Alison Krauss and Union Station

Finally, after 11 years, Edith and I attended the Alison Krauss and Union Station performance last night at the State Theatre in New Brunswick.  We’d last saw her in May, 2000 at the Community Theatre in Morristown in support of her Forget About It album; we had planned to see AKUS in November of 2005 at the NJ Performing Arts Center, but had to forego our tickets due to an intense work schedule that precluded me from taking the time to attend the show.  Alison has been a favorite of mine for a long time, and since the last time we’d seen her AKUS was featured on the soundtrack to O Brother Where Art Thou? (Record of the Year Grammy winner) as well as Alison’s album Raising Sand with Robert Plant (another Grammy for Record of the Year.)  Last night’s show was a long time overdue.

We bought our tickets back in April, when they first went on sale, and were seated in the third “official” row (3 rows of temporary VIP seats were added in place of the orchestra pit, so in essence we were 6 rows removed.)  The show was good – from Dan Tyminski on guitar and mandolin as well as vocals to the very tight performance of an incredibly gifted group of musicians; you could not ask for more from the world’s premier dobro player in Jerry Douglas, nor the outstanding playing of Barry Bales on upright bass or Ron Block on banjo and guitar. Of course, I love Alison’s fiddle playing, but it is her angelic voice that gets me every time.  Incredibly sweet yet strong at the same time, I am taken in from the very first note until the very last.

I did manage to take some photos with my Droid (but would never consider actually recording the audio or video) and some are better than others.  They don’t do justice to the performance nor capture exactly just how good our seats were.  I just hope it’s not another 11 years before we get to hear Alison perform live for us again.