“Many people in bluegrass music talk about being born in the wrong decade,” says Alison Krauss, “and whenever I sing, the pictures I see in my head take place in a particular time. That's what happened with these tunes, maybe even more so than in the past.”

For nearly four decades, Alison Krauss & Union Station have been celebrated as one of the most influential acts in bluegrass and roots music. Known for an immaculately crafted but endlessly surprising sound, the group has returned with Arcadia, their first album since the 2011 masterpiece Paper Airplane—a multiple Grammy Award-winning LP that debuted at #1 on the Billboard Country, Bluegrass, and Folk Album charts.

They may not have released an album in 14 years, but Krauss never stopped thinking about the next Union Station project or gathering songs that might fit. “Over the years, you'll hear something, but it's not time for it,” she says. “You say to yourself, ‘Oh, this is beautiful, I'm going to set it aside and wait. I have a place behind my desk with songs that I collect, including CDs and cassettes of songs I've kept for 30, 40 years.”

Still, she needed the one song that would bring things into focus, that felt like a starting point, before she would pick up the phone and start mobilizing the band. “Usually, I find something that's a first song—‘Here's the beginning’—and then things fall into place. That song was ‘Looks Like the End of the Road.’ Jeremy Lister wrote it, and he’s one of my favorites. It just felt so alive — and as always, I could hear the guys already playing it. We’ve always been very grateful as a band to have come across such beautiful songs through the years and to be like-minded enough to create this life together.”

The members of Union Station are a team of virtuosos, all with thriving solo careers. Krauss (fiddle, lead vocal) signed to Rounder Records at age 14 and has gone on to sell over 12 million albums, earning 27 wins and 44 nominations from the Grammy Awards. Jerry Douglas (Dobro, lap steel, vocals), Ron Block (banjo, guitar, vocals), and Barry Bales (bass, vocals) are all award-winning players, songwriters, and producers who have worked with and are considered some of the greatest musicians in the world.

While reassembling for Arcadia, there was a crisis to address: Dan Tyminski informed the band that after thirty years as Union Station’s guitarist and vocalist, he was not returning and would be solely focused on pursuing his solo career.

“The four of us met when Dan left,” says Krauss, “and Jerry asked me, ‘What do you think?’ I said, ‘Russell Moore,’ and they all said, ‘Absolutely!’”

As the frontman of Russell Moore & IIIrd Tyme Out, Moore is the most awarded male vocalist in the history of the International Bluegrass Music Association. Krauss remembers seeing him play when she was a teenager, during Moore’s early days with Doyle Lawson and Quicksilver, and recalls it as “a very big deal.” She claims that she didn’t think Moore would take her up on the offer to join Union Station, but then there he was.

“I couldn't believe it when we went into the studio and his voice came through the speakers,” she says. “He just stands there and sings with his hands in his pockets, and he kills it. The first song he did was ‘Granite Mills’ and about 10 minutes in, Ron was covering his mouth because he started giggling. Russell came in and inspired us all.”

Though most of the songs on Arcadia are contemporary—written by such modern masters as Robert Lee Castleman, Viktor Krauss, Bob Lucas, JD McPherson and Sarah Siskind—for Krauss they evoke the history and sensibility of a bygone America. “The stories of the past are told in this music,” says Krauss, who was honored in 2019 with the National Medal of Arts, the highest honor given to artists by the United States government. “It's that whole idea of ‘in the good old days when times were bad.’ There's so much bravery and valor and loyalty and dreaming, of family and themes of human existence that were told in a certain way when our grandparents were alive. I think we naturally dream about that time—at least I do.”

She points to one of the songs, the Civil War ballad “Richmond on the James,” as an example of the power and immediacy these compositions contain. “There's something about hearing a woman telling the story of a soldier,” she says. “It reminds us how young they were—they were just kids, and they had such passion, and they were excited to go and to be of service and to be a hero and so innocent. There was no way to know what they were getting into. Even though the story is so dark, the innocence is so beautiful at the same time.”

Krauss mentions that she drew much inspiration for Arcadia from a familiar source. “I’ve always been enamored with Norman Rockwell and that whole look, because in my mind, that's where all bluegrass tunes take place,” she says. “I used to stare at those paintings as a kid, in a coffee table book we had, and my mom had to explain to me they were paintings. When you get older, you learn they were to encourage people, he was painting to present an idyllic life and offer hope.”

“With a lot of these tunes, you hear these tragic stories, but they combined it with a beautiful melody and poetry.  It was how people got their true-life stories told and I'm always drawn to the truth.”

For Krauss, returning to a more traditional approach after spending so much time recording and touring with Robert Plant (including 2021’s acclaimed Raise the Roof, the follow-up to 2007’s Raising Sand, which won the Grammy for Album of the Year) put her back on familiar and hospitable ground. “This is where I live and come from, and now I get to bring my experiences with Robert back to Union Station, just like all of the guys do with recording, producing and performing outside of the band” she says.

As Alison Krauss & Union Station gear up for their first tour together in ten years, Krauss is excited about the musical challenges and rewards of working with her magnificent bandmates, and about the new directions they explore on Arcadia. But she’s also aware of the importance, even the responsibility, of being a standard-bearer for roots music and keeping these songs alive.

“Someone asked me, how do you sing these tragic tunes?,” she says. “I have to. It’s a calling. I feel privileged to be a messenger of somebody else's story. And I want to hear what happened.”