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Rocker Robert Plant, bluegrass star Alison Krauss return to scene of their first musical collaboration
By Malcolm X Abram
Beacon Journal music writer
Published on Thursday, Jul 10, 2008
When bluegrass queen Alison Krauss and rock legend Robert Plant take the stage together Tuesday night in Cleveland to perform music from their Grammy-winning, platinum-selling collaboration Raising Sand, it will be the completion of an unlikely circle of events that brought the pair together.
It was in Cleveland that Plant and Krauss first collaborated — at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame's tribute to Leadbelly in 2004.
''He called and was very friendly on the phone,'' Krauss said during a recent conference call with Plant and Raising Sand producer and touring bandmate T-Bone Burnett.
''He came down there and we were rehearsing in an Armenian dance hall that looked like it hadn't been touched for 40 or 50 years. The minute I met Robert, I thought, 'Oh, my goodness. This is going to be fun,' '' Krauss said.
''We talked about [bluegrass legend] Ralph Stanley and traveling through the Appalachian Mountains and how much [Plant] loved traditional music. I was very taken by him — his personality and his interests in traditional music.''
The duo performed Black Girl, Poor Howard and Green Corn at the tribute, and enjoyed each other's personal and musical company enough to keep in touch and make tentative plans for some kind of collaboration.
Those plans went from tentative to fruitful when Burnett, who enlisted Krauss for the massively popular O Brother, Where Art Thou? soundtrack, was brought in to help shape the project, turning the singing duo into a creative trio.
Burnett's resume as a producer and performer includes such names as Bob Dylan, Elvis Costello, Roy Orbison, Counting Crows, Spinal Tap and Los Lobos. He was charged with putting the band together, finding the material and giving the low-key recording his patented organic, ambient sound. The songs cut a wide swath through the space and time continuum of popular and not so popular music, including tunes by Tom Waits, the Everly Brothers, Townes Van Zandt and Allen Toussaint, a revival of a Plant/Page composition from their Walking to Clarksdale collaboration and two by Byrds guitarist Gene Clark.
While the pairing of the Led Zeppelin frontman with the quiet, mellifluous bluegrass star and leader of her longtime band Union Station may seem odd on paper, Raising Sand proves again that preconceptions and image have little to do with music.
The album finds the still golden-maned rock god Plant way out of his comfort zone, singing softer and with more control in his lower register, and doing something that he's never done before — harmonizing. Throughout the album's 13 songs, Plant and Krauss' voices blend easily and smoothly like cream and coffee, with Krauss expertly following Plant's more subdued vocals on tracks such as the low-boiling opener Rich Woman, Killing the Blues and the Everlys' rockabilly-flavored Gone Gone Gone (Done Moved On).
''I haven't had any private moments with women singing — I never saw myself as somebody who could sing with anybody else,'' Plant said.
''I've learned that constraint and modifying the amount of air that I've pushed through my body — and reducing it and minimizing the sound — can be so much more effective,'' he said. ''What I've learned from Alison is humility and patience. I'm just learning how to fly.''
Both also take solo turns on the album, with Krauss' pristine soprano shining on the sparsely arranged, pastoral Trampled Rose and singing with a bluesy lilt on the lightly rocking version of blues legend Little Milton's Let Your Loss Be Your Lesson.
Plant shows his newfound restraint on an ominous take on Van Zandt's Nothin' and invokes a bit of his rock god past on a cover of Toussaint's Fortune Teller.
The album is a surprise success, selling more than a million copies and garnering the principals a Grammy for Best Pop Collaboration with Vocals, for the single Gone Gone Gone. It was Plant's first solo award and Krauss' 21st, making her the top Grammy-winning female artist of all time.
Plant has been having so much fun that he shocked many fans and likely his old bandmates when, after Zeppelin's triumphant reunion concert at London's O2 Arena in December, he quickly killed any Zeppelin 2008 tour rumors by telling anyone who would listen how excited he was to tour with Krauss and Burnett.
Doing that reunion concert to honor the late Atlantic Records founder Ahmet Ertegun, ''to go back out of respect to complete the circle, to bring Jason Bonham into the picture, to make his mom smile, to make Ahmet's sweetheart feel good and to help all those kids in that charity is the right thing to do. But after that, I hot-toe'd it back to Ms. Krauss,'' Plant told the Associated Press in June.
So far the tour, like the album, has been a big success, with Krauss, Plant and guitarist Burnett joined by guitarist Buddy Miller, acoustic bassist Dennis Crouch, multi-instrumentalist Stuart Duncan and drummer Jay Bellerose playing songs from the album as well as a few surprises.
Yes, those surprises have included some Zep, with the group turning Black Dog into a crawling shuffle with Krauss' added harmonies, and more familiar versions of Black Country Woman and The Battle of Evermore, with Krauss in place of original singer Sandy Denny. The band has also tried Hey, Hey, What Can I Do, with Krauss adding fiddle fills, and When the Levee Breaks.
The set lists have also included nonalbum tracks, such as Ray Charles' Leave My Woman Alone, the Stanley Brothers gospel tune Green Pastures and the rockabilly It's So Long and Goodbye to You, by Mac Wiseman. Likewise Krauss has been receiving praise for her rendition of Down to the River to Pray, from O Brother, featuring an a cappella introduction before the three-part harmonies of Plant, Miller and Duncan.
Fans of Led Zeppelin hoping that Plant will relent and hit the road with his old band might have to wait a while longer; he and Krauss have plans to return to their regular gigs, Krauss with Union Station and Plant with his Strange Sensation band, with which he recorded his recent well-received solo album Mighty Rearranger.
But all three believe Raising Sand will not be just a one-time collaboration.
''I think all of us are hoping to continue this and that it goes on and on. But that doesn't mean we've lost any love for who we play for and play with [in other settings],'' Krauss said during the conference call.
Plant said: ''I'm a fortunate man to be learning every day and to be standing on the side of the stage . . . and sometimes pinching myself and saying, 'Am I really a part of this?'
''It's such a great cacophony of sounds. I couldn't wish for anything better than this.''
Malcolm X Abram can be reached at mabram@thebeaconjournal.com or 330-996-3758.
When bluegrass queen Alison Krauss and rock legend Robert Plant take the stage together Tuesday night in Cleveland to perform music from their Grammy-winning, platinum-selling collaboration Raising Sand, it will be the completion of an unlikely circle of events that brought the pair together.
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