The blogger at Hell Yeah enjoys Raising Sand:

Raising Sands is a beautiful album of country, rock & roll, blues, and jazz influenced music. The tracks are organic, effortless, and sail by, before you even realize they were there.

My favorite tracks are, Rich Woman, Fortune Teller, Let Loss Be Your Lesson, Gone Gone Gone, and Through The Morning, Through The Night.

This album reminds me so much of the work of Johnny Cash, because it burns like a ring of fire. The music is simple, the arrangements are pure, and Plant balances Krauss vocals very nicely. I’m fond of this record because its nothing like the mainstream music heard on popular radio.

It’s not Neyo, or Jennifer Hudson, but this music came from the old R&B and Gospel roots of yesterday. It’s a great retro thing of beauty.

Simon Sweetman wrote an article for his Blog on the Tracks column about unlikely duos that work. He mentions Robert Plant and Alison Krauss with Raising Sand:

It was different with Raising Sand. I appreciate Alison Krauss’s material and I really like the direction that Robert Plant has been heading (particularly with Dreamland and Mighty Re-arranger). It didn’t seem that mad to me that this pair would work together but then, when I heard the album, I was a tad underwhelmed at first. Maybe I expected to be blown away because of all the four- and five-star reviews and the kudos being ushered from all corners. I was more interested in listening to Led Zeppelin’s Mothership at the time.

But then, it all clicked. I persevered and played Raising Sand a few times and the odd song choices (The Letter, Fortune Teller) began to shine. It’s a very good record - and easy to like - and I am not basing that on the fact that it won a heap of Grammy awards (that doesn’t mean anything. Just ask Carlos Santana or Norah Jones).

Rita from Working the Room just discovered Raising Sand. She writes:

I picked up the Robert Plant and Allison Krauss collaboration CD last week. It had received so much acclaim on the AMA’s and the Grammy’s that I thought it was likely a safe purchase. I looked at it the same way I look at the Oscar nominated films…….you likely cannot go wrong if you choose to see one in the theater.

I was not disappointed. Now it’s not my normal everyday music (I don’t own a RP or a AK cd), but you know sometimes you want to listen to something slightly quirky and irregular. Something off the beat and path. Something that blends well with a small group of people sipping martinis late on a Friday afternoon. Raising Sand would be the CD for those times. Its not rock-n-roll nor is it bluegrass. Its a blend that can only be described as “alternatively unique”.

Caitlin Moran writes a humorous piece about the festival-going experience in Times Online. In it she outlines some good and bad points about the inevitable mud soaking you’ll get. One of the good points? Watching “Robert Plant patiently queue for a whole barbecued fish at the Yam The Cassava Caribbean snack-stall.”

Irish musician Luka Bloom’s new album, Eleven Songs, is a traditional style album that used the sound of Raising Sand as a model. Bloom says:

We decided to make a more traditional style record; great room, great musicians and singers, old microphones. We wanted to capture an honest, and hopefully beautiful performance of the songs. I don’t mind admitting that the template for the record was the sound on the Alison Krauss/Robert Plant record of 2007, Raising Sand. It seemed like a long time since I had heard such a raw, beautiful room sound. And we both thought, let’s try to record the songs this way.

Robert Plant and Alison Krauss still maintain respectable numbers with Raising Sand.

Top Country Albums
This week: #8, Last Week: 6, Two Weeks Ago: 2, Weeks on Chart: 74

Top Internet Albums
This week: #10, Last Week: 8, Two Weeks Ago: 8, Weeks on Chart: 31

Top Rock Albums
This week: #17, Last Week: 17, Two Weeks Ago: 11, Weeks on Chart: 40

The Billboard 200
This week: #47, Last Week: 43, Two Weeks Ago: 26, Weeks on Chart: 67

Billboard Comprehensive Albums
This week: #48, Last Week: 43, Two Weeks Ago: 27, Weeks on Chart: 57

Blurt Online has an interview with Buddy Miller talking about his new album “Written in Chalk”. Miller talks about working with his wife Julie as well as other noted musicians including Robert Plant. Andy Tennille writes:

AT: Tell me about the track you recorded with Robert Plant.

BM: That was cool. We cut it between soundcheck and before dinner on his and Allison’s tour. I waited ‘til we were at a venue with a nice, big dressing room and asked the guys in the band if they’d be into it. They brought their drums and upright bass, and I set up some mics in the dressing room and just cut it live. We did it super fast and cut everything, including the vocals, live. I think we played the song twice through and got it.

That song probably wasn’t either of ours first choice. He had some ideas, and I had some ideas, and we talked about them. Somehow, we ended up with this old Lefty Frizzell song. It just seemed like it would be a cool duet. And it was. I loved that band and playing with Robert. He’s just a wonderfully generous guy.

AT: Did you know that you wanted to do a song with Robert, or was it that you had a particular song in mind and were looking for the perfect person to work with it on? How did it come together?

BM: We were playing in L.A. and I had a meeting with New West, my label. The record was done, so I went over there, but they said it’s too late to come out this year, which was last year. So I came back after the meeting and at dinner Robert said, “How’d it go with New West?” I told him everything went well, but it won’t come out until next year. After dinner, he said, “Well if you need me for anything, let me know.” It took me about a half a second to respond. I hate to take advantage of people but hey, if Robert Plant offers…

The Green Blues blog enjoyed Raising Sand:

I just saw Robert Plants name (from Led Zeppelin fame) and thought to myself “I have to give this a listen, it can’t be that bad. So maybe having never heard of the album helped me like it for what it is and not for all the hype it probably garnered back in 2007. “Killing the Blues” is the first track on this album and right of the bat you are hit with some beautiful vocal harmonizing from Plant and Krauss. This, in my opinion, is the staple of this album. The haunting melodies sung by this two accomplished singers are draped in melancholy and a just a certain feeling absent from most music today (Dare I call it, emotion?). This album simply makes you feel emotion, something that I feel is absent from today’s modern music industry. If a feeling or an emotion is present in today’s music it’s probably something explicitly sexual. Not to say that this album lacks a sexual element, this is Robert Plan we are talking about, but the sexuality in these song are much more complex than the average Top Ten hit, moving more along the lines of the erotic or a feeling longing.

Nashville music veteran Joe Boyland passed away March 17, 2009 after a heart attack. He was 61. Boyland founded Hit List Music in 1986. Music from the Hit List catalog was recorded by artists like Alice Cooper, Deep Purple and Billy Squier. Boyland also worked with artists as diverse as Celine Dion, Laura Branigan and Robert Plant. Boyland served as a consultant for the Honeydrippers album.

Porcupine Tree’s Steven Wilson has released a solo album entitled “Insurgentes”. And interviewer from Metal Underground used Robert Plant as an example in his questioning:

I think you follow the Robert Plant model, as it were, of always looking for new musical territories to explore rather than looking over your shoulder at the past. A lot of other musicians are content to stay in a comfort zone and make variations of the same record over and over again.