Taken from their forthcoming new album Raise The Roof (out on Rounder Records on November 19th), Robert Plant and Alison Krauss and have today shared a final preview of the album with a cover of ‘It Don’t Bother Me’. The song was the title track of Bert Jansch’s second album, released in 1965.
They transform the solo acoustic composition into an empowering arrangement led by Alison Krauss, simmering with spectral flourishes of dolceola, marxophone and pedal steel, handclaps and percussion, and interplaying guitars of Marc Ribot and Los Lobos’ David Hidalgo.
Raise The Roof features songs written by a dozen legends and unsung heroes of the past century, including Anne Briggs (interviewed here). The long-awaited reunion marks the duo’s first record in 14 years, produced by T Bone Burnett, and the tracklist below reflects both deep-rooted influences and recent revelations.
Plant is a well-known fan of Jansch, and in 2016 at a special Celtic Connections concert he, alongside past collaborators and the likes of Karine Polwart, Martin Simpson, Bernard Butler and Ryley Walker, paid tribute to the folk legend. This seemed to tickle some that reviewed the concert, it being pretty well-known that Jimmy Page’s guitar arrangement on Led Zeppelin’s “Black Mountain Side” closely follows Bert Jansch’s version of that song, recorded for his 1966 album Jack Orion (read The Song Was So Good, Jimmy Page ‘Borrowed’ It).
“It Don’t Bother Me” is a timely share as it would have been Bert’s birthday yesterday – be sure to check out Jason McNiff’s cover of Bert Jansch’s ‘Running from Home’, which we premiered here; in the same article, Jason shares a lovely recollection of seeing Bert play a weekly residence at the 12-bar club in London.
Raise The Roof Tracklisting
- 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
- My Heart Would Know
- You Can’t Rule Me
Raise the Roof is out on 19th November via Rounder Records.
Photo Credit: David McClister