Alison & The Fuschia Dress
08/20/2007

Alison Krauss & Union Station have gone with an arty stage set for the first time in memory, with a map of Tennessee backdrop—or Europe, depending upon the correctness of one’s eyeglasses prescription (though it’s a near certainty that the framed paintings on the wall were birds—presumably indigenous to Tennessee or Europe—though one may have been a Picasso).

Whatever. Alison was most definitely stunning in a fuschia dress with navy blue trim. The show itself was artfully arranged and sequenced the varied material on new album A Hundred Miles or More: A Collection, with the band coming out first and then being augmented at times by drums and/or keyboards—including an understated Hammond B3. And there were at least 15 stringed instruments employed by the four pickers, with Barry Bales even playing an electric bass at one point.

Music aside, Krauss’s patter was endearingly inane as ever. She pointed out you can go anywhere in New York “and get the greatest sandwich you ever had—and a heating pad at the same time” (new knowledge, most likely, to most New Yorkers in the full house) and invoked The Lord of the Rings in referring to Jerry Douglas’s dobro as “The Precious.”

The show ended beautifully with the whole gang grouped around a microphone to sing Ron Block’s gorgeous gospel “A Living Prayer.” Vince Gill and Amy Grant were hanging out backstage afterwards, in town to do the Today show the next morning—having been in Chicago the previous weekend along with AKUS at Eric Clapton’s Crossroads Festival.