Alison Krauss & Union Station photo courtesy of Rounder Records.
"The day we cut the song in the studio, and hit the line, ‘When all my will is gone you hold me sway,’ I fell apart and had to stop. I said, ‘It’s so sad.’ And everybody was so sweet—I thought they were gonna laugh and rip me apart. There was this big, long silence, and Barry says, ‘Well, that’s what you get for havin’ a girl in the band.’"
In the end, making Paper Airplane was a revelatory experience for the band. "Whatever formula we thought there was doesn’t exist," Alison acknowledges. "It disappeared, especially this last time out. You can’t trust your method; you can’t rely on a method. The only thing you can do is record things that move you—that have a connection with you—and to represent yourself truthfully. Things have to be true that I sing or I can’t do it. Whether I write them or not, they have to be true for me to say it, and for the guys to play it. The only recipe is if it feels true, and true may be incredibly sad. But that’s the part that feels good, because it’s truthful. It might not be true for anybody else, but it is for us. That’s the recipe."
"I feel like this is the best environment for me," she says of working within the context of the band. Proof of that simple but telling statement resonates from every note of this musically exquisite, emotionally charged and, above all, utterly truthful album.
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