It's been 14 years since Alison Krauss and Robert Plant collaborated with producer T-Bone Burnett and wowed the world with their blues blessed Americana tribute album Raising Sand.
After an unsuccessful attempt at an initial follow up, they're back, teaming up to rework another dozen tracks mostly handpicked and produced by Burnett for their latest offering Raise the Roof.
Music 101's Charlotte Ryan talked to Krauss and Plant about the joy and friendship of recording their new album.
Alison Krauss & Robert Plant Photo: David McClister
The pair told Ryan they always wanted to work together again, following Raising Sand, but the right opportunity only presented itself about two years ago.
Plant says when they started on the project they were in a totally different space, and could have been touring for a year by now. But then Covid hit. They managed to record many vocals together, but smaller parts were done separately, sent back and forth to each other to fine-tune.
"So continue to work on it through all these down times and lockdowns and stuff, it's taken a lot of tenacity and a lot of mutual respect to almost feel in the margin, in abstraction, I think it's been a game," Plant says.
"We like what we do together."
Did they have any fears going in to a second album together?
"I don't think we even think too much about it, because the last record you made is always the last record you made, and whatever you're working on currently is like the first one. It's always new," Krauss says.
Plant says if it was 40 years ago they might be in a different position, "playing the game", as such, but music now "translates through the public".
"You know people can make the most beautiful records and they can just completely vanish. It's another game, a different world, so in a way, slightly selfishly I think, we just grab these songs and the people we are working with and made the best we could with them," he says.
"We haven't got to do really do anything beyond just enjoy ourselves and each other's company and musicians we work with, and just try and hit some songs that are beautiful but maybe got lost in time, and just explore together."
Krauss had worked with Burnett before on Cold Mountain and Divine Secrets of the Ya-ya Sisterhood and describes him as having "one foot in rock and roll, one foot in ol' time music".
Alison Krauss & Robert Plant Photo: David McClister
Burnett already had most of the songs for Raise the Roof in mind, but Plant also brought a few to the album.
"He's like a magic man really," Plant says of Burnett.
"He's quite imposing both in his knowledge, his capacity to control and capture a room's momentum and also his humour - and his laugh."
Plant says the record was a collaborative effort.
"Everybody has their moment in the sun in these relationships, and as we go through the sessions there's opinions, and there's a different way of putting it across. It's very interesting. It's a very delicate process."
Krauss says one of the highlights for her was singing the harmony on 'Can't Let Go', while Plant says each song brings out something different every time you listen to it.
"They transmute all the time, they develop... the textures of these pieces of music, once you get inside of them you can concentrate on a different performance every time, outside of just the lyrics and vocals," he says.
"I think It 'Don't Bother Me' is one of my favourites, because it's got a real sensitive build but it becomes in the end, it's almost trip-hop at the end... If we recorded it in Bristol it probably would have turned into something like a Massive Attack kind of moment."
He described the album as having more "rumble, rhythm and groove" than Raising Sand.
"We didn't want it to just be an extension of the last one, you want it to have its own identity," Krauss says.
"I do think it changed a lot. I got more intricate with the harmonies, but for me more than anything, I thought that the poetry got a little bit darker, you know, than the last one.
"So when you do that the tracks naturally change and T-Bone brought in some other personalities that really changed up the feel," she says.
"If everybody's left to be who they naturally are, it will just naturally change, and also Robert and myself are different people than we were 15 years ago. You're not going to be drawn to the same things...it's just a different time."
