Robert Plant and Alison Krauss revealed their new single “High and Lonesome,” off their upcoming album Raise The Roof (Rounder Records), out Nov. 19.
Videos by American Songwriter
Marking the duo’s first album together in 14 years, following the 2007 Grammy Award-winning Raising Sand, on Raise The Roof Plant and Krauss reunite to take on iconic songs of country, folk, blues, and soul with their own renditions.
Written by Plant and T Bone Burnett, who also produced the album and Raising Sand, “High and Lonesome” is the sole original track on the album. Burnett also plays electric guitar and mellotron on the track, along with featured musicians guitarist Marc Ribot and pedal steel player Russell Pahl, bassist Dennis Crouch, drummer Jay Bellerose, Viktor Krauss on mellotron, and Jeff Taylor on bass accordion.
Following the lead single “Can’t Let Go“—Plant and Krauss’ rendition of the Lucinda Williams and Randy Weeks 1998 duet—“High and Lonesome” is a bluesy chug, searching the smokier ends for love with Plant’s croons of Take me down / Down to the river / Lift me high Upon the flood / And there will be no turning back… Well now meet me In the bottom / With the serpents And the vine / And I’mma shout out loud and appealing refrains of I must find my love… Does she still think of me.
Recorded at Sound Emporium Studios in Nashville and completed weeks before the shutdown around the pandemic, Raise The Roof also features deep cut covers of The Everly Brothers, Merle Haggard, Allen Toussaint, Anne Briggs, Bert Jansch, Calexico, Geeshie Wiley, and more.
“One of my favorite parts of this is the songs and songwriters that I had never heard of,” says Alison Krauss. “Working with Robert, and with T Bone, is always a great education in music history.”
Plant adds, ”It’s such a far cry from everything I’ve done before. I love the whole kaleidoscope of music that I’ve explored, but this is a place where you can think within the song, you can decide how to bring home an emotion. It’s another blend that we’ve got, and long may we have more of them.”
Raise The Roof Track list
1. Quattro (World Drifts In)
2. The Price of Love
3. Go Your Way
4. Trouble With My Lover
5. Searching for My Love
6. Can’t Let Go
7. It Don’t Bother Me
8. You Led Me to The Wrong
9. Last Kind Words Blues
10. High and Lonesome
11. Going Where the Lonely Go
12. Somebody Was Watching Over Me
