Alison Krauss & Union Station featuring Jerry Douglas have sold out concerts all over the United States.

The bluegrass and roots group has released eight albums. Krauss has won 27 Grammys, more than any other female artist.

She has also done six solo albums and two albums with Robert Plant, the former lead vocalist of Led Zeppelin.

Alison Krauss & Union Station featuring Jerry Douglas are in concert, 7:30 p.m. July 20, State Theatre Center for the Arts, Easton.

Jerry Douglas is generally considered to be the most famous, and best, Dobro player in the world. He has performed on some 2,000 recordings and has won 16 Grammys.

A Dobro is played horizontally, with a slide, like a pedal steel guitar. It is a type of resonator guitar, with a metal plate in the middle to amplify the sound instead of a sound hole. It has a twangy sound, most often heard in country and bluegrass.

Douglas calls from his home in Nashville, Tenn., on the hottest day of the year in the Lehigh Valley. It is 112 degrees Fahrenheit where he lives. He notes one advantage of his success:

“People used to say, ‘A Dobro? What’s that?’ I don’t get that much anymore.”

This is Union Station’s “Arcadia” tour, named after the album they released last year. Recorded over a three-year period, it was their first since 2011’s “Paper Airplane,” that debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard Country, Bluegrass, and Folk Album charts and won a Grammy for Best Bluegrass Album.

Alison Krauss & Union Station have performed at Red Rocks Amphitheatre, The Greek Theatre, Radio City Music Hall, and London’s Royal Festival Hall.

The group is Alison Krauss, fiddle, lead vocal; Jerry Douglas, Dobro, lap steel, vocals; Ron Bloc, banjo, guitar, vocals; Barry Bales, bass, vocals, and Russell Moore, guitar, mandolin, lead vocal.

Their concert features Douglas playing alone on a few songs. “It’s a little solo spot to get it out of my system,” he says.

Krauss and Union Station perform many new songs, but the themes follow the spirit of roots music. Her website states: “Many people in bluegrass music talk about being born in the wrong decade. Whenever I sing, the pictures I see in my head take place in a particular time.”

In 2011, Krauss and Union Station appeared with Douglas at Musikfest on the main Steel Stage.

“Alison relies on certain writers a lot,” says Douglas. “They might be pop, but we  give them a different treatment.

“We are acoustic, but not just bluegrass or country. In this band, the instrumental bar is so high, we can go in any direction.”

He says Union Station audiences have a wide range of ages. “There are a lot of youngsters, but I can also see a lot of silver hair.”

One of his side projects is the Jerry Douglas Band, which has a bluegrass sound with a jazz orientation. They have performed at the Sellersville Theater, including in November 2025. “The Set” album from 2024 combines new songs with re-recorded songs to recreate a typical set from the band.

“Dobro is not what I set out to do,” says Douglas, 70. He began with guitar and mandolin, setting up a regular guitar like a Dobro. He did not have lessons, but learned music by listening to his father’s band:

“My dad worked for steel mills. Everyone in his band worked there. They all were from West Virginia or Kentucky and brought their music with them.”

At a music festival, Douglas was asked to become a member of the popular Country Gentlemen, one of the first progressive bluegrass bands.

They wanted him to leave with them that day, but Douglas refused since he was a junior in high school. He soon joined, however, which began a career playing and recording with Eric Clapton, Ray Charles, James Taylor, Paul Simon and many others.

Douglas says he has “run the gamut in the challenge to adapt the Dobro in all kinds of music.” He has recorded in all genres, including rap.

Douglas performs in more than 100 concerts a year:

“I’m trying to scale back next year,” he says, although he is also still working with his traditional bluegrass band The Earls of Leicester and the Celtic-based Transatlantic Sessions.

“I don’t want to retire from having fun,” he says.

“Music is the last thing to go in hard times. People don’t want to stay at home to watch TV and bad news. It takes their minds off of it. Everybody needs this.”

Alison Krauss & Union Station featuring Jerry Douglas, 7:30 p.m. July 20, State Theatre Center for the Arts, 453 Northampton St., Easton. Tickets: 610-252-3132, https://www.statetheatre.org/