Fourteen years after their Grammy Award-winning collaboration Raising Sand, Robert Plant and Alison Krauss are releasing a sequel, Raise the Roof, out Nov. 19, as well as planning a 2022 tour.
Like the 2007 effort, the new set will be released via Rounder Records. Also like its predecessor, it will consist of covers made famous by acts such as Merle Haggard, the Everly Brothers and Allen Toussaint. The one original on the set is co-written by Plant and returning producer T Bone Burnett.
The first track, which was released Thursday (Aug. 12), is “Can’t Let Go,” originally recorded by Lucinda Williams. Like the other songs on the album, the swampy, surf-influenced “Can’t Let Go” features a driving beat.
“We wanted it to move,” Krauss said of the album in a statement. “We brought other people in, other personalities within the band, and coming back together again in the studio brought a new intimacy to the harmonies.”
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Added Plant: “You hear something and you go, ‘Man, listen to that song, we got to sing that song!’ It’s a vacation, really — the perfect place to go that you least expected to find.”
A follow-up was expected long before now with Plant, Krauss and Burnett returning to the studio shortly after the release of the original, but that project was scrapped. Representatives declined to answer when the songs for the new set were recorded.
Raising Sand swept the Grammys in early 2009, nabbing several awards including album of the year, record of the year, and both best pop and country collaboration with vocals.
Raise the Roof track list
Quattro (World Drifts In)
The Price of Love
Go Your Way
Trouble With My Lover
Searching for 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