Robert Plant and Alison Krauss join Zane Lowe on Apple Music 1 to discuss their forthcoming album ‘Raise The Roof’, due out this Friday. They discuss deciding which songs to cover on the album, their creative partnership, creating in the studio with producer T Bone Burnett, hoping to tour when safe, how American geography influenced the album, and more.
Robert Plant Tells Apple Music About ‘Raise The Roof’…
The bottom line is, these are great songs. It just pushed them out into the world again and have a lot fun. As far as what's going on around me, there are still people making records about human relationships and they're following time on a path most of them that I hear. And that, in a way, people still need some joy and they need some sort of reflection, if that's the game that we are playing. So in a way it's kind of more comforting and convenient to join with Alison and to visit songs that came from times which we can just about relate to.
Robert Plant Tells Apple Music About Deciding Which Songs To Cover on the Album…
We've got to stay in this area of what I think are songs that actually have, they have a life and their life that you can re-energize the original themes and you can play with them because they're not hard set in people's imaginations. So it gives us the opportunity to put our own personality into somebody else's work, which in places it's quite profound and coming from another time when songwriting and people's stories and statements and concerns were from a totally different time with a different onus. And I think that gives us a opportunity not to crush the original idea, but to just take it into another place, which is our goal. And it's been remarkable really. We did exchange music for such a long time but then scuttled on to the next project. And then, slowly but surely, we have this thing where we can explore the less trodden pathways, I think of these songs.
Robert Plant Tells Apple Music About The Duo’s Plans To Tour When Safe...
We have some plans to start rehearsing. As a matter of fact, while we've been together now, with this band, we've been playing every day and it's sounding pretty good. Bottom line is, the thing is drawing together. So after a week of playing together now, I think we are almost at the stage where a little bit more work and we could be on the road, but we have to wait and see. We've got some plans and there are people called agents who start to get a little bit hungry. Their plates aren't quite as full as they used to be. So everybody's touting they're in the game and we are in the game.
Robert Plant Tells Apple Music About The Role American Geography Plays in Informing The Album and His Career…
Well, because America's made up of... Every two or three miles, it's a new America. And so geographically, it carries so many different arrivals from birth right the way through the game. So I spent some time living in Austin, Texas, and I felt far more affinity going into the hill country, into the old Comancheria, the Comanche lands, away from a new, very, very new juvenile European civilization that had found its way there. I just find it's very, very interesting, because I come from a very old country where my ancestors go back 2 or 3000 years, more or less where I live. So I find America to be stimulating in so many different ways, but I'm always a guest. I'm always checking it out. And quite often I must say, for all the years from 1968 to 1980, when I was in the hurricane, I thought I knew, I thought I had an idea, but really all I got was some sort of confectionary. I never really started taking it in and all its various, the forefathers, your people came from Germany. So there's a whole lean there. And that comes across socially, in communication, in music, in musical leanings. And I think it doesn't kind of work if you're in Wolverhampton.
Alison Krauss Tells Apple Music About Singing with Robert Plant…
Well, depending on where the lead lands, who's singing lead, where, and if I'm singing the melody, if he should sing right underneath or skip that middle part and sing the low one and vice versa, where his range is on a particular song. It's just kind of where the melody lands. And sometimes you move it around. Our ranges aren't an octave apart, kind of on like the standard duet. We're a little closer together, our ranges.
Alison Krauss Tells Apple Music She Knew She’d Re-Visit Her Creative Partnership with Robert Plant...
Yeah. I thought we would revisit this again. I didn't know when it would be. I always thought we probably would. But I didn't know. You don't want to do it out of time. And you don't want to do it out of time and not have the right songs in place or it would never be enjoyable. I don't feel like that there was a time prior to this, that would have been the right spot because we wouldn't have had the collection of songs together…
Alison Krauss Tells Apple Music About Interpreting Other People’s Songs…
My whole musical career has been interpreting other writers. I'm not a songwriter. There's probably, I had three that that I've actually helped with or written with someone. And I wouldn't even say I did that. So my whole life is searching out songs and songwriters and interpreting another person's story. So getting to hear more wonderful people and tell their story from something of a whole other world to me is really magical. So yes, this experience of hearing tunes and getting to do covers, that's my life. So I love this part of it and hearing new people because see, I grew up in a very certain genre. So hearing other people from another world is really magical.
Alison Krauss Tells Apple Music About Being In The Studio with Robert Plant and T Bone Burnett…
It's always a surprise in there. These guys have such personalities and identity, what they're playing and to hear it come together, when people are finding their way, and to hear new life to something you've heard for years. It's really a magical time. It felt like no time had passed for any of us. And you saw most of the same characters back in there. And, you know, beautiful poetry.
Alison Krauss Tells Apple Music About Covering Bert Jansch’s Song “It Don’t Bother Me”…
That was the first one we recorded. It felt like something I had already sang. The feelings of it and where it kind of landed was a very familiar place. Felt like a bluegrass song to me, was really familiar. I love the way that turned out. And I hadn't heard Burt's music or Anne Briggs. And so that was like a, a whole new moment in time where you go, how do I make it this long without listening to them my whole life? It's always a plus.
