Switched on Pop - Robert Plant & Alison Krauss Raise The Roof

Episode Date: December 7, 2021

Robert Plant is in his own words “cold” and “prickly” while speaking about his new album with Alison Krauss, Raise The Roof. First thing upon joining the Zoom call from London, Plant jovially launches into the much misattributed quote “talking about music is like dancing about architecture.” But he is neither callous, nor coy. For Plant the music is ineffable, a joyous celebration of friendship, and a kindred love of song that he shares with Krauss and producer T-Bone Burnett. Their album follows up from their 2007 Grammy award winning album Raising Sand. Both albums are steeped in americana and roots music, favorites that the trio traded across the Atlantic over many years of friendship. There are few hints of Plant’s Led Zeppelin or Krauss’ Union Station. Instead their collaboration sounds timeless, haunting and melancholic. Their idiosyncratic sound emerged from an entirely organic process, a method that both parties are happy to share, but reticent to analyze. Switched On Pop’s co-host Charlie Harding spoke with Plant and Krauss about the making of Raise The Roof.  SONGS DISCUSSED - Spotify Playlist Robert Plant, Alison Krauss - Quattro (World Drifts In), The Price of Love, Go Your Own Way, Trouble With My Love, Can’t Let Go, It Don’t Bother Me, You Led Me To The Wrong, Last Kind Words Blues, High and Lonesome, Going Where The Lonely Go, Somebody Was Watching Over Me Calexico - Quattro (World Drifts In) The Everly Brothers - The Price of Love Anne Briggs - Go Your Own Way Bert Jansch - Go Your Own Way Sandy Denny - Go Your Own Way Led Zeppelin - The Battle of Evermore Betty Harris - Trouble With My Love Lucinda Williams - Can’t Let Go Bert Jansch - It Don’t Bother Me Ola Belle Reed - You Led Me To The Wrong Geeshie Wiley - Last Kind Words Blues  Merle Haggard - Going Where The Lonely Go Pops Staples - Somebody Was Watching  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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your fragrance euphoria. Talking about music. It's our favorite thing to do. It's like dancing about architecture. Welcome to Switch to On Pop. I'm songwriter Charlie Harding. And that was the voice of Robert Plant, known for his lead vocal in the band Led Zeppelin.

He's just put out a record with the great bluegrass artist Alison Krauss, who you may know from her group Union Station or countless Grammy Awards. Their album together is called Raise the Roof, a follow-up 14 years after their award-winning album, Raising Sand, that took the sounds of Americana and crafted their own sort of timeless genre, all at the hands of acclaimed producer T-Bone Burnett. This is a fun. conversation because not only will you get to hear Robert Plant respectfully call out my want to overanalyze music, but you'll also hear how two artists at the top of their games come together to collaborate in a spontaneous and authentic way with some music that I really love and I think you will too. Here's my conversation with Robert and Allison. It's cold. Tennessee, it shouldn't be that cold. So here we are prickly and ready to go. It's London and it's freezing cold. Everybody's frightened. Nobody wants to go home. So let's start with the opening number from Raise the Roof, Quatro, a composition by the American Southwest band, Calexico.

Tell me about this song choice. How did it come about? Well, I've been collecting Calexico music for as long as I can remember. Obviously, not quite as long as I can remember. But I've always been really absolutely in joyous frenzy at the way that they can ricochet through. the various forms of music that they touch on. That's something going on down around Tucson.

And this was one of the songs that I really, I thought it was a challenging piece. It isn't within the normal vein of what you would call sort of duet material, I don't think, or whatever you want to say. It just seemed like a song that would be really good to try and explore. And hence, there we have it. There we have it. I sent it across to Allison from here. And she really felt very similar to me that it was a great piece of music.

I knew that when I heard that Kalexico song for me, I knew that we would be going in. That was so beautiful. It was like one of those things when people have those big moments that they heard of an event, you know, in history. And they know where they were and where they were driving or what they were doing. or what they were wearing. That was kind of for me with the Colixco song. It was so beautiful. I just thought, here we go.

So I love that this song is both the beginning of the record, but it's also the impetus to make the record. And it's a great place to begin because it starts with running. Things are in action. And lyrically, it's a mysterious song. You can't quite grab onto what's happening. I'm curious while you wanted to start here.

It's a challenging and very well-conceived piece of music. And the challenge is not what they were saying, but the fact that we would try and visit it ourselves, I think. What did you want to bring in your approach? I don't know, because we didn't know until we started to sing together, where it was going to go. There's nothing up front about any of these songs. We just settle down with them in the room.

Quite often, either with T-Bone and a guitar, or with, yeah, various musicians around will pick up the lilt or the sway of the whole thing. And most often, songs just develop and build on the floor. There's an improvisatory way that you approach songmaking. I know for you, Alison, that you've been known for being really meticulous in the way that you use a studio to layer vocals, find the perfect. take. How is it for you to work in this kind of methodology in approaching a song? You know, with Union Station, we've done a bit more pre-production, but I guess the biggest

difference for me is, you know, stepping back and making sure that I honor the taste of T-bone to a degree that, you know, when things start to go a little uncomfortable, that I don't stop it, you know, you know, something that might be new and uncomfortable for me, that's really, then we know we're moving someplace different. And the vocals, too, he's very much into capturing, you know, that specific moment, including lead vocals. That was the hardest for me, because I really liked to sing things thousands of times, if possible. And he says, you know, we can. but I really like where this is.

And I think that T-Bone and Robert are much more connected with that style of being so spontaneous. And it's really magical. And after doing raising sand, I could never go back to the same crazy, meticulous part of, at least singing lead. I couldn't go back. It works both ways, though, doesn't it really? because if you think about through the morning, through the night. But to know that the trust you hurts me through the door. The achievement for me is being able to master the right harmonic variations

that actually make the songs, when it's appropriate, make the songs blossom into something that I could never, ever imagine. And so I take my little hat off to you there because I can spend time going, I don't like doing this. Oh, yes, I do. It's sort of the curve. It's kind of working both ways, yeah. A lot of the music that you approach uses a lot of common one, four, five blues chords. What is the relationship between those kinds of progressions and the kind of harmonies that you all create together?

I have no idea. I mean, those, you seldom find too many tunes without one four or five in them somewhere. I don't know. I guess, you know, we don't, there's no plan other than, you know, you have to follow the chord structure. And, you know, when you're doing parts, or people are going to throw you out in the street. I think when you go to the forecord, something happens. Some sort of beautiful revelation sometimes. It arrives just at the right time.

And that's probably some time when the harmonies would suddenly arrive out of nowhere, and everybody's in pieces going, oh, I feel so much better now. Actually, I've only found out recently what a five chord is when I came to Nashville. But yeah, I don't know, the songs were already there. Somebody else, to the main degree, has already written these songs. So there is a lure to the four chord. Yeah, there's something about the familiarity of these traditional sounds that I think really highlight the relationship that you all have. As friends, as collaborators, as record makers, I want to go to another song.

You cover the song Price of Love by Don and Phil Everly, the Everly Brothers. A family duo known for their intertwined melodies And it seems fitting for a duet But you slow this song down And approach it quite differently What did you want to say with this performance of Price of Love? What was fun about this song And you know like Buddy Holly songs

in addition to a lot of these tunes like the Everleys, where they have such a happy, beautiful, upbeat melody. Wine is sweet, but you won't forget her. You would never know the kind of the tragic lyric that went along with that. Yeah. You would really have to pay attention to that because you're living in the swing of it or in the pace, and it really uncovers how sad that lyric is.

when you do it like this. And the melody is still the same, but just the temple could uncover this whole other mood to this tune. But, you know, poetry like that has many parallel universes attached to them. When you said,

let's slow it down, we gave it another, we gave it some, a different complexion, which I think was exactly the right thing to do because it's a great piece. The songs on this record are extremely diverse,

but there seems to be some unifying things. themes. We hear a lot of lost love and unrequited romance and loneliness. How did you choose which songs fit this record? What were you aiming for? Well, how many times have I lost love in the last 24 hours? I mean, it's tough out there. I don't know. You don't choose songs. They come, and they come and find you. All the blue stuff that I've collected through my time since I was a kid at school, there's always something going wrong, you know, and when it goes wrong, people can empathize with it. There's a sort of common chord, a thread that runs through all of our lives,

and sometimes these songs can be cathartic. What about for you, Alison? One thing I know that I've loved about this process is that no one, I mean, no one, the three of us, no one is interested in anything that doesn't have. a full commitment. You know, no one is pushing for one that another person isn't interested in. And without trying to do anything, nothing was planned out or contrived about this project other than you knew the cast. Right. You, Robert, and producer T. Baum Burnett. I don't know. Robert, didn't you feel like that was an easy process?

Yeah, I think so. I mean, there is so many invisible forces. We can talk about the structure and the chordal progressions and whether or not one, four, five, 16 and 18, all these different chord places. But the bottom line is, we just wanted to find songs which we could really empathize with, get right into the, there are how many layers of the epidermis of a song from when it's was written, say, the Gishi Wiley piece. How many times I hear my daddy say How many changes

Have singers been through To go back and still Try and make something of that song So Charlie What I mean do you ever just sit down And let the music just take you? All the time

There's something really Interesting about When we get together finding songs that we're very very seldom is not a unanimous lure to these particular pieces of music and other ones there's a sort of place that we can go as two singers and with the the Archduke Burnett hovering overhead that thinking about making a forced landing onto the control room floor there's an ease in which you all move across decades and genres. We have country, bluegrass, R&B, gospel,

soul, folk, Americana. It seems to me it's the relationship between you all that unites them. It's the adventure. We just want it to, as Alison said, it's got to be right. It's no great mystery. There are about another 10 million songs that we can use. If we can get over the 14-year thing, I've heard of the seven-year itch, but this has become ridiculous. Maria, you have a podcast now and you need to start acting like it. What's the first step as a podcaster? Well, you have to ask lots of questions. I'm Maria Sharpova and I'm hosting a new podcast called Pretty Tough.

Every week, I'm sitting down with trailblazing women at the top of their game to discuss ambition, work ethic, and the ups and downs that come on the path to achieving greatness. I have a few pretty tough questions for you. Okay. Ready? Ready. Do not sugarcoat something for me. No, no. No. We'll dive into. their stories and get valuable insights from top executives, actors, entrepreneurs, and other individuals who have inspired me so much in my own journey. Pretty tough is your front row seat to the women who have demonstrated the power in being unapologetic in their pursuits.

I hope you'll join us. New episodes drop Wednesdays on YouTube or in your favorite podcast app. One of my favorite songs that you all do on this album is Going Where the Lonely Go, a Morrill Haggard country hit from 1982. I've got two. keep going blend down this lonesome road I'll be rolling going where the long they go

It's probably one of the more contemporary and bigger songs on the record It was a large country success Somehow you all transform the song Into something that makes it feel like An ancient traditional piece Like it's just always been in the ether Making up things to do with... I'm curious, Alison, why bring this song in and how do you feel you all transformed it?

I had loved that song that was on a Merle Haggard collection that was on the fourth CD of a like a box set. And in the 80s, Merle was the Merle that I grew up with. You know, there's something so magical about hearing something so beautiful, be new to you in your life, and it's fresh coming right off the press, and that was 80s Merle for me. The company you keep defines your borders on what to do. And, you know, like if I were sitting with Union Station and we were going to look at doing, going where the lonely go, my thoughts of what they might want to hear those borders and boundaries on what, what you might decide to do, you know, are going to be different with who you're with.

And with Robert, who is, I don't know where he's going to go from moment to moment. I don't know what he's going to say from moment to moment. You know, that really opens things up. The whole mentality with this project from the very beginning, you have no idea where something's going to go and you don't have any expectation where it's going to go. And you don't want to control where it's going to go. would go. I think that was, I don't think we cut that, but a couple times. It was just kind of what fell out. I'll go back across the pond to you, Robert. There are so many wonderful English, Scottish,

and Irish folk songs on here. One that stands out to me is go your own way. It's a folk song performed by Anne Briggs, but also covered by, the great Bert Yanch and the English folk singer Sandy Denny, who was the only guest vocalist on a Led Zeppelin record. She sang on the Battle of Evermore. Robert, I'm assuming that this was your pick. Why did you want to bring Go Your Own Way to this record? Well, I was raised listening to the Mersey Beats, Rolling Stones, the Escorts, the Big Three, all these beat groups way back, really, really great music going on in those days. And parallel to that,

there was a fantastic folk scene, just as there was in your country. And I was just moved by, because I was a kid and I never did analyze anything at all. I was just immediately moved by something or not. It's only now in this extended maturity that I'm trying to hang on to, that I start thinking Oh, well, of course, Anne Briggs wrote this because at that time there was X, Y and Z going on in the world. But for me, just listening to Yanch, go your way, my love. Go your way, my love. You know, that whole movement of that underground,

it's just another part of the whole deal, and that was a part of Led Zeppelin. So, yeah, it was, it's really not that far at all. Those songs are not that far away from stuff that you might hear in a corner of any city in the United States, but just unheard, unknown. They didn't have the qualifications to break through the great pop charade and cavalcade, which is what we're dealing with right now.

So we're almost taking these beautiful nuggets and vignettes and bringing them out and cleaning them and throwing them up in the air. But they come from beautiful corners that have not really been explored because they don't fit in with the way that this works. Media, press, critique, but they're all there. All those songs are all there, and the roots of them are just, they're equally as relevant, really. And if you think about, you know, where, for example, Bob Dylan was,

when a girl from the North Country, you know. Many times I've often prayed in the darkness of my night, the brightness of the... That melody and that refrain and is coming back from this side of the water. It's interactive, interchangeable. And I think that's the feast that we can offer each other, myself and Alison. I like what you're leaning into around the traditions that don't get noticed, and even those that might have influence over the Atlantic.

I think about the way in which you bring Bert Yanch song like, it don't bother me. And then we also have Ola Bella Reid, a great bluegrass ballad, you led me to the wrong. Lord, Lordy me, and it's Lord, Lordy, my. Oh, honey, you led me to the wrong. In some ways, these music feel like they couldn't be any further from each other, but they resonate so closely. They're literally back-to-back on your album. and there seems to be common tradition between the two.

Well, yeah. Of course. You can't elaborate on that. That's actually a fact. Well, I mean, it's the survival, you know, those songs and from a similar time, simpler time, surviving, heartbreak, hard times, hard living, you know, all those things, those themes that are universal. But it is funny when you think about it, because these songs are, because these songs are. coming from all sorts of different points in time. If we were talking about a love song that we, you know,

say we did Love Hurts, Roy Orbison, or something like that, that we couldn't say any more about it than that anyway, because it's just the whole deal is there's a song. And, you know, did I have to have an early night before I sang it? What the hell? I don't know. It's just great to be able to be able to be,

next to that fantastic singer lady there who's struggling with this as much as I am. It's a game in it really. I just, I think we're very lucky that we have such a great tripartite state of Henry Burnett and Alison and myself. Because then we have a sort of brains trust, an emotional sort of meeting place. I'm really intrigued by this intuitiveness that comes to together in the trifect of the three of you. You know, throughout your careers, all three of you have been interpreters of songs.

And on Raise the Roof, we're going, as you said, across decades, generations, class, race, national identities. Balancing the intuitiveness, I'm curious how you think about what responsibilities you all bring as song interpreters. Oh, Connie. I mean, we could do this really badly. It could have been awful. Our responsibility really is to each other to make sure that we both think that we've done

that we've taken it to a place that is that carries our own mark, if you like. If we don't do it very well, you ain't going to hear it. I mean, it's as simple as that. I'm not trying to be tried, but it's just what we're doing here, these questions are, interesting and they're great but this is not the book of Kells or the Mabinogion this is not pre pre-Christian Welsh history this is two people choosing songs that they really like singing them and laughing a lot and sometimes having a cup of tea but I'm interested in your questions because it makes it in the way with the tone that you have as if it's

some sort of for us it's like the conquest of taking beautiful songs that are already in existence and sometimes quite obscure, and enjoying them to the degree that we sit back and smile. So we can talk about the meaning of life, but it's just great to be able to get to the end of 12 songs and go, look, if you put them like this one next to that one and that one next to that one, they create a weave. well maybe that's a way of sort of wrapping things up and talking about the weave that you've made ends after nearly an hour of songs that I love that you're approaching with joy you're all having so much fun making this record but there's a lot of heartbreak on this record and then we get to the end and we have pop staples somebody was watching over me how do you feel that leaves us on the record with great optimism I think Yeah. Happy Sad, said Tim Buckley. The song says, it just says all the things about, you know, you can pull yourself out of a hole and you can actually,

my bad times are better than my good times used to be. I mean, that's a pretty good line. I like the last chord strikes. wild T-bone joins the trogues. You know those strikes on the end, Allison? I like when they're singing together. Yeah. Oh, man, that's so good. Yeah. Isn't it great to sing? It was a really sweet time to all be back together and have a lot of the same

cast of characters that were there last time. It was really great. Yeah, Robert and Allison, thank you so much for joining us. I really appreciate. appreciate it. Thank you. Great pleasure. I enjoyed it. I'll give you a call,

Allison. We can talk about him. Okay. It's been a pleasure. Be well. Bye. Switched on Pop is produced by Nate Sloan and me, Charlie Harding.

We're edited by Joey Myers, engineered by Brandon McFarland, social media by Abby Bar, illustrations by Iris Gottlieb. Our executive producers are Nasha Kerwa and Hannah Rosen. We're a member of the Vox Media Podcast Network and a production of Fulcher.

Check out the show at Switchedonpop.com. and on Twitter and Instagram at switch. We've got two more episodes for you this year. First, a look at one of the most successful TikTok breakouts and why that platform really is still changing the sound of popular music. We'll be talking with Thai Verdes. And our final episode will, of course, be covering some of the best new holiday music of the year.

So stick around. Until then, thanks for listening.