Robert Plant & Alison Krauss Talk Making Of Their New Album
Robert Plant & Alison Krauss have spoken about the making of Raise The Roof, their new album, out 19 November and available to pre-order here.
In an interview in the new issue of Mojo, out now, the pair discussed the circumstances that led to them recording together for the first time since 2007’s hugely successful Raising Sand. Krauss revealed: “We’d hook up when Robert came through Nashville… We’d constantly send songs back and forth, and talk about songs we should do.”
Plant when on to talk about the point where he became sure that the two should work together again, when his Shape Shifters band and Krauss’ Union Station shared a bill at Willie Nelson’s Outlaw Festival in Indiana, September 2019: “For me, it came to a head when we were both on the same show as Willie Nelson. I was more or less convinced that night, that we had to make space for another go – that it would definitely be a terrible waste if we didn’t carouse again.”
They went on to speak about the inspiration they’ve taken from one another, with Krauss reflecting on Plant’s different take on American music: “I grew up with the songs of rural America but it’s been amazing to hear the stuff Robert’s introduced me to, which are often the blues versions of things that I knew from growing up on the bluegrass side – the same stories of the droughts and the natural disasters of the dustbowl, the sharecroppers’ connection to the land, and love, loss, and death. it’s very raw in both styles of music. Mine came from Jimmy Rogers, his came from Robert Johnson.”
Plant agreed, “I thought I’d got America down, but here was this whole world of country music I’d not encountered. That’s the great thing about me and Alison – we’re ably supported by a world of beautiful music that one or other of us doesn’t know too much about.”