The new Scott Matthews album, “Elsewhere”, will be released on May 25, 2009 and features a duet with Robert Plant on “12 Harps”. Matthews opened for Robert on some UK Raising Sand tour dates. Scott says of recording with Robert: “When he turned up at the studio, we just started jamming and I began singing to show him the melody and the phrasing, and I forgot who I was singing with. We only did a couple of takes and nailed it.”

Check out 12 Harps. It’s a sad little song of loss with vocals by Matthews alone, Plant alone, and both together.

Click the triangle to start the player, click again to stop it.

12 Harps 12 Harps

Robert Plant and Alison Krauss made it a clean sweep on February 8, 2009. They took home 5 Grammys–one for every category they were nominated in:

Album of the Year for Raising Sand
Pop Collaboration with Vocals for Rich Woman
Record of the Year for Please Read the Letter
Best Country Collaboration with Vocals for Killing the Blues
Best Contemporary Folk/Americana Album for Raising Sand

Add that to the Grammy already won last year for Gone Gone Gone, that’s six for Raising Sand.

These honors are well deserved. Congratulations to Robert and Alison!

Robert and Alison came away with five Grammy nominations this year, all well deserved. While Robert hasn’t historically paid that much attention to awards and kudos like this, I’m glad to see the project actually getting the recognition it deserves from the Grammy organization. And keep in mind they’ve already won a grammy for Gone Gone Gone, which made the cut in time to be nominated last year.

While the pundits say wins are assured for Robert and Alison because of their status as legend and Grammy favorite respectively, I think the wins would be well deserved on the basis of the records alone. Even if Grammy voters like to “play it safe”, this time they have a fantastic record to cling to.

May the best man win (and of course, the best man is Robert).