a seven-time Grammy winner whose bluegrass-country style delights both critics and fans, points to the array of curlers already in place as she stands in the doorway of her suite at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel.

The question is typical of the celebrated singer and fiddle player’s disarming, down-home personality.

The 25-year-old Illinois native doesn’t exactly say “aw, shucks” during the ensuing interview, but there is a “heavens to Betsy” quality in her laughter and in her reactions to certain questions.

When she talks about her favorite artists, she isn’t too cool to gush.

Dolly Parton.

“Mercy me, that woman can sing!”

Merle Haggard.

“Oh, my God, I’ve got both of his box sets. They’re the greatest things I’ve ever heard. And have you seen those old photos of him? Are they beautiful or what? Whoo-ee.”

But don’t let that easygoing demeanor fool you. When it comes to music, Krauss exhibits a subtlety and grace that appeals even to pop listeners. It’s why she has seen sales of her albums on tiny, folk-based Rounder Records go from about 10,000 copies in the late ‘80s to more than 2 million today.

On record and onstage, Krauss sings with an angelic sweetness that can be captivating as it combines some of the purity of early Parton with the soulful edge of Patsy Cline.

Unlike so many one-dimensional singers who focus on either melody or words, Krauss treats both with equal respect. She also understands the importance of space in a song, sometimes letting her voice trail off in a way that the silence in a line becomes an extension of her vocal.

Offstage, she exhibits in her actions a strong sense of independence and confidence that has protected her music from a series of potential compromises.

When major record labels in Nashville started coming around years ago with flattering offers for the then-teenage singer, Krauss and the members of her band, Union Station, recognized the dangers.

For one thing, she suspected that even the most well-intended Nashville executives would probably want her to tone down some of the bluegrass elements in her music. They’d no doubt suggest adding electric guitar and drums to her generally spare, acoustic backing. They’d also want her to make solo records rather than continue to turn over some lead vocals to members of her band.

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Krauss watchers have been especially on guard in recent months, anxious to see what effect the spectacular success of her last album, 1995’s “Now That I’ve Found You: A Collection,” would have on her music. Would the sudden stardom lead her and the band to add some commercial touches to their just-released new album, “So Long So Wrong”? (See review, Page 66.)

“Does it look like I’m caught up in stardom?” Krauss says in a mocking voice as she points at the curlers in her hair. “When the record started doing good, it was like, ‘Whoa, what is going on here?’ When we started out in music, I just figured it was something I’d get to do on weekends.

“If we were into the money or being famous, we would have gone with a major label by now and done everything we could to push those babies up the chart. But we’ve learned we can do just fine by doing what we’ve always done. When we went into the studio for the new record,we left all that stardom business outside. The truth is, we had most of the songs on the album picked out before we even made the last one.”

It didn’t take the record industry long to catch on to the promise of Alison Krauss.

Denise Stiff, who now manages the singer, was an assistant in a Nashville management and booking company in the late ‘80s when she attended a bluegrass trade show in Kentucky. She still recalls the first time she heard Krauss, then 16, sing.

“Oh, man,” Stiff says. “I was just walking through the room and her voice just got me. I stopped dead and thought, ‘I can’t believe this.’ I loved her fiddle playing, her enthusiasm, everything.”

Soon after, Krauss and Union Station did a showcase in Nashville where Vince Gill saw her and began spreading the word. Emmylou Harris was calling, offering Krauss a job in her band. Tony Brown, now president of MCA Nashville, wanted to sign her to a contract.

“I was so zapped when I first saw her,” says Brown, who has worked as a producer or musician with such great singers as Elvis Presley, Harris, Wynonna and Gill. “Her voice was so lovely that I couldn’t get it out of my mind.”

But Krauss was already signed to Rounder, so Brown just let her know he was a fan and asked her to contact him if she ever decided to leave.

Krauss respects Brown, and the group did consider signing with MCA Nashville before re-signing with Rounder, in a contract that includes one more album. But Krauss and her bandmates felt they would have a better chance of honing their style on their own at Rounder.

“I think we could have made a real interesting record with Tony,” she says now about the decision to stay with Rounder. “But having someone else produce your records that early in your career has its drawbacks. I don’t think I would have been able to learn as much about the studio or our music without making my own mistakes.”

Since then, Krauss has gone beyond her recordings with Union Station to produce three albums for the Cox Family, a bluegrass-leaning vocal group whose 1996 album, “Just When We’re Thinking It’s Over,” has many of the engaging, understated qualities of her own albums.

“When labels call, we still talk to them,” Krauss says of her future. “I never want to say never. That’s one thing my parents taught me: Check things out.”

One reason Krauss was able to impress industry pros by the late ‘80s is that she already had been performing in concerts or contests for nearly a decade.

“When my brother Viktor and I were growing up, my mom and dad exposed us to everything, . . . and not just music,” she says, leaning back on a couch in the hotel suite. “Mom tried to find something new for us to do every day, even if it was just going to the local bakery to see bread being made.

“I think that made us open to new experiences. I listened to whatever was played on the local rock station or at the roller rink. . . . Foreigner, Stevie Wonder, AC/DC, Lynyrd Skynyrd. Even today, I listen to everything from the Stanley Brothers to Ella Fitzgerald and Shawn Colvin.”

As part of that preschool education, Krauss and her older brother, who now plays bass in Lyle Lovett’s band, were showered with sports classes, art classes and music lessons in their hometown of Champaign, Ill.

Alison began classical violin when she was 5 and started entering fiddle contests around town three years later. She eventually started singing in contests as well. Over the next few years, her folks drove her to dozens of contests in Illinois and neighboring states.

In the spirit of experimenting, Krauss became infatuated during her teens with bluegrass and joined Union Station when she was 14. The group’s reputation spread quickly within bluegrass and folk circles and it was just a year later that Krauss recorded her first Rounder album, “Too Late to Cry.”

The youngster left high school after the 10th grade, taking music classes instead at the University of Illinois for a year and a half before devoting herself full time to Union Station, whose lineup now also includes Barry Bales on bass, Ron Block on banjo and guitar, Adam Steffey on mandolin and Dan Tyminski on guitar.

Despite its bluegrass foundation, the group has been open to experimentation, recording such occasional pop-rock material as the Beatles’ “I Will.” Union Station also has opened over the years for such varied attractions as Garth Brooks, Bob Dylan, Amy Grant and Dwight Yoakam.

The main breakthrough commercially came in 1994 when Krauss recorded a song for a tribute album honoring the late Keith Whitley, a hit country singer in the ‘80s. The song, “When You Say Nothing at All,” is as lovely a piece of music as has been recorded in the ‘90s, and it went to No. 1 on the country charts and into the Top 100 on the pop charts. The tune became the centerpiece of Union Station’s hit 1995 album.

After years of nonstop touring and recording, Krauss and the band took advantage of the success to give themselves a vacation last year. “I’ve had a great time, just moved into a new place,” says the Nashville resident. Yes, she says, she has a steady beau, but, no, she doesn’t want to talk about him. “Well, it’s kinda personal and, besides, I don’t think anyone is interested in my personal life.”

For relaxation, Krauss enjoys “girly” movies. “I must have seen ‘Steel Magnolias’ 40,000 times,” she says. “But ‘The Color Purple’ is probably my all-time favorite.”

Through it all, however, she is always searching for new songs.

“That’s really the key, isn’t it?” she says. “I’m very choosy. There are millions of songs I like when I hear other people sing them, but they just wouldn’t sound right coming from me.

“To me, a song has to have a timeless feel. . . . I don’t want them to have anything that dates them or clutters them up . . . like references to appliances or food or clothes or even cities. Maybe it’s something I learned from Bill Monroe and bluegrass music. You listen to one of his songs and they could have been written yesterday or tomorrow because they just tell a human story. That’s all I try to do in my music.”