Alison Krauss performs Sunday at the Newport Folk Festival.

Alison Krauss has good memories of the folk festival in Newport. As a 15-year-old in 1986, she and her band, Union Station, made their Newport debut, and the splash they made led to their contract with Rounder Records, their label to this day. It also exposed the Illinois native and her band to an East Coast audience, and the world for their high-energy traditional bluegrass opened up tremendously.

“That was really what made the difference in our band, playing that festival,” the singer and fiddler says now. “It was a really pivotal moment. . . . My whole family went. We drove from Illinois.”

Krauss has come a long way. She returns to Newport for her fifth folk festival performance (the others were in 1987, 1993 and 1998) with millions of records sold, 20 Grammys and a firm position straddling the line between bluegrass and old-time American fiddle and vocal music with Union Station on one side and more mainstream Nashville-style country as a singing solo act on the other.

Her latest record, A Hundred Miles or More, a collection of songs and cameos previously released on other people’s records and movie soundtracks, works mostly on the latter side. There’s one song, “Sawing on the Strings,” with Union Station and Tony Rice, but the record mostly has songs such as “Down to the River to Pray” from the O Brother Where Art Thou? soundtrack; “The Scarlet Tide” from Cold Mountain; “Whiskey Lullaby,” a duet with Brad Paisley from Paisley’s Mud on the Tires album; “How’s the World Treating You?,” a duet with James Taylor from Livin’, Lovin’, Losin’: Songs of the Louvin Brothers, and more.

There are five new songs as well, and they fit in the same gentle vein as the older stuff.

The record begins with “You’re a Country Boy,” a gender-switched cover of “I’m a Country Boy,” made famous by Don Williams, that gains poignancy in the yearning re-framing: “You’re a country boy/ Money have you none/ But you’ve got silver in the stars/ And gold in the morning sun.”

It continues with the homespun “Simple Love” and the harrowing “Jacob’s Dream,” about the disappearance of two small children on a wintry day. “Away Down the River” is a sweet song of condolence, and “Lay Down Beside Me” is a sweet duet with John Waite (their duet on Waite’s “Missing You” is also included).

Krauss says that the thread of the collection was chronological, not thematic — a chance to put a lot of guest appearances and one-off recordings onto one disc. But at the same time, she says, “The tunes that I picked on there, I think they do go together. The tunes gave me a similar feeling. I felt like when the record was over, I had a specific feeling. I didn’t fell like I’d been thrown about by a bunch of things from different places.”

And the new material fits in as well. “The idea came up to put out another compilation record, and I was like ‘No way!’ and my manager said, ‘Let me just gather all the things you’ve done over the past 12 years and see what you think.’ And the more I listened, the more I began to think that it could work together.”

Next up in the recording pipeline for Krauss is a Union Station record, but there’s no firm plan on when that will be. The next disc to come out, however, is a record that will pair Krauss with former Led Zeppelin frontman Robert Plant and that should come out in October.

“There’s a mixture of things” on the record, with songs picked by producer T-Bone Burnett, Krauss says. “It’s a very different record for me, and for Robert. There’ll be a strong reaction to it either way. . . . People will either be really happy about it or they won’t be.”

Krauss raves about working with Plant. “There is no mistake why he has made the mark on history that he has.… Just a passionate person about music and the history of music, and so knowledgeable and so personable. I’ll never forget it, working on that record.”

Krauss’ switching between the hardcore bluegrass and old-time country of Union Station and the relatively (only relatively) Nashville-friendly mainstream of her solo work used to draw criticism from purists in her youth. Asked whether she still gets such flak, she says, “I’m sure that we do, but I don’t care; I don’t listen to it.

“It’s something I paid more attention to when I was younger. I feel like my experience as a musician has been so exciting and rewarding that the comments of other people complaining about what kind of music I’m singing, it’s really a waste of time to pay attention to it. I feel like I am led by what inspired me, and what’s interesting.”

The mix of solo and band success would seem to make it difficult to keep a band together, but the “newest” member of Union station is dobroist Jerry Douglas, marking his 10th year. Of such longevity and stability, Krauss says, “This would be your hope. Is it tough, too? The band has gone through changes through the years, but this is pretty consistent now. I think it just depends on the personality and the attitude. If everybody is like-minded, this is the biggest issue. And we are.”

Her willingness to do whatever she wants is a cause and an effect of an independent streak that she credits to her parents, as well as the early start to her career.

“Luckily, when I first started playing music I was living at home. . . . I think that was a plus. My parents encouraged me to be very independent. And because I wasn’t worried about making a living, I just played what I wanted to play.” It’s a spirit of risk-taking that a lot of artists say they wish they could have, but never seem to break out of giving their fans what they expect.

“My personality has always been stubborn and hard-headed about work, so I don’t know. But I do see why that happens, and obviously folks who do say those things have connection to what they’re doing, period, or they couldn’t do it at all. So it’s probably just different levels of what’s inspiring.”

It was also a matter of motivation.

“I was never driven by imagining myself as a well-known person. My heroes were Del McCoury and Ralph Stanley. The biggest dream in the world was going to play bluegrass festivals and to play and hear other people play. I didn’t daydream about what life was going to be like in 10 years, career-wise.”

She may have dreamed of playing at bluegrass festivals, but they didn’t stop there.

“We didn’t. But it was just how it happened. It’s been wonderful. I never thought I would get to do it in the first place.”

Alison Krauss and Union Station play at the Dunkin’ Donuts Newport Folk Festival on Sunday at Fort Adams in Newport. For ticket information, call (866) 468-7619 or go to www.ticketweb.com.

rmassimo@projo.com