Robert Plant & Alison Krauss

[BFrank]

On Charlie Rose tonight.

(Joni Mitchell tomorrow)

[Alexander]

I think it's very well done and that Plant and Krauss sound great together.

I'm getting a little tired of T-Bone Burnett's productions, though. Everything he produces sounds the same!

[7/4]

I'm listening to it for the first time, sounds great to me. Mo later...

[mjzee]

Tune into CMT (Country Music Television) this weekend. They're playing an hour-long "Crossroads" with Plant and Krauss. Well done...it's more lively than the CD (which I find a bit of a snore). Great band, with Marc Ribot and Buddy Miller. It's a trip to hear Alison do a Led Zep song, and wait til you hear them croon and harmonize on "Black Dog"! Don't miss it.

[BFrank]

Yeah. Good show.

It's also "OnDemand" on various cable systems, so you can watch it whenever you want.

[7/4]

Yeah, it was pretty good. I think that's the first time I really used that OnDemand function.

[WorldB3]

Tune into CMT (Country Music Television) this weekend. They're playing an hour-long "Crossroads" with Plant and Krauss. Well done...it's more lively than the CD (which I find a bit of a snore). Great band, with Marc Ribot and Buddy Miller. It's a trip to hear Alison do a Led Zep song, and wait til you hear them croon and harmonize on "Black Dog"! Don't miss it.

I hope they show that again as I missed it, I love Ribot and Buddy Miller. I need to hear the record again as I was a bit disappointed with it at first, I felt it was a bit innocuous. I think the songs could work much better live.

[7/4]

Tune into CMT (Country Music Television) this weekend. They're playing an hour-long "Crossroads" with Plant and Krauss. Well done...it's more lively than the CD (which I find a bit of a snore). Great band, with Marc Ribot and Buddy Miller. It's a trip to hear Alison do a Led Zep song, and wait til you hear them croon and harmonize on "Black Dog"! Don't miss it.

I hope they show that again as I missed it, I love Ribot and Buddy Miller. I need to hear the record again as I was a bit disappointed with it at first, I felt it was a bit innocuous. I think the songs could work much better live.

Crossroads is live in the studio.

[BFrank]

Is that a studio or a TV studio or what?

[mjzee]

Is that a studio or a TV studio or what?

TV studio with an audience, interspersed with interviews.

[Sundog]

Saw the Plant/Krauss Crossroads concert special the other night. I couldn't of been more bored. Too bad, I was really looking forward to hearing this music. I assume the album is more or less the same as this performance?

[BFrank]

If you were bored by the concert, don't bother with the album. It's more low-key.

FWIW, it's the kind of music that takes a few listens to "get it" (for me, anyway).

[Sundog]

If you were bored by the concert, don't bother with the album. It's more low-key.

FWIW, it's the kind of music that takes a few listens to "get it" (for me, anyway).

Thanks. I recorded the show so I'll probably give it another shot. I thought the band was a bit underrehearsed. It probably didn't help that Robert Plant had nothing interesting to say whatsoever during the interview snippets. He came off a bit full of himself; which in retrospect did turn me off.

[BFrank]

I thought that T-Bone's comments were the most insightful of the interviews. I would have liked to hear more from him.

[7/4]

June 11, 2008

Krauss, Plant lead Americana Awards finalists

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

Filed at 11:34 p.m. ET

NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) -- Alison Krauss and Robert Plant were nominated Wednesday night for top album, No. 1 song and best duo in the seventh annual Americana Honors and Awards.

They received the nominations based on their million-selling ''Raising Sand'' album.

[7/4]

June 12, 2008

Music Review

Harmonious Tension and Dueling Flaxen Locks

By NATE CHINEN, NYT

Alison Krauss and Robert Plant performing at the WaMu Theater at Madison Square Garden.

On “Raising Sand” (Rounder), the spooky, beautiful album they released last year, Robert Plant and Alison Krauss tilt toward each other from starkly different vantage points: heat-blistered arena rock (his) and coolly plaintive bluegrass (hers). Their material, scouted out by the producer T Bone Burnett, mines a deep, dark region of Americana somewhat familiar to them both. But their chemistry springs partly from contrast; even the most harmonious moments convey a subtle, fruitful tension.

Mr. Plant and Ms. Krauss approached common ground more literally at the WaMu Theater at Madison Square Garden on Tuesday, the first of two concerts there. Taking the stage from opposite wings, each assumed a stalking gait, like cartoon predators. Their pace had a parallel in “Rich Woman,” the R&B throwback that also opens the album. There was casual symmetry in their height and black attire, and in their flaxen manes.

Things loosened, and quickened. The next song up was “Leave My Woman Alone,” a spunky admonition by Ray Charles; Ms. Krauss grabbed her fiddle, and Mr. Plant sang bracingly over a two-step groove. Then came “Black Dog,” a classic by Led Zeppelin, Mr. Plant’s old band. Arranged in a minor key for banjo, acoustic bass and guitar, it felt muted but menacing, especially as both singers arced their voices upward with a harmonized “ah,” just before an instrumental squall.

“Welcome to the Raising Sand Revue,” Mr. Plant said after that song, summing up a basic truth about this tour. While plainly inspired by the album, it takes welcome liberties with repertory and tone. Mr. Burnett, leading a band of aces, including the drummer Jay Bellerose and the guitarist Buddy Miller, keeps the momentum crisp. The set list doesn’t appear to change much from night to night, which doesn’t suggest a lack of imagination so much as a sturdy formula. It’s working mightily, judging by Tuesday’s results.

As a revue the tour also favors the strengths of its headliners, in a way that “Raising Sand” doesn’t. So there were two more Led Zeppelin tunes, each a powerhouse. “Black Country Woman” had the band exploding at each emotional spur in the lyrics, and then subsiding until the next furious wave.

“The Battle of Evermore” was quieter but stronger, owing to its Celtic drone (a sound not far removed from Appalachia) and its female vocal part (which Ms. Krauss sang grippingly). And even on some songs from the “Raising Sand” album, Mr. Plant was rewardingly forceful: “Nothin,’ ” a Townes Van Zandt lament, found him caterwauling like his younger self.

Ms. Krauss had her own showcase, beginning with the traditional hymn “Green Pastures,” on which she received sparse support from Dennis Crouch on bass and Stuart Duncan on guitar. Then she pared down further, singing a serenely penetrating version of “Down to the River to Pray,” initially with no accompaniment at all. (Halfway through, Mr. Plant mock-tiptoed onstage to contribute to an a cappella gospel harmony.)

If this collaboration encourages Mr. Plant to be a bit more ethereal, it has certainly made Ms. Krauss seem earthier. Her characteristically sweet, high singing was balanced against more strident and cathartic belting. On “It’s Goodbye and So Long to You,” which doesn’t appear on “Raising Sand,” and “Trampled Rose,” which does, she proved she can wail as hard as anybody, even you know who.

Elsewhere there was better proof of a cohesive blend, as in the back-to-back closers: “Please Read the Letter,” a ballad by Mr. Plant, and “Gone Gone Gone (Done Moved On),” a classic by the Everly Brothers. Then there was the final encore: “Your Long Journey,” by Doc and Rosa Lee Watson. Ms. Krauss and Mr. Plant sang it exquisitely, with a somber intensity that they couldn’t possibly have summoned before they hit the road.

[BFrank]

I'll be seeing them in Berkeley in 2 weeks. A friend can't use her tix and offered them to me.

[mjzee]

From the Wall St Journal:

Alison Krauss And Robert Plant, Together

It's a pairing that works a lot better than you might expect

By JIM FUSILLI

June 14, 2008; Page W16

ROANOKE, Va. -- At first blush, Led Zeppelin vocalist Robert Plant and bluegrass singer and fiddler Alison Krauss seem an unlikely pair, but they share territory on the pop landscape. Witness Ms. Krauss's faithful version of Mr. Plant's "Big Log" on her brother Viktor's album "Far From Enough" or her forays into pop with her band Union Station. Then there are the mellow, velvety smooth folk-based songs on Mr. Plant's solo recordings or the folky side of Zeppelin, a band formed by Delta and Chicago blues.

The best evidence of their commonality is the Plant-Krauss 2007 collaboration, "Raising Sand" (Rounder), produced by T-Bone Burnett. The million-selling album comprises country-flavored rock and rockabilly from the 1950s, with a touch of Kurt Weill's Weimar Republic-era arrangements here and there, all enveloped by Mr. Burnett's shimmering, atmospheric production. The disc provided most, but by no means all, of the material for Mr. Plant and Ms. Krauss's current U.S. tour, which resumed here on June 2 after the troupe spent early May in Europe.

In concert, the music was a little bit looser and by turns quiet and tranquil, pounding and aggressive as the singers and their five-piece backing band tossed bluegrass numbers and several reworked Led Zeppelin songs into the mix. The singers' versatility was matched by the band's, which featured Mr. Burnett on guitar, Stuart Duncan on all sorts of stringed instruments, Dennis Crouch on upright bass and Jay Bellerose on drums; all of these musicians played on "Raising Sand." Nashville's Buddy Miller was also on guitar, succeeding the album's Marc Ribot, and Mr. Miller's presence deepened the country twang.

But with the exception of Mr. Crouch and Mr. Bellerose, rarely did the musicians play the same instruments in consecutive songs, nor were they always on stage at the same time. When Ms. Krauss sang the bluegrass gospel song "Green Pastures," she was accompanied only by Mr. Crouch and Mr. Duncan on guitar. She began "Down to the River to Pray" as a solo a cappella number; soon she was joined by Messrs. Plant, Miller and Duncan singing low harmonies. "Leave My Woman Alone" was built on Ms. Krauss's fiddle and Mr. Duncan's mandolin, and the two played fiddle as Mr. Plant offered a decidedly country version of his solo hit "In the Mood." Fronting the band when Ms. Krauss departed, Mr. Plant bridged the U.S. and the U.K. with "Fortune Teller," previously recorded by the Rolling Stones and the Who but written by New Orleans' Allen Toussaint.

Both vocalists were in extraordinary voice -- perhaps not a surprise given how distinctive and commanding they usually are. But they blended so well together, whether they were singing a tight, controlled Everly Brothers-style harmony in "Rich Woman," the night's opener, or letting loose during a soaring reimagining of Zeppelin's "Black Country Woman" that seemed to rattle the bunker-like Roanoke Civic Center.

Though there are no Zeppelin songs and only one composition by Mr. Plant and his Zeppelin partner Jimmy Page on "Raising Sand," the band's material was a focal point of the concert -- and yet another opportunity to celebrate versatility. "Black Dog" arose from an interpretation of its guitar lick by Mr. Duncan on banjo, and Mr. Plant and Ms. Krauss gave it a sly, understated reading: Though they've been playing this version for months -- you can find a performance on You Tube -- they still seem delighted by the audacity of the re-creation. Later, they let their voices fly during "Battle of Evermore," with Mr. Miller adding a gorgeous third harmony. "When the Levee Breaks," which Zeppelin reinvented 42 years after Memphis Minnie's version in 1929, served as a fitting conclusion to the two-hour show, with strands of country and rock flavoring the blues.

They paid tribute to Bo Diddley, who died earlier in the day, by playing his "Who Do You Love," Mr. Plant alternating the vocal with a piercing harmonica solo. Mr. Burnett's penchant for reverb and tremolo, his and Mr. Miller's chugging guitars, and Mr. Bellerose's use of maracas, toms and sticks on the drums' rims created a pretty fair facsimile of the Bo Diddley sound and a rebuke to those who attempted to define the late musician in their eulogies by a single rhythmic pattern.

From beneath a cascading mane, the 59-year-old Mr. Plant was in a playful spirit throughout the evening, joking through song introductions and smiling and glancing out of the corner of a twinkling eye at the reserved Ms. Krauss, who did her best to avoid his distractions. Calling her "the most gifted musician I know," he made it clear he relished the chance to perform at her side, all but laughing in joy after a song in which their vocals intertwined.

As for Ms. Krauss, who is 36 years old, her voice is so pure and potent that she can control a down-tempo number by holding a crystalline note and letting it build in volume, seemingly without effort. If the evening's version of Tom Waits's "Trampled Rose" was maudlin to the point of overbearing, Ms. Krauss wasn't to blame. She sang it with disarming power.

Which isn't to say that Mr. Plant was outclassed. The duo's version of Doc Watson's "Your Long Journey" was a lovely bluegrass prayer, and in "Killing the Blues" their voices formed a flawless two-part harmony. Despite an evening's worth of resourcefulness and invention, the most magical moments were when the singers sang, together and without reservation.

[7/4]

June 15, 2008, 10:22 pm

Bonnaroo: Same Set, Different Sound

By Jon Pareles, NYT

I had seen Robert Plant and Alison Krauss performing their duets with T-Bone Burnett leading their Raising Sand Revue band in New York, at WaMu Theater, the night before I left for Bonnaroo. It was a memorable concert: hazy with smoke and reverb, full of mystery and melancholy. And I was curious to see how such eerie, pristine music would survive daylight, a standing audience and the bleary day-four Bonnaroo crowd. It did, by turning everything inside out. The set list was virtually the same, the effect entirely different. The “Raising Sand” album was conceived and partly recorded in nearby Nashville, representing Mr. Plant’s discovery of, as he bluntly put it, America’s white songwriters. And behind the grief and solitude in many of the songs, it turned out, was a core of tenacity.

The band gave its dynamics a different order of magnitude: quieter at times, louder when they let loose, particularly Buddy Miller’s guitar solos. Where Mr. Plant and Ms. Krauss had sung gently and mournfully,

they let their voices ring, with Ms. Krauss’s fiddle playing bit harder. The banjo-centered version of Led Zeppelin’s “Black Dog” had the voices just teasing and the band crashing in, until Mr. Plant let loose a few phrases of the old arena wail, And Ms. Krauss’s aching version of “Trampled Rose,” so quiet and bereft in a New York theater, became a clear, keening mountain-music lament, with a sorrow as big as all outdoors.

[WorldB3]

I didn't care for the record much but with T.Bone and Buddy Miller in the band I wouldn't mind going to see it.

[medjuck]

I'm seeing them in Santa Barbara. My wife figured it was as close as she was going to get to ever seeing Led Zepplin. Now she's really excited because we saw Buddy Miller with Clem's favorite Emmy-Lou Harris and as a result she bought one of Buddy's cds and just loves it. I saw T-Bone with his own band and thought much of it was great, though I was disappointed in the cd with the same material. (That happens to me a lot-- I think many pop/rock/folk records are over-produced. True of some jazz cds too.)

[7/4]

Plant and Krauss bound for Grammy glory

Sun Feb 8, 2009 12:30pm EST

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Former Led Zeppelin singer Robert Plant and bluegrass queen Alison Krauss are the favorites to take home the coveted Grammy for album of the year when the music industry's top honors are handed out on Sunday.

The odd couple scored five nominations for their collaboration, "Raising Sand," on which they reworked old folk ballads and R&B chestnuts under the watchful eye of producer T-Bone Burnett, the man behind the "Oh Brother, Where Art Thou?" soundtrack, the 2002 album of the year winner.

"Raising Sand" was an instant critical and commercial hit, and Plant scuttled a much-rumored Led Zeppelin reunion by opting to tour Europe and America with Krauss instead.

Grammy voters will surely warm to the 60-year-old's "amazing transformation" from the frontman with one of the most debauched and successful rock bands of all time to an earnest purveyor of white mountain blues, said Doug Brod, editor at Spin magazine.

"There's a quality to him that really appeals to people now," Brod said. "People see him as a survivor, as a guy who's not afraid to take chances."

more story

[ejp626]

So Plant and Krauss have reunited for a second album, Raise the Roof.  It looks like they did a fairly modest 20 stop tour in 2022, and are touring again in 2023.  I decided to take the plunge and will see them in early July.  I definitely respect the fact that Plant is not resting on his laurels and has no intention of just playing his old material (as great as most of it is).  It looks like at most they play 3 Led Zeppelin songs in radically different interpretations, but mostly they are playing material from Raising Sand and Raise the Roof.

Edited February 3, 2023 by ejp626

[mjzee]

It should be a great show; enjoy!

They once broadcast a complete concert (it may have been an in-the-studio concert) with Buddy Miller subbing for Marc Ribot, on the tour that supported Raising Sand.  It was great, but they never reran it and never offered it on DVD.  Would love to see it again; it rocked harder than the album.

[Rooster_Ties]

My wife and I are debating going to see them at Wolftrap here outside of DC, June or July, I forget which.

We have both their duo CD’s, and they’re both lovely. I’ve half followed Plant’s solo career about 10x more than I ever listen to any Zeppelin any more (and haven’t for 20-25 years).

I appreciate Plant charting his own course apart from the Zeppelin legacy, and have always said ‘more power to him!’ every year he’s turned down opportunities to reunite as Zeppelin.

His voice is (imho) infinitely more pleasing post-Zep too. Even his first several solo albums in the 80’s are preferable (to me) over most of his LZ output — and I’ve probably listened to his first 2-3 solo albums more in the last 25 years, than I have any Zeppelin.

Not everyone has to agree about any of this either — to be clear, I’m not saying I’m ‘right’ about any of these preferences.)