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ROBERT PLANT & ALISON KRAUSS FEATURING T BONE BURNETT
Palace Theatre (Louisville, KY)
April 19, 2008

(NODEPRESSION.NET) -- As Jim Lauderdale is too prone to remark at various points during the annual Americana Music Association Honors & Awards, that's Americana.

It's a fair bet that large segments of the audience were really hoping this would be more like a Robert Plant MTV "Unplugged" session and were tempted to view Alison Krauss as a really expensive and high-profile backup singer. Which, of course, is not exactly -- not hardly; not at all -- what they got, for the real trick of the evening was so deeply remaking the Led Zeppelin covers as to almost hide them against the memory of their past, to make them part and parcel of the folk tradition. As they are, by now (and, anyway, that's where a good many of them were, um, acquired).

Raising Sand, the T Bone Burnett-produced album of duets which was well enough received (and, one suspects, made with sufficient fun) to outweigh the pleasures of an extended Zeppelin reunion for Plant, was not a grand statement. It was an intentionally modest album, in the tradition of John Lennon's 1975 Rock 'N' Roll or much of John Entwistle's solo career. The first generation of the British invasion came to rock 'n' roll not strictly through the blues (from which Peter Green and Eric Clapton emerged) but from its pop side, too: from Buddy Holly and Elvis Presley and the Everly Brothers.

For Plant, this album and tour is a chance to play with and within a tradition he adores and respects, and to escape from the operatic ecstasies of his superstardom. For the balance of his band -- Buddy Miller (guitar, steel guitar, autoharp), Union Station alum Stuart Duncan (guitars, clawhammer banjo, fiddle), Dennis Crouch (bass), and Jay Bellerose (drums) -- this is an opportunity to play with two of the great voices of this or any other day, and to rock, occasionally. (At one point Miller seemed to get in touch with his inner Kim Thayil, though I suspect Buddy's not much of a Soundgarden fan.)

All of that -- that mix, the melange, that messing about -- that's Americana.

That these are conflicting impulses is part of the potential charm, and a significant challenge. Particularly to the technical crew, who must juggle an assortment of microphones, amplifiers, instruments, balance points...

And so a caveat: This was the first night of the tour. Every other night these folks play together will be easier and more fun and better, and so if Miller kept being handed guitars that were inexplicably out of tune, or microphones weren't always turned on (or up) on cue, and if there was a certain inevitable stiffness among performers sorting out how to do what they all do so well in this setting, well, it was still an opportunity to watch seven tremendously talented musicians play through a deep and curious songbook.

Was magic made? Not yet; or, rather, not together, not yet. This is Alison Krauss' turf, apart from the rock edges, which she has largely hidden in performance. The ornate Palace Theatre is familiar (Krauss recorded her 2002 live album there, and the IBMA awards were held there for a time), and she is accustomed to playing acoustic music. And her spotlight songs soared, though she seemed a trifle tense, even alone. Plant is the interloper, and yet the star, and has nothing to lose. Is easy with himself. Those who watched the CMT "Crossroads" special recorded earlier may have noticed his over-broad hand movements, arena-sized gestures of long habit. He has quelled them, for the most part, but is still not quite able simply to address the microphone and the audience and sing -- except when he is singing harmony. Which is not to say he is anything less than gracious, nor engaged. Simply that old habits die hard, and he is adapting.

And, anyway, no other performer even dabbling in American could so easily prompt an audience to sing in response, as Plant did with very small gestures during "Black Dog", a song that reached crescendo not through vocal pyrotechnics, but because Bellerose switched to mallets on the drums. (The Louisville audience did not sing in key, though, in fairness, it's a difficult part, even if there are no words to learn.)

Comparatively little of the set came from Raising Sand, but, perhaps because they had already been most carefully worked out, those songs came off best. The Zeppelin chestnut "Please Read The Letter" (from the 1998 Jimmy Page/Robert Plant album Walking Into Clarksdale) was a letter-perfect Everlys knockoff, both loving and lovely. "Fortune Teller" "Rich Woman" opened the show (cutting off Elmore James' "Madison Blues" on the house system), Plant and Krauss both walking to their microphones on cue, and Plant later made a point to introduce Townes Van Zandt's "Nothing", though it got an oddly blurry performance. They closed a four-song encore with an especially mournful, tender reading of "Your Long Journey".

Many things came in between (after a brief opening act, their set ran roughly two and a half hours), and it's hard to guess how many of them will survive or be changed out. Mid-set, Krauss left the stage, and Plant stopped proceedings and brought T Bone Burnett to center stage, where the producer sang two songs from his new album. This was the only time Burnett was afforded a microphone, though he clearly led the band from his seat to the drummer's left (our right), and while they were nice enough songs, it takes a certain amount of self-conviction to take center stage when Robert Plant, Alison Krauss, Buddy Miller and Stuart Duncan are also singing. Plant slipped into the background to sing harmonies on Burnett's second number.

The truth is that I went hoping for something like the original O Brother wrap party at the Ryman, where (among other great joys) Emmylou Harris, Gillian Welch and Alison Krauss made a trio of "Down To The River To Pray", as gorgeous a sound as one will ever hear. On this evening, Krauss sang her song against a trio of male voices, centered around their own microphone: Plant, Duncan and Miller. Their microphone was turned too low, but it may well be spectacular when you can hear all four voices. Certainly the George Jones cover in the encore (I've now forgotten the title) with Miller finally turned loose on a microphone (which quickly was turned up), his rough voice playing against Plant's reedy tenor and Krauss' skyscraper, suggests how spectacular this tour will become. Should become.

And watching them work out the kinks, while not magic, was still tolerably close. Those two, they can sing.

-- GRANT ALDEN
Copyright c. 2008 No Depression Inc. and/or Grant Alden.

P.S. To the two corrections (and there may be more). I have never taken notes for live reviews. In the print world, I have time and resources to check against set lists (and such) from one source or another. The plague of the internet is that one is emboldened to publish soonest, and so...my foibles are more public than might be wished. So it goes.