Raising Sand
Raising Sand is a collaborative studio album by rock singer Robert Plant and bluegrass-country singer Alison Krauss. It was released in October 2007 by Rounder Records. Raising Sand won Album of the Year at the 2008 Americana Music Honors & Awards and at the 2009 Grammy Awards.
Raising Sand
October 23, 2007
Sound Emporium, Nashville
Electro Magnetic
The Village Recorder, Los Angeles
Stage & Sound, Hollywood
57:13
Rounder, Zoë
Chart performance[edit]
The album debuted at number two on the Billboard 200, selling about 112,000 copies in its first week, the highest chart position for either artists' solo work, although Plant had previously reached #1 several times with Led Zeppelin.[25] Raising Sand was certified platinum by the RIAA on March 4, 2008.[26][27] After the album's success at the 2009 Grammy Awards, the album topped the Billboard Top Rock Albums chart and Top Internet Albums chart for the first time on the week of February 28, 2009. The album also hit the top of Canadian Top Country Albums, and also peaked at #2 in Billboard Top Country Albums, being stuck behind part of 35 weeks non-consecutive chart topping Fearless by country singer Taylor Swift. Selling 77,000 copies on a 715% increase, Raising Sand jumped 69–2 on the Billboard 200.[28]
The album entered the Top 5 on the UK Albums Chart, going on to reach #2 on January 2, 2008.[29]
Follow-up album[edit]
According to Ken Irwin of Rounder Records, and producer Burnett, the duo started work on a second album in 2009.[30]
"To be 61 and faced with the 'difficult second album' is quite a phenomenon…" Plant observed in 2009. "We'd finished everything in ten days in Nashville, and I rented a car and went down the Natchez Trace to Oxford, Mississippi, across to Clarksdale and down into Helena, Arkansas, looking for those ghosts… and thought to myself, 'How can this be? I've just been with complete strangers, recorded 12 amazing tracks, had a fantastic time, and now I'm headed for the Mississippi Delta.'"[31]
In a 2010 interview, Plant indicated that the follow-up sessions were unsuccessful.[32]
Krauss and Plant released a new album produced by Burnett, Raise the Roof, on November 19, 2021.[33]