Rock Legend Robert Plant Teams with Bluegrass Superstar Alison Krauss

Robert Plant, the lead singer for Led Zeppelin, is a certified legend in rock and roll. The Rock and Roll Hall of Famer can be heard daily on any FM rock station in the world thanks to classics such as "Whole Lotta Love," "Livin' Lovin' Maid," and FM rock's number one played song of all-time, "Stairway to Heaven."

Alison Krauss is a world champion fiddler and bluegrass superstar. With her band, Union Station, Krauss has won Grammy awards and taken bluegrass to one of the widest audiences it has enjoyed in years.

What happens when you put the two together? Under the direction of acclaimed producer T-Bone Burnett (who produced the Oh Brother, Where Art Thou soundtrack), you get Raising Sand, an album that may raise eyebrows for its unconventional teaming but will certainly please the ears. The album is scheduled for release October 23 on Rounder Records.

Drawing on a combination of old ("Stick With Me, Baby" was written by new Country Music Hall of Fame inductee Mel Tillis, and the Everly Brothers' "Gone Gone Gone [Done Moved On]") and new ("Please Read This Letter" is a Plant composition, while Burnett's wife, Sam Phillips, contributed "Sister Rosetta Goes Before Us"), Raising Sand will no doubt draw an audience from fans of Plant's, fans of Krauss', and the curious who want to see just how these two diverse artists sound together.

Robert Plant took the first step in the project in 2000, when he called Krauss and voiced his admiration for her and said he'd love to work with her some day. Their first performance together came at the 2004 Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction of music legend Leadbelly. "We did four songs together," Plant said in an exclusive interview for Rounder Records, "which was really a great experiment, because it proved that we could do it. And, it just felt good."

As they began to discuss the possibility of making an album together, Krauss suggested Burnett , who has worked on albums by artists as varied as the BoDeans, Los Lobos, Spinal Tap, Elvis Costello, and Tony Bennett, as a producer. Plant's enthusiastic reply was, "Well, yeah!"

Krauss sees no problem with working with a man known for his hard rock vocals. "He has such a passion for roots music," Krauss said of her new duet partner, "and a passion for knowledge about music."

Burnett described the initial phase of the project as "the blind feeling the elephant." When Krauss told Burnett she was uncertain about some of the selections he had chosen for her to sing, he replied, "You both are nervous, and that's what I want." Burnett's idea, he admitted, "was to take them both out of their comfort zone."

Plant's nervousness came from the notion of singing harmony for the first time in his career. "I was intimidated as hell," he admitted. "I had been into the Everly Brothers, and I'd always liked harmony singing, but I'd never been a part of anything in any band that went anywhere near any harmony work. So, it was very intimidating to arrive at Alison's house and sit down on Alison's couch, and she suggested a key for a song, and there was no microphone, no effects. I'm normally all right hiding behind a microphone, normally, but that was quite daunting."

The harmonies will certainly surprise fans of Led Zeppelin, but this project will no doubt delight Plant's longtime fans to see a new side of the legendary rocker. While Krauss may be more at home with the harmony aspect, the choice of duet partners is new territory for her as well. Rising Sand will certainly make new fans for both singers as well as be one of the "must-have" albums of 2007 for fans of good music.