Song Exploder - Partners: Robert Plant & Alison Krauss

Episode Date: April 20, 2022

This week, I want to introduce you to another podcast that I make, called Partners. It’s a show about partnerships that was born out of Song Exploder. I’ve made a bunch of episodes with bandmates, or co-writers, or an artist and a producer who worked together, all these stories where the songs were the result of a really special collaboration. And I was always fascinated by the origins of the relationship, as part of the story of the origin of the song. When you hear those stories, it becomes clear that what these people made together is something that reflects not just each of them individually, but this other, unique entity that only exists where the two of them meet. And I wanted to make a podcast that was entirely about that idea. And I feel like all successful long-term partnerships could be thought of as love stories. It’s a matter of luck, and being in the right place at the right time, and also work and patience, plus some ineffable magic spark. So that’s what Partners is about. The first season came out in 2020, and the second season just began last week. You can subscribe to the show at partners.show, or wherever you get your podcasts, etc, but I also just want to play you this episode from season 2, with two music greats, Robert Plant and Alison Krauss, who have made two incredible albums together. For more, visit songexploder.net/partners.

You're listening to Song Exploder, where musicians take apart their songs and piece by piece tell the story of how they were made. I'm Rishi Kesh Hirwe. This week, I want to introduce you to another podcast that I make called Partners. It's a show about partnerships that was born out of Song Exploder. Over the years, I've made a bunch of episodes with bandmates or with co-writers or an artist and a producer who worked together really closely. All these stories where the song was a result of a really special collaboration. And I was always fascinated by the origins of those relationships. When you hear those stories, it becomes clear that what these people made together is something that reflects not just each of them individually,

but this other unique entity that only exists where the two of them fit together. And I wanted to make a podcast that was entirely about that idea. Also, I feel like all successful long-term partnerships can sort of be thought of as love stories, because they're a matter of luck and being in the right place. at the right time, but also work and patience and some ineffable magic spark. So all of that is what Partners is about. The first season came out in 2020, and the second season just began last week. You can subscribe to the show at Partners. Show, or wherever you get your podcasts, et cetera, et cetera.

But I also just want to play you this episode from Season 2. It features two music greats, Robert Plant and Alison Krause, who have made two incredible albums together. I hope you like it. We were on the road and they would throw a new song in last second. There are enough elements

on my end that I felt could go wrong and then they'd want to throw a new song in there and I'm like oh you guys come can we just you know. Yeah that very thing was the thing that used to make me go what's wrong with this woman? My name is Alison Krauss.

And I am the long serving suffering Robert Plant. Robert Plant and Alison Kraus have made two albums together. Their first album, Raising Sand, came out in 2007 and won the Grammy for Album of the Year. 14 years later, they reunited for their

second album, Raise the Roof. Robert Plant was the singer and frontman of Led Zeppelin. He's in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, and he won a Lifetime Achievement Grammy. Allison Krause is a multi-platinum artist who started out as a fiddle playing Child Prodigy. She's one of the top Grammy winners

of all time. She has 27. On their albums together, Robert and Allison combined their individual rock and bluegrass sensibilities to reimagine songs. Their story began in 2003 when Robert was in the car listening to the radio. A long, long time ago, I was driving home from a local hostelry

and I heard this most beautiful voice and a whole idiom of music that didn't really permeate the sound waves in the United Kingdom. But I heard these beautiful tomes and this beautiful voice and this innocence exuding a promise and optimism, the likes of which I'd never heard before. The voice sitting opposite me that's now looking at me with a very strange expression. And I pulled over on the side of the road and Alison sang to me about little children on the side of a hill who had lost their sheep. And their parents were looking for them all night long, playing banjos.

That's a true story. In the spring of 1856 with the snow still... It just captivated me. I was enamored by her style and the lightness of her delivery. I'd been invited to go to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland, Ohio, to celebrate the work of Leadbelly. to pay kind of homage in a way to him, I was able to reach out to Allison. I remember I got a call from my manager at the time, and she goes, hey, Robert Plant is going

to call you in five minutes. My brother used to play Led Zeppelin in his room, and we had grown up listening to that music. And so I said, what does he want? She goes, I don't know. So at the time I was putting my son to sleep, who was a little boy at the time. And so there the phone rang and, hello, it's Robert. And I had to be really quiet. I just was trying not to wake my son up. And so I had to go, hey, Robert, yeah, it's really great. Nice to talk to you. And it was kind of like this really weird phone call. And then he asked about going and playing in Cleveland. So we met in Cleveland in remarkable circumstances. I didn't think about how her world worked as a traveling musician, and she knew nothing about mine.

And we did the rehearsal at an Armenian dance hall that was like stepping into another world. I thought this is one of the most incredible places I'd ever seen. It was like just out of some Fellini movie or something way back in the day. And I saw him standing in the corner with his hairdo. My hairdo, wait a minute. Hang on. My hairdo is my business. You know, and I walked up to him and he turns around and says,

oh, there you are. And the first conversation we had was about one of my favorite records by Ralph Stanley called Clinch Mountain Gospel. And he talked about in the 70s driving through the Appalachian Mountains, listening to that record and I thought how interesting I would have had no idea that he had that kind of connection to that world and it was just great. A very good first meeting because it allowed us to see what our personalities might be like which is almost more important than where we go to as players. She's a very charming and

humorous woman, we really did have some kind of very unusual, unexpected affinity. And we took the stage and played some lead-belly stuff. Well, let's just say it was work in progress. There was a little bit of floundering. Unfortunately, I didn't realize there was one or two really important aspects of singing with another person that I've yet to be considering. And that is, if I'm singing, what is the other person going to sing? And I've heard this talk now, which has actually been drilled into me by Madam,

about singing harmonies. For singing a duet, depending on the range of the person that you're singing with, you're either singing one part above or two parts above. But, you know, I just thought we just sing. I was sending it left, right and center with Alison screwing up that beautiful face and saying, why don't you sing the same thing twice? Because how, in heaven's name, am I supposed to sing along with you? If you're kind of, baby, oh, mama, mama, all over the place.

It was just really funny. But, you know, the great thing about it was even when it was going into some strange, spiral of turmoil. Alison was laughing at me across her violin, and I think she thought I was a little bit nuts. So that was the way that we started once upon a time in Cleveland. But whatever happened that night, set the scene for all the events that have followed it, really. And the next time that we talked was about making a record.

Robert called. Again. And he says, hey, let's get together and go in the studio for three days, and let's just give it a shot. And he said, if it doesn't work, we'll just move on. And I thought, well, that sounds like fun. And I remember saying, I don't want to produce it. He says, I don't want to produce it.

So I brought up T-Bone Burnett, who I had worked with a number of times on the O'Brother were Arthou Soundtrack and Cold Mountain. and he had an incredible respect for that kind of music, you know, bluegrass music and acoustic music. And I knew about his career with rock and roll. And he seemed like a perfect bridge. Robert loved the idea. T-Bone loved the idea.

T-Bone had suggested some particularly beautiful songs. And sent us those. And then we got together in Nashville. And I have to admit, I was nervous. how we were going to do it because there were so many unknowns of what in the world, you know, how it was going to work. Walking in with a blindfold on, I said to T-Bone, well, you know, we've got three days. We can see how it goes and, you know, no more commitment after that.

And he says, oh, we'll get it done. He goes, this is going to work. And he was very confident. And he had said, T-Bone said, well, my goal is to make you both very uncomfortable. And we're like, boy, that sounds like a joy. I can't wait to get in the studio. But he wanted us to not be doing something we'd already done. And I guess two or three days before we went in to track,

we did a lot of rewriting, trading those leads and harmony parts around. And some of the melody lines where we would switch, you know, from Robert's singing lead to me singing lead, and then he would jump to harmony. And I thought that was a really beautiful, idea. We're not trying to create something where our egos are being looked after by making sure that I get my bit in, and Allison gets her bit in. It's not always going to be both of us singing. It's not always going to be either of us backing the other up. For myself and for Robert,

it was a totally new way of singing together. You know, he is very off the cuff and I grew up in a very regimented style of singing. And, you know, to bring those things together can be... Interesting. Yes. Robert's attitude was, let's just go in and try. And so for myself, that's the first time I'd ever recorded like that. With Allison, I was learning. I was going into an area that kind of worried me and frightened me and still does. And I follow her angles when it comes to harmonies and stuff like that, which in the past would be something that I would consider to be unattainable, because it's never been in my world at all.

The boundaries of that atmosphere with the three of us in there and that group of musicians, I mean, it was a group think. And we ended up really kind of giving a new life to those songs. You could suggest a song and play the original version and just, get a feel for it if it came from 1953 or whatever it was. For example, rich woman originally by Lil Millet down in New Orleans. That's such a sexy piece of music. I mean, it's just incredible in its original form. If we didn't have the right guys there, musicians who were on the studio floor, it would have sounded lumpy and it would have been like, oh, this is not

going to work, but instead it was like incredibly alluring the groove that was created. I'm pretty sure we were already talking about making another record while we were touring the first one. You know, I never played with amps like they had on stage. You know, everything for me in the past was, you know, very low volume. I could hear everything and we were on the road. And they would throw a new song in. last second, there are enough elements on my end that I felt could go wrong, and then they'd want to throw a new song in there, and I'm like, oh, you guys, can we just, you know.

Yeah, that very thing was the thing that used to make me go, what's wrong with this woman? I mean, surely, expression is everything. If you can take your violin towards the amplifier to get a little bit of feedback, and then perhaps put your violin bow. I'll just take the mic right in front of the amp. Yeah, see, she's waiting to come out. Alison Krause comes out. His spontaneity when he sings is so different than my whole mentality through the years.

I got really fascinated with being able to sing something 10 times and be able to piece something together. And then, you know, he'd get in there and just throw down. And it was all about right now, right this second. This is about capturing this moment in time. And it was really a wake-up call for myself, you know, about really being present and authentic. I was a typical English rocker, so to end up being encouraged and enamored by her meticulous vision of various parts of certain songs was quite an experience for an old dog. I found it was incredibly rewarding musically, and we had actually started to solder a really great affinity between us,

a friendship which doesn't have to be propped up by anything at all. The whole thing was a surprise from just beginning to end. To have that whole thing wrap up with such an unexpected ending was just really remarkable. really. The Grammys? Yeah. Now we can fly between the great work of Calexico and the lost works of Gishi Wiley. There's no boundaries to where we can go because we're actually, we're almost translators in this situation, I think.

So as long as there are songs that people have never heard on my jukeboxer in my record collection or in Alicons, then we've got a relationship and a gig together. Robert Plant and Alison Krause are partners. Their two albums, Raise the Roof and Raising Sand, are available everywhere. You can find them online at plantcrowse.com or at Plantcrowse. Partners is made by me, Rishi Keishy Sheerway. I produced and edited this episode and made the theme music. Maureen Hoban is my co-producer, and Chloe Parker and Casey Deal are the production assistants. Kathleen Smith handled music clearance.

Partners is a MailChimp podcast, Made in a Mawbush. partnership with Radiotopia. Find out more at Mailchimp.com slash presents and at Radiotopia.fm. I have a new album of my own coming out on April 24th. It's been about 15 years since I last put out of full length, and this is the first one that'll be out under my own name, Rishi Kesh Her Way. I started making Song Exploder when I was feeling lost in my own music career. And then for over a decade, I've gotten to have these incredible conversations about the process of making music talking to other artists. and it made me completely rethink my relationship to music and my way of writing songs.

And this album is the product of all of that. It features contributions from some of my favorite artists, including some folks that you may have heard on this podcast, like Iron and Wine, Kevin Morby, Vagabon, Fenlily, and the producer Phil Wine Robe. I'm going to be on tour playing in cities across the U.S. starting in April, and I'm trying to bring the spirit of the podcast with me. So every show that I'm playing will begin with a conversation about the album with a different amazing guest moderator in each city,

like Adam Scott, Samin Nasrat, Jason Manzukas, Josh Molina, Minjin Lee, Ken Jennings, John Roderick, Austin Cleon, and more. They're all going to be my conversation partners on stage, and then I'll play with my band. The album is called In the Last Hour of Light, and the first couple songs are out now. You can listen to the music and get tickets for the shows on my website, RishiCash.co, or just go to SongExploder.net,

slash live. That's songexploder.net slash live. Thanks. If you want to hear more episodes of partners, you can find it and subscribe to it in your favorite podcast app. I love making that podcast, and I hope you'll keep listening to it. I'm going to be back here next time with a new episode of Song Exploder with Arouj Afthab, who just made history earlier this month by becoming the first Pakistani woman to win a Grammy. Until then, you can follow me at Rishi Hirwe, or you can Follow Song Exploder at Song Exploder, and you can get a Song Exploder t-shirt at songexploader.net slash shirt. I'm Rishi Kesheirway. Thanks for listening. Radiotopia.