Alison Krauss holds 27 Grammy Awards, trailing only a handful of names in recording history, and she did it with a purely acoustic sound. This episode traces her path from a five-year-old in Champaign, Illinois who hated classical violin lessons and would rather roller skate, to the moment her mother bought her a bluegrass instruction book and a Richard Greene record for a county fair fiddle contest. She ignored the sheet music, learned by ear, placed fourth in the novice category at age eight, and by 13 had won the Walnut Valley Festival fiddle championship.

We follow her early band Union Station, her Rounder Records contract at 16 that required alternating solo and band albums, her first Grammy at 19, and her 1993 Grand Ole Opry induction at a time when the Opry had not added a bluegrass act in 29 years. From there the conversation covers the double-platinum Now That I Have Found You, the O Brother, Where Art Thou? soundtrack, the Raising Sand and Raise the Roof albums with Robert Plant, her work as a producer, the migraines that delayed Paper Airplane, and the 2025 Union Station album Arcadia.

• Why learning by ear instead of sheet music shaped her intuitive, interpretive style
• How her independent-label deal protected her band rather than turning her into a solo pop commodity
• Her refusal to appear on camera in O Brother, Where Art Thou? while pregnant, letting the voice do the work
• The anchor-track method she uses to build albums around a single emotional mood
• The two-million-dollar glass slippers at the 2004 Oscars and her grounded Midwestern reaction