Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: FRIDAY, May 7, 1993 TAG: 9305070206
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: MARK MORRISON STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
She's happy in bluegrass.
And glad for her relative anonymity, the 21-year-old Krauss said in a telephone interview last week from her home in Nashville, where she was taking some time off.
Although well-known in bluegrass circles, Krauss doesn't enjoy the same celebrity status as her country counterparts.
Thankfully. She said she can leave the house without much fear of being recognized or bothered. She can wear what she wants.
"I'm usually being a pig," she said of her time off. Krauss will return to the spotlight Saturday night when she plays the Tripple Creek Park Music Festival in Rocky Mount.
"Nobody cares. There's a lot more exciting people than me running around Nashville."
Maybe so. But few can handle the fiddle as well, and few have a voice as highly coveted.
After the success of her 1991 bluegrass album, "I've Got That Old Feeling," Krauss became a hot commodity. It seemed that the country hit makers in Nashville thought she would be a natural.
All they had to do was tone down the bluegrass twang, and Krauss would be ready for rhinestones.
Only she wasn't biting. She didn't want that kind of fame. More importantly, she said she didn't want to leave her foremost musical love - bluegrass.
And now that she has staked her claim, country doesn't come courting as much anymore, she said.
Krauss really started staking that claim long ago. A fiddling prodigy from Champaign, Ill., she won scores of bluegrass fiddle contests before she even reached her teen years.
She signed a record contract with Rounder Records at age 14, becoming the label's only bluegrass artist.
By 19, she had won a Grammy, and had been profiled in Time, Newsweek, Rolling Stone, Billboard, USA Today and The Washington Post.
Critics praise Krauss for her understated fiddling in a bluegrass world too often dominated by the fastest pickers.
As a singer, she has been compared to Emmylou Harris and early Dolly Parton.
Her latest album, "Every Time You Say Goodbye," has received raves. It earned Krauss her second Grammy earlier this year.
She said the album is more of a truer bluegrass record than "I've Got That Old Feeling," which was so understated that it flirted with being country.
She also lets her band, Union Station, step forward more. Overall, she said the album is her most sophisticated.
"I feel like I'm getting more in touch with what's tasteful."
Krauss said she has nothing against country. In fact, she likes it. Some of her favorite singers include Trisha Yearwood, Wynonna Judd and Travis Tritt.
She said she also likes Bad Company and Lynyrd Skynyrd and Foreigner.
It sounds like Krauss might have a wild side.
Not really, she said. "That's just pretty doggone tasteful rock 'n' roll to me."
She is 21, after all.
Her young age is something Krauss has sometimes had to cope with. "I've wondered if people would think that I'm a snot," she said.
To compensate, she said she has worked to not let her success go to her head. She has tried to treat people the same.
Sometimes to a fault, she said.
"You go out of your way not to be different, and then you're different because you're trying so hard not to be."
It's difficult, she said.
Just imagine what it could have been like in country.
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