Music makes strange alliances

A new Alison Krauss album is being sold by none other than Cracker Barrel.
By RANDY LEWIS
LOS ANGELES TIMES
When the going gets tough, some counterculture wag observed a couple of decades ago, the tough get weird. So as the record industry continues to grapple with sliding sales, file-sharing and other woes, strange new trends keep emerging.
Case in point: Fans of Alison Krauss and Union Station who pick up the country-bluegrass queen's new album, "Home on the Highways," can ask the cashier to ring it up with a side order of baked apple dumplings to go.
That's because the collection is being sold exclusively through Cracker Barrel Old Country Stores. The 35-year-old Lebanon, Tenn.-based restaurant-retail chain now has more than 500 locations in 41 states and in recent years has been making music a regular part of its retail mix.
In fact, go to Cracker Barrel's Web site and you'll find a plug for "Home on the Highways" -- right above the description of the restaurant's beef n' broccoli dinner entr & eacute;e.
That doesn't bother Dan Tyminski, Union Station's guitarist, who gained fame of his own with his performance of "I Am a Man of Constant Sorrow" for the "O Brother, Where Art Thou?" soundtrack.
Consultation
That recording is one of the 11 cuts on "Home on the Highways," for which Krauss and her bandmates consulted with executives from Rounder Records, their longtime label, and Cracker Barrel for a compilation they hoped would suit the company's customers.
"It's such an obvious match for us it's pitiful," Tyminski says with a chuckle. "All of us in the band frequent the Cracker Barrel. We take our kids and shop and they like to see the toys and it has all the food things they like. It seems like a perfect marriage."
Just as Starbucks has found gold in moving music with mocha, Cracker Barrel carries specially assembled CDs, both multiartist collections and an "American Legends" series with individual entries for such obvious candidates as Hank Williams, Patsy Cline and Tammy Wynette but also running afield of country music with albums by Louis Armstrong and Frank Sinatra.
For Rounder Records, it's a new given in the business that traditional retail stores aren't enough.
"Alison is our premiere artist, and we're always looking for new opportunities to expose people to the band's music," says the label's general manager, Paul Foley. "As space at music retailers continues to shrink and they give more space to DVDs and games, everybody has to look for new ways to deliver music through nontraditional outlets."
For those in the nine states the chain hasn't penetrated, it's available at www.crackerbarrel.com.