Their first meeting was just as it should be: at The Hideout club in Chicago. Mavis Staples, the illustrious queen of modern gospel and longtime member of The Staples Singers – a woman who has been performing 60 years and watched the world turn several times – and Jeff Tweedy, a musician who has helped reshape and reinvigorate rock and roll in his groundbreaking band Wilco.

On paper, it might seem like an unlikely pairing. Where was the intersection between church-born music like “I’ll Take You There” and “You Don’t Knock,” with the boundary pushing aspects on albums like Yankee Hotel Foxtrot and A Ghost Is Born? Surely there would be genre collusions that could end in an apples-and-oranges scenario, sending both sides going back to the drawing board. In practice, nothing could be further from that: You Are Not Alone is a work of stunning strength and vision and makes it seem as though these two Chicago residents are candidates for the separated-at-birth squad.

Even today, Mavis Staples is shaking her head how it all happened. “Jeff came out to our show at this funky club on the North Side of Chicago,” she says. “He came upstairs and we met. After the show he came back and congratulated us – very nice. We were recording a live album that night. Two or three weeks later my manager called and said, ‘Mavis, Jeff Tweedy wants to produce your next album.’ I still couldn’t believe it. When I got off the phone I just said, ‘Thank you, Jesus.’ I knew it was a blessing.”

The great spirits often work in mysterious patterns, but this time they had their timing just right. Mavis Staples has traveled a long and often challenging road. Her father, guitarist Roebuck “Pops” Staples, built The Staple Singers around his son and three daughters in the early ‘50s, teaching them to lead with faith and never give up. Their musical journey took them through an endless array of experiences, from singing with Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. on freedom marches in the early 1960s, tagged as “God’s Greatest Hitmakers,” to the heights of pop stardom during the ‘70s with mega-hits like “Respect Yourself.”

There were some rocky years in the ‘80s and ‘90s before Prince signed Mavis to his Paisley Park label and released two solo albums. But through it all, her voice has remained a deep-seated instrument of soul, sounding like an impassioned weapon of love for all mankind to learn from.

When Tweedy and Staples teamed up last year, the woman felt she’d found a new true path. “He came to the South Side and we talked,” she recalls. “And what we had in common immediately was we’re both family-oriented, which made me feel really good because Pops had always instilled in us that family is the strongest unit in the world, something that no one can mess with. I was so thrilled we’d be working together because I put Jeff Tweedy on a high pedestal and felt he knew what I was about.”

Their collaboration seems almost blessed from the start, as Tweedy was a longtime fan of Staples. “I have almost everything she’s ever recorded and I dug back through very thoroughly when I was given this job to do,” says Tweedy. “I thought that if I refreshed myself about where she’s been, it would help her figure out where she wanted to go. I wanted to be sure that we were making a record that she really wanted to make.”

Photo by Spencer Tweedy

Staples’ previous album for Anti- Records was a collection of freedom songs, produced by Ry Cooder. For You Are Not Alone, she felt like it was time to go to church and to the streets to find songs of inspiration and salvation. “Jeff said, ‘Mavis, I got these songs for you and if you’ll come over to the loft, we can see if you like any of them,’” Staples says. "He had about 14 songs, and we chose eight or nine out of that. Some were from way in the past, and I said, ‘Where did you get that from? That song is older than me! You’re taking me back to my childhood now.’ Pops used to play those songs for me on his big 78 record player, things by the Golden Gate Jubilee Singers and all. And then Tweedy played me ‘We’re Gonna Make It.’ Now, that’s a blues song, but when you listen to the lyrics Little Milton is singing – they’re right on time.

“When we started the sessions last December at the Wilco loft, he had some Staple Singers on his iPod and asked what I thought about doing some of those. It gave me a chance to relive that time and be young again, visualizing where I was then. I told Jeff, ‘These songs are the happiest time of my life. It was when we were just singing to my father’s guitar.’ So we chose three of those. Everything started to tie in just right.”

Little did Mavis Staples know, but the real prize – a song so inspired and moving that it’s likely to go down as an instant gospel classic – was still waiting on the horizon. “You Are Not Alone,” fittingly the new album’s title track, is a shiver-inducing original by Jeff Tweedy that sounds like it is heaven-sent. In some ways, it actually is.

“We were deep into the sessions,” the singer says. “Jeff told me, ‘Mavis, this is a title that’s been going around in my head: I want to write this song for you called ‘You Are Not Alone.” ’ I said, ‘Write it, Tweedy. Write it!’ That name sounded so good, and I wanted to see where he was going with it. But he didn’t write it until we were almost finished with the session. He wrote some lyrics and put the song on a disc. He told me I could take it home and get familiar with the melody, but these weren’t the real lyrics. He said, ‘I’ll write those tonight and have them tomorrow when you come to the studio.’ And he did!
“The song just draws you in and it’s so comforting. My brother, Pervis, just can’t get enough of it. He’ll call me up and say, ‘Mavis, you’re not alone. I’m gonna always be here with you.’ I’ve never sung a song in my life that made me feel like that one. Man, my skin was crawling in my bones when I sang that song. And it’s on time for today. Nobody wants to feel alone. When I sang that line, ‘Open up this is a raid,’ I told Jeff, ‘This is unique.’ I never thought I’d be singing lyrics like this.”

In the revered annals of Tweedydom, this collaboration with Mavis Staples is one to open new doors to a place Tweedy hasn’t gone before. Look at music as an endless assortment of various tributaries, though, and perhaps this collaboration isn’t such a surprise after all. Tweedy’s roots in Uncle Tupelo included the entire spectrum of American music, a point that the musician has always prided himself on. Even with acoustic instruments and down-home presentation, his early years have a direct link to the Carter Family catalog and beyond. Tweedy produces the album here like he’s borrowing from the backwoods, spicing up the arrangements with a touch of Spectorian splendor crossed with plenty of bluesy bottom, and then lets Staples shine in regal glory as she delivers a message of human hope, humility and, yes, a touch of heroism – all in honor of the Lord.

There really hasn’t been an album like this since, well, maybe ever. The players fall into the gospel groove like they’ve found a new best friend, making sure a foundation of swing and strut never wavers. It’s one of the keys that anchors the music to the past while promising something of the future. Tweedy also ensures that simplicity is ever present, a key in Staples’ voice to staying a primary force. She has her love light turned on bright, too, like someone who has found a way out of the shadows to walk in the sun. It is such a righteous return to form that it’s impossible to imagine her not reaching a whole new audience. She has captured the spirit of today and wants to spread it further. “Songs are timeless,” she says. “You can take a song, and God don’t have to be in the lyric, just positivity and truthfulness. Someone asked me how I sing the songs with such feeling. I said, ‘Listen, I just go to my heart. Because I know what comes from the heart reaches the heart.’ God is love. I love you. I love the world. I’m about love. Since day one and I was a child, it’s all love.”

The Staples Singers at Wattstax

It’s clear that the memories she holds from the ‘70s – those times when The Staple Singers rode the best-selling charts to the very top and the world was at their command – she still deeply treasures. “Those were good times, even when people would try to sidetrack us and say we were singing the devil’s music,” she remembers with a laugh. "Those songs were played all over the radio and the kids would get up and dance. Some people couldn’t hear we were still singing gospel. We’d do interviews and tell them, ‘I know a place there ain’t nobody crying, ain’t nobody worried, no smiling faces lying to the races.’ Where else would that be except heaven? They backed off [of] us and we were invited back to the church.

The first song we did was ‘I’ll Take You There,’ right in the pulpit! But we also had some trying times back then. Let me tell you, when disco came through, we were just sitting down. Pops said, ‘You all be faithful, and this too shall pass.’ Nobody wanted to hear any music like ours. I could hear ‘Love to Love You Baby’ from the South Side to the West Side to the North Side – same song would be playing! My father got us enrolled in [Chicago’s] Second City and we did some drama with the people that started “Saturday Night Live.” It kept us from feeling idle and getting down. Next thing that came along was Curtis Mayfield, and we did ‘Let’s Do It Again.’ And we were back!"

The prime piece of Mavis Staples’ identity was, is and will always be her father, Pops Staples, who passed away in 2000. Naturally, when it came time to choose songs for You Are Not Alone, she knew she needed to find something very special to honor her father. In many ways, Randy Newman’s “Losing You” anchors the album, allowing the singer to open up her heart and share the love and pain she still carries for the man who started it all. “When Pops passed, I didn’t know what I was going to do,” she says. "I didn’t feel like I could go on, or could sing without his guitar. It got so bad my sister Yvonne yelled at me and told me off. She explained how Pops would want me to keep on singing. She said, ‘Pops is not gone. He’s watching over you and you carry him with you everywhere you go.’ She lit a fire under me.

“I got to praying, and had the whole church praying for me. The song I started singing was ‘Will the Circle Be Unbroken.’ That was the first song The Staples Singers did. We recorded it about six times, but Pops was always singing lead on it. I’ll never get over losing him, but I put [it] in my mind [that] he’s still with me. You don’t get over it, but you learn how to live. That’s where faith comes in.”

Faith could be the glue in the seamlessness between Mavis Staples and Jeff Tweedy. It’s in every note on You Are Not Alone, not to mention everything in Staples’ 60 years of singing. Selections like Allen Toussaint’s “Last Train,” John Fogerty’s “Wrote a Song for Everyone,” Rev. Gary Davis’ “I Belong to the Band” and Tweedy’s other original, “Only the Lord Knows,” each have an inner glow and let Staples, the band and the backing singers raise the temperature right through the roof. The song selection reflects how much this record is a journey.

“This music covers everything, from my beginning all the way to today,” Mavis Staples says. "I’ve come full circle and everyone on the album has come with me. That’s what I try and stay open to. I remember back in the ‘60s [when] we were doing the Westinghouse television show and heard Bob Dylan there. He was just starting out, and was singing, ‘How many roads must a man walk down before you can call him a man?’ Pops said, ‘Wait one minute. Listen to what that kid is saying. That’s the truth and we can sing that song.’

Music has always been like that to me. It comes from all places and has taken me everywhere. I learned very early not to put any walls around it. Just try and show the bright side, make people feel better. Now, I’m so grateful to be here and have Jeff Tweedy produce me. I told someone yesterday, ‘I’m the happiest old girl since Betty White.’"

You Are Not Alone is going to make a lot of listeners happy, from hard core gospelites to followers of Tweedy ’s every move. There is a certain alchemy that happens when disparate forms of music join together and the history of popular music proves how powerful that puzzle can be. When Elvis Presley and the early rockers crossed country with blues to create rock and roll or the first psychedelic jammers borrowed the improvisatory beauty of jazz and injected it into rock, music continued its unstoppable march into the future.

When Mavis Staples steps to the microphone to sing, she brings with her a living history of American music, one that she has built based on faith, love of family and respect for life. She will take us there, too, as surely as Staples has always done, but this time with the help Jeff Tweedy and his believing heart.