Alison Krauss and Union Station
So Long, So Wrong

What happened with So Long So Wrong?

Entered Country charts at #5; moved to #4 by the second week. Entered Billboard Top 200 at #65, and moved to #50 by the second week. Entered U.K. Country Charts at #3. Favorably reviewed in national press such as Time, USA Today, and Rolling Stone. Album went RIAA Gold (500,000+ copies sold). Not bad for an album with a lot of straight-ahead bluegrass on it!

Review Excerpts

Time Magazine

      4/14/97

by Richard Corliss
...there's plenty for
      fans of Krauss's vocal virtuosity. Mark Simos's Find My
      Way Back To My Heart (whose melody echoes Paul McCartney's I've
      Just Seen A Face) is a lesson in hard-earned self-reliance....
      These are songs in the past tense - love mourned, pain savored,
      from beyond the grave. Or from heaven: Krauss
      has the voice of a lost angel,beckoning you into the beyond.


      
Rolling Stone

      [on-line review by Don McLeese]
Music this subtle and
      self-effacing is rare in any category; Union Station shuns
      both the hot-licks showboating of conventional bluegrass and
      the soft-rock suburbanization of contemporary
      country. Instead, the band's singular hybrid
      is both musically sophisticated and unaffectedly sincere, combining
      the hooks of pop melodicism with the purity of mountains spirituals
      through an acoustic latticework that emphasizes team interplay rather
      than individual virtuosity.
...With more nuanced
      material, such as the title song and the two by Mark Simos
      ("Deeper Than Crying" and "Find My Way Back To
      My Heart"), Krauss makes meditative melancholy
      sound like an emotional refuge, a haven where she
      can give intimate voice to what one of the songs ["Deeper
      Than Crying"] calls her "secret heart of hearts."
      


      
New Country

      May 1997
On So Long So Wrong,
      Krauss and cohorts once again delve into bluegrass with renewed
      fervor, still keeping one foot planted firmly inmodern country
      and pop. "Find My Way Back to My Heart" says it all:skilled
      country harmony over clever chord changes, with Krauss's airyvocal
      bringing the tune's moving melody to the fore.


      
Front page of USA
      Today's Life section 

      Friday, March 28th
BEST BETS - Album
From the hot picking
      required for 'Little Liza Jane' to the gentle realization of
      Michael McDonald's pop dirge 'I Can Let Go Now,' Alison Krauss
      & Union Station's "So Long So Wrong" is up to any
      musical challenge. While the emotional restraint and exacting
      musical standards of bluegrass permeate everything they do, Krauss
      and company have shaped a unique sound that is both rootsy and
      contemporary. The album's top cuts include the sweet and rueful
      'Find My Way Back To My Heart' about the sacrifices of the road
      and 'Looking in the Eyes of Love,' in which Krauss offers a surprising
      emotional outpouring.


      
Boston Globe Sunday
      

      3/30/97 by Scott Alarik
Too Country for Country
      Radio? [Headline]
If that's the price
      I have to pay For doing things my own way Then it's what I'll
      have to do somehow. "Find My Way Back to My Heart,"
      by Mark Simos
That refrain, from
      the new Alison Krauss single, is already being heard as a battle
      cry in bluegrass, folk, and county music.... Many see [So Long,
      So Wrong, by Alison Krauss and Union Station] as a real acid
      test for the ailing country music business, which is experiencing
      a decline in both record sales and radio listeners.


      
Alison Krauss and
      Union Station: the Unofficial Web Site: 

      by D. Stalnaker,
      Moderator
Deeper Than Crying
      - Depress me more...I love it. No one sings a "leaving"
      song the way AK does. Deeper than crying, indeed! To me, this
      one wouldn't have sounded out of place on the last Cox Family
      CD. What a pretty melody
Find My Way Back To
      My Heart - Another winner, and a good choice for the first single.
      AK cranks up the volume a bit on this one. Okay, so she still
      whispers a bit, but I like her balance on this cut. A great melody,
      fleshed out by great musicianship...
One of the greatest
      finds on this CD is the songwriter Mark Simos. He wrote two of
      my favorite songs on the album, "Deeper Than Crying"
      and "Find My Way Back To My Heart". Who is this guy?
      Anyone know his story? "Deeper..." has got to be one
      of the prettiest songs AK has ever recorded. One of the reviews
      I've read includes a comment that "Find My Way..."
      owes more than a little bit of credit to "I've Just Seen
      A Face" by Sir Paul McCartney. For those non-Beatle fans,
      "I've Just Seen A Face" is on the British version of
      "Help!". I hear *some* similarities, but maybe not
      as many as the Time reviewer.

Posted to: Alison Krauss and Union Station: the Unofficial Web Site:
      (D. Stalnaker,
      Moderator; note this website is now "de-commissioned")

      
I first heard "Find
      My Way Back to my Heart" while in a half-sleep dream world
      in the middle of the night. I wondered if I was dreaming or what,
      to hear this gorgeous voice, these perfect musicians who made
      all the right choices, and some real harmonically and structurally
      interesting stuff on a CW song. As soon as I had identified the
      song I ran to get the CD, and have been a devotee ever since.
      She and the band were worth the wait. A real knockout of a group.
- Bob Morin

About the songs...


      
Reflections on Writing the Songs for Alison
      Krauss and Union Station's So Long, So Wrong
(Mark
      Simos · Feb 16, 1997 · Devachan Music)
For the last few days I've been wearing out
      the advance CD copy of Alison Krauss and Union Station's So Long,
      So Wrong. (Actually, CDs don't wear out, they tell me.) The album
      is so good that even if I weren't lucky enough to have two of
      my own songs on it I'd probably be playing it just as much. It's
      a thrill and an honor to have songs included in such a great
      collection spanning such a range of musical worlds. In trying
      to listen to how the songs fit together, and how my songs fit
      in with the album as a whole, I have brought back to mind much
      of the history of how the songs came to be written and the long
      "collaboration at a distance" that took place over
      the almost five years that these songs were on hold.
One thing that I imagine few people other
      than songwriters who have worked with Alison and her band could
      appreciate is how strong and yet respectful a role they play
      in shaping, editing and refining the material of the songs. In
      my case, I wrote both the songs ("Deeper than Crying"
      and "Find My Way Back to My Heart") after meeting Alison
      and hearing a lot of her music. (The latter song was written
      with Alison in mind, but in a special sense I'll talk about in
      a minute.) In any case, neither song is a great song for me to
      perform personally; they are instrumentally challenging and vocally
      not suited to my voice. So the songs reached Alison in what I'd
      call a "raw" state; not having aged much, not having
      been performed except for a few friends and on the demo tape,
      not having been lived with for very long.
When a song's in that state, a performing
      songwriter is usually just starting the editing process. Over
      many performances, you have to "file the burrs" off
      the tune and the words. As ruthless an editor as you may think
      you can be in the initial writing stage, you almost always discover
      assumptions you made that can be dispensed with, roundabout ways
      of saying things that can be simplified, etc. In the case of
      these songs, at least, I can say that Alison and the other members
      of Union Station effectively played that role. From the first
      day when Alison's enthusiastic response to the songs showed up
      on my answering machine (I considered saving the tape for posterity)
      there has been a dialogue involved. I wouldn't call it a co-writing
      relationship per se, because most of the changes involved taking
      little bits away in the right places; but as every songwriter
      knows taking away is often the key to the success of the song,
      not adding more!
When I listen to these songs, I can hear perhaps
      dozens of changes, to words ("for doing things my own way"
      to "by doing things my own way"), to phrasing and timing,
      to chord changes. It all works perfectly, even if someone else
      would have done it differently. It's clear to me that thought
      has gone into every aspect of the song; how many beats should
      come between the chorus and the next verse, when to leave in,
      and when to leave out, a passing chord. This is what makes a
      songwriter feel their work has been "lived into". A
      good song will withstand a lot of tugging and pushing and pulling
      anyway; what you listen for is whether the spirit of the song
      is being furthered, or obscured, by the changes.
Alison may not write her own songs (still
      hard for me to imagine) but her knowledge of what makes a good
      song shows up not only in her choice and selection and, of course,
      performances, but in countless interactions with the writers,
      invisible in the final, beautifully crafted pieces that emerge.
      I've had similar interactions with other people who have done
      my songs, like Laurie Lewis, Jo Miller of Ranch Romance, and
      Kate Brislin and Jody Stecher. It's one of the joys of being
      a songwriter placing material in the hands of great writers,
      singers and interpreters.
Writing the Songs
When I met Alison in 1991, I was just beginning
      to come into confidence with myself as a songwriter, although
      I'd been writing for many years. I'd had just one song recorded,
      "When the Nightbird Sings" by Laurie Lewis on her "Love
      Chooses You" Flying Fish album. I had been writing fiddle
      tunes for almost as long, and had been an accompanist for Irish
      music for many years. I had been living in Europe for the better
      part of a year; I was in the process of splitting up with my
      companion of almost five years, and dealing with my mother's
      illness.
When I met Alison and heard her music, I was
      blown away by the depth and sophistication of bluegrass music.
      I had grown up in California hearing a lot of bluegrass mixed
      in with everything else. I loved bands like the Bluegrass Cardinals
      that played around LA a lot, and the Good Old Persons in the
      Bay Area. But for the most part I had fallen in love with the
      older sound of traditional Southern old-time fiddle music and
      Irish music; bluegrass was just too "modern" for me!
      At that time, as a callow youth, I was drawn to the communal,
      trance aesthetic of old-time music more than the solo-swapping
      hot licks of the bluegrass jam sessions I had been around. At
      the time Laurie Lewis recorded my song I was pretty ignorant
      of more recent developments in bluegrass. So by the time I heard
      Union Station I was unprepared for what an incredible wellspring
      of musicianship and solid craftsmanship the modern bluegrass
      scene had turned into.
I've always found that I write new kinds of
      music after immersing myself in a certain world of sounds for
      a while. I filled my ears with Union Station's music, particularly
      those great John Pennell tunes. Then I found my own accompanist's
      sense of chord movement, derived in large part from Irish music,
      fusing with those sounds to create something that sounded pleasing.
About "Deeper Than Crying"
I heard a song of Ron Block's called "If
      You Can Tame A Heart, Then Half the Battle's Won" which
      knocked me out. The phrasing was different from any song I'd
      heard before, the six emphasized beats of the line was like discovering
      a new kind of poetic stanza. Imagine having written sonnets for
      years and then discovering haiku! That phrasing eventually surfaced
      in my song "Deeper than Crying". All this mixed up
      with my own circumstances into those two songs.
One funny bit of the songwriter/singer dialogue
      that occurred with this song had to do with the line "Deep
      inside my heart is also hurting sore." Originally the last
      words were "hurting sure." Alison and the band didn't
      really get that turn of phrase. Eventually it morphed into "hurting
      sore" (though it sounds like she might be singing "hurting
      so" on the actual track). So I told the band: "Fair
      enough; I guess I'll just have to write a song called "Hurting
      Sure" to show you guys what I meant." And eventually
      I did write that song; it's the penultimate track on my new upcoming
      CD, Crazy Faith.
About "Find My Way Back to My Heart"
"Find My Way..." was curious, in
      that it sort of fused my own life story at that point with the
      little glimpse I'd seen of Alison's band and life on the road.
      In some ways, I may have been writing a song I imagined she might
      write for herself. It was like taking my accompanist's sense
      one step farther; letting her voice live in me for awhile and
      seeing what came out. The result was an odd composite that wasn't
      really true for either of us, but had an integrity of character
      of its own (I hope).
In at least one respect that fusing went a
      little too far (for Alison, anyway!) The night I met the band
      they were in a hotel room, eating cold pizza and watching a horror
      movie on HBO. Thinking about life on the road (not that I was
      living it myself) I wrote the line: "Hotel rooms and pizza/and
      late night TV/Aren't the part of this life that endears it to
      me..." Later, Alison said she just couldn't sing those lines,
      though I protested that they were journalistically accurate I
      later decided for myself that maybe "The home I don't go
      home to/And the friends I don't see" might be a bit more
      of a universal experience...


      
At that time, I guess I hadn't completely
      decided whether I might go back to pursuing a musical life, though
      I was already pretty committed to returning to work in the technology
      field. What I did know was that I had just spent a long time
      in a relationship where I felt like the relationship itself was
      taking a lot of my energy, and I had reached a point in my life
      where I really needed all that energy to be there for figuring
      out my own work in the world. I didn't want to run away from
      the relationship, but I was beginning to realize that being in
      the relationship was a way of running away from me. It may sound
      funny, but I had to get a bit more self-centered for a while.
      (Now I think I may have gone too far in that direction!)
That's why the lead line of the song "...find
      my way back to my heart" is so odd; I noticed over the years
      that when people listened out of the "corner of their ears"
      they'd almost always switch it to "...find my way back to
      your heart." The latter would be the typical kind of romantic
      song to write; it basically says that my meaning revolves around
      another person, that getting their approval and avoiding rejection
      is the name of the game. But it was exactly that kind of imprisoning
      love relationship that I was finding stifling and cowardly for
      myself.


      
That's why it's not really a song about rejection
      of the other; in fact, you don't even know the song is about
      a relationship until the second verse. The first time you hear
      the chorus, therefore, there's a confusing period -- "It's
      too early to say that it's over, or to find we can make a new
      start..." could be the singer talking about the band and
      how successful their tour was going to be! Only the second verse
      definitively introduces the "person sung to"-- starting
      with the "we" and moving to the you only later in the
      verse. This breaks some basic songwriting rules, as my partner
      Kit pointed out while we listened to the band's recording of
      the song. It feels like a multiple-agenda problem, one I've often
      diagnosed in critiques of other people's songs. Is it a song
      about being on the road, or doing one's own thing, or being in
      a relationship, or settling the relationship? The answer is yes.
      The song is about the mysterious resonance between these things.
I've written a number of other songs where
      some outer event is mirrored by a dynamic in a relationship.
      I love crossing these polarities; songs of the world are not
      separate from songs of relationship, because it is our relationships
      that prepare us to meet the world, and we meet the world reflected
      in our relationships all the time. They are our windows. There
      are Bosnias, Rwandas, as well as Olympic Games and Wall Street
      bull runs in the day-to-day stories we play out with our partners.
Similarly, I'll often find that songs sung
      to the other become mirrors of songs sung to some part of myself.
      Fritz Perls, the father of Gestalt psychology, had a way of interpreting
      dreams where everything in the dream is you, woven out of your
      own soul-stuff, so every part of the dream can speak as you in
      interpreting the dream. ("So you're the dancing rabbit with
      wings. What do you want to say to Mark?") I often feel that
      songs put you into a similar dream-state.


      
To bring this back to "Find My Way"
      -- all this is hidden in that song in a way I could not see when
      I was writing it. This not coming to terms with the song showed
      up in my struggle over fixing up some of the last lines. "No
      one but me's gonna take my part" can sound peevish and defensive,
      or it can sound like owning up to the part I have to play that
      only I can play. What are the things that will remain undone
      if I do not do them? This is not competition; it's not about
      the chances that someone else will get if I don't move first.
      It's about doing what I came here to do, being what I came here
      to be; an act of stepping into the world. And you never know
      when this work is finished; it's always too early to say. "My
      heart" here is my destiny; and only in alignment with that
      can I answer a question like whether a relationship is alive
      or not.


      
This has been a retrospective of some of what
      went into writing the two songs for Alison, and an attempt to
      show the real nature of the collaboration involved in placing
      good songs in the hands of great artists. It was a five year
      wait -- but, man, was it ever worth it!

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