This collaborative album brought together two legendary voices for a collection of gospel and spirituals recorded shortly before Levon Helm's death in 2012. Staples, who had sung gospel with her family since childhood before achieving fame with the Staple Singers' civil rights anthems, joins Helm, drummer and vocalist for The Band, for performances that draw on both artists' deep roots in American vernacular music. The album includes traditional spirituals, songs associated with the civil rights movement, and material that both artists had performed throughout their careers. The performances are intimate and unadorned, letting the voices and songs speak without elaborate production. Helm's voice, ragged from his throat cancer battle, brings emotional weight to songs about mortality and transcendence. Staples's voice, powerful into her seventies, provides counterpoint and harmony. The collaboration represented a meeting of artists from different musical paths who shared commitment to music's spiritual and political dimensions. The album stands as a document of two musicians near the end of long careers, drawing on traditions that sustained them through decades of American change.