Special Coverage 2008 Fall MoviesThe Must List2008 Fall TV2008 Emmy Awards2008 Fall Music

How can you spot an Alison Krauss fan? Not very easily. There are a whole lot of them -- enough to have kept the 24-year-old bluegrass diva's platinum album, Now That I've Found You: A Collection, in the top 10 of the country charts for 31 weeks (it's the only bluegrass album to crack the Pop chart's top 15). But numbers alone don't reflect the scope of Krauss' popularity. Take, for example, the crowd at her outdoor concert at New York City's Lincoln Center one steamy night this past August. The predominantly young, elegant, Banana Republic-clad crowd sits quietly as Krauss and her band play on. They sip Chablis. They applaud vigorously, yet respectfully. One month later, at a bluegrass festival on the New Jersey-Delaware border, the ambiance is a bit...looser. A nearly toothless woman, spilling out of a ''Gone Pickin''' tank top, dances at the lip of the stage while the crowd cheers raucously. One 60ish man in a T-shirt and shorts, sprawled on a lawn chair, opens the cooler at his side, tosses a beer to a friend two rows back, then bellows, ''Let's hear more blues!''

Thanks to Krauss, the world is hearing more blues -- bluegrass, that is -- and the music has never been hotter. The lead singer and fiddler for Union Station doesn't produce the classic high-lonesome sound of veteran fiddler Bill Monroe, who has dominated the genre since its birth in the Kentucky hills in the late '30s. But Krauss' pop-rock-influenced style -- some call it newgrass -- is authentic enough to win over hardcore bluegrass fans, accessible enough for the urban Tower Records set, and strong enough to have earned her three Grammys and four Country Music Association Awards nominations, including best female vocalist (the show airs Oct. 4 on CBS).

Krauss' prowess as a fiddler is as impressive as her pure, piercing voice, which has been compared to Dolly Parton's. ''Bluegrass is pretty simple,'' says Bill Monroe, 84. ''You just got to hit the high notes and put some blues in it and you got bluegrass. But not everyone can do it. Alison can do it.'' Adds a beaming Roy Cox, 72, who attended the New Jersey festival and has followed her career for 10 years: ''She plays so aggressive, and she's a girl! Before her, this kind of music was dying. She really brought bluegrass out of the barnyard.''

Sitting in her tour bus after the New Jersey show, eating her favorite foods -- candy corn and Tijuana Mama spicy pickled sausages washed down with chocolate milk -- Krauss roundly dismisses the compliment when it is repeated. ''I don't want to take bluegrass out of the barnyard, I want it to stay there,'' cracks the plain-spoken Krauss, who may sing like an angel but who is as wry and down-to-earth off stage as the hardscrabble circuit she has traveled with Union Station for the past decade.

Krauss is less certain about, and occasionally stressed out by, her sudden mainstream fame. She recently spent a week in a Chicago headache clinic, hoping that doctors could determine the cause of the recurring migraines that have plagued her for the past few months. ''I never thought this would be my career,'' she says. ''I've always loved to play bluegrass and festivals. But I didn't figure this would be my job. Now all I do is work. I barely have time to water the flowers in my yard.''


Page 1 of 3