Robert Plant and the Band Of Joy - Live at the Artists Den

Bob-Dubery

For those of you who are not up to date with Plant's "other" career (which now has run much longer than Led Zeppelin did), a couple of years ago the said career, which had already been an interesting one, took an unexpected and very fruitful turn when he embraced Americana and recorded Raising Sand with bluegrass queen Allison Krauss. Krauss and Plant then toured with a band featuring some Nashville heavyweights in ther persons of Buddy Miller and Stuart Duncan.

Miller and Plant seemed to have forged a strong working relationship, and this led to the excellent Band Of Joy (named for Plant's pre-Zeppelin band) in which Plant again worked with a female country singer, this time Patti Griffin (rumoured to now be Mrs Plant). Miller produced and this time he bought the all round Americana polymath Darrell Scott on board. The same lineup that recorded Band of Joy took to the road as the Band Of Joy and this DVD catches them in performance in Nashville. I believe it's not an entire show, but it is all from the same night, and at 75 minutes you get a decent helping of Plant and his band in action.

And what a band! A great rhythm section (Marco Giovino and Byron House), the instrumental attack of Miller and Scott and a massive vocal punch from Plant and Miller, Griffin and Scott - all strong singers in their own right, and all of them get a vocal spotlight here.

They stretch out a bit more on the material from Band of Joy (the album), with Miller especially in a higher gear than on the disc. They also take on some of Plant's back catalog, but not like a tribute band (as Plant says in the on-disc interview) but filtered through their own skills and styles. Scott really comes into his own on these reworkings, with a fab banjo part on "Gallows Pole" and a toe-curling pedal steel solo on "Rock 'n Roll". If all this sounds a bit blasphemous, it's not! The reworked Zep tracks are inventive but also respectful and some times give a nod to the originals - Scott and Miller dig out the original riff for "Houses of the Holy" and Giovino tacks a tribute to John Bonham onto the end of "Rock 'n Roll".

Throughout Scott catches the ear with great all-round musicianship on a number of instruments and Miller cranks it up on a selection of non-mainstream and sometimes outright bizarre guitars. His baritone playing is especially tasty. Griffin is a great vocal foil for Plant. The vocal solo spots are all strong, especially the harmonies on Scott's performance of "Satisfied Mind", and Percy even gets in some better-than-useful blues harp.

Plant looks like he's having the time of his life, and with a band like this behind him and with an ever-broadening horizon for his solo career it's no wonder that he's not that keen on a Led Zeppelin reunion tour.

Word is that Plant popped into Miller's studio recently to bounce some ideas around and they ended up with a lot of good tracks very quickly, so although Plant has been touring with the more trancey Sensational Shape Shifters behind him, it may be that his detour through Nashville has not yet run it's course.

singemonkey

Ok. Sounds good. Looking forward to seeing it.

I guess he had to ditch his hippy-isms of his post Zep career to get into more disciplined playing that brought his strengths out. Currently it seems he can do no wrong in the country centred approach.

Bob-Dubery

singemonkey wrote: Ok. Sounds good. Looking forward to seeing it.

I guess he had to ditch his hippy-isms of his post Zep career to get into more disciplined playing that brought his strengths out. Currently it seems he can do no wrong in the country centred approach.

What I think I detect is that a surprising number of Americana/country players were big fans of hard rock in general and Zep in particular in their teens. So I think that there's a long queue of top Nashville players who would be happy and honored to work with Plant - which helps him no end as he can assemble really good bands.

A couple of years ago, at the marvellous annual Celtic Connections in Glasgow, somebody pulled out at the last moment so Jerry Douglas and Tim O'Brien filled in at short notice with a set of Hendrix covers. These guys have broader tastes than we might think, healthy respect and affection for music other than their bread and butter, and serious chops to boot.

Earlier I mentioned Stuart Duncan, who I know as a sensational fiddle player but who also played a lot of guitar behind Plant and Krauss. He's featured on the forthcoming Richard Thompson album (the title, "Electric", sends a signal that is NOT folk music). These guys want to rock - and can rock. Buddy Miller produced that album, and he seems to be becoming a bit of a focal point for the new rock/country cross over.

Oh... in the DVD we started off discussing, Plant slips in a Fairport Convention tribute. On the Raising Sand tour he and Krauss included "Matty Groves" in the set list. So he hasn't completely forgotten his English roots.