Robert Plant and the Band of Joy have received two Awards:

OUTSTANDING CREATIVE ACHIEVEMENT
Record Production/Single or Track
“Angel Dance”, Robert Plant

Remote Production/Recording or Broadcast
Robert Plant and the Band of Joy,
Live in Concert, NPR Music

About The TEC Foundation for Excellence in Audio:

Founded in 1990, the TEC Foundation for Excellence in Audio is a 501(c) (3) public benefit corporation, dedicated to recognizing and furthering excellence in audio, video, music and other communications media arts. The Foundation’s signature program is the Technical Excellence & Creativity Awards, honoring outstanding achievement in audio technology and production. The Foundation endows scholarship programs for the audio arts and sciences at leading universities and presents its own TEC Scholarship to deserving students.  http://tecfoundation.com

After getting noticed for his solo albums, Scott had a fortuitous streak of Top 40 success in 2001 and 2002, when his songs went on to be covered by Travis Tritt (“It’s a Great Day To Be Alive”), Sara Evans (“Born to Fly”) and The Dixie Chicks (“Long Time Gone”), the latter of which netted a Grammy. That doesn’t include the oft-covered modern mountain classic, “You’ll Never Leave Harlan Alive.”

In 2007, Scott won Song of the Year at the Americana Music Award for “Hank Williams’ Ghost.” These days, he finds himself winding down his touring duties as a member of Robert Plant’s Band of Joy and getting back on the road, ready to introduce material from his new album, Long Ride Home.
Speaking to us from his home in Nashville, Scott offered up some eccentric and philosophical thoughts on the state of Americana music, singing with the guy from Led Zeppelin and how a song can leave the room out of spite while it’s being written.

So, when you were growing up, dreaming of musical stardom, it must’ve been totally normal and expected when you started touring with the singer of Led Zeppelin, right?

No, that was a pretty odd one, actually. That’s one I would’ve never dreamed. The good news was that Robert [Plant] didn’t want to do Led Zeppelin all over again. He expressed how he really wanted to morph and follow his own muse. The path that started with his last record [Raising Sand with Alison Krauss] led him to Nashville and to connecting with Buddy Miller, and then that led to Buddy calling me to be a multi-instrumentalist on the record, and then to Robert deciding that he wanted that band out on the road for a 13-month tour. It started out as a record, but turned into a great band project.

Well, it’s a pretty big deal to get to work with Buddy Miller, too, isn’t it?

It’s been a great learning experience to work with both Buddy and Robert. With Robert, one of my roles was to sing harmony, and when the instrumentalist in me got to play guitar with Buddy, that was great, too. It was a wonderful thing to lift my voice with Robert and Patty [Griffin] and then to play guitar with Buddy. So I was an entertained guy.

So many come to Nashville to either play, write or sing. You’ve been getting work doing all three. Was that your strategy for success?

It was never an exact strategy of mine. These are just abilities, or tools, that I have. The way I work this stuff is sort of like that Steely Dan song, “Any World (That I’m Welcome To).” It’s a great song and it’s how I feel about that subject. I’ll walk through any door that’s open to me. I still do. I feel very lucky, because the writer part of me has been fortunate and has had a lot of stuff going on. The player part of me has played in some great sessions and on some great records, and the artist part of me has put out eight or nine albums, and then I got to be in Robert’s band. I just walk where I’m welcome. I won’t crack my head against a window hoping that someone will let me in; I’ll just go to someone who says, “Hey, come over here.” I don’t have a work-related or a star-climbing strategy. Why the hell would I want to be where I don’t feel welcome, you know? I just slither around, chameleon-style between the writing, playing and performing worlds.

Given how much live performing you’ve been doing, whether it be solo or with Band of Joy, would you say that the performer world is where you’re most welcome right now?

Yes, I would say that, because it’s where I’ve been able to express a fuller blast of my artistic self recently. Going out and playing my own shows is an expression, obviously, because it’s just me. It’s not me playing someone else’s songs in a session. Of course, it’s all music, and I love it all in some way.

You’ve become a revered figure in the Americana scene over the past few years. What is Americana music to you?

Roots music. I love that Americana is so hard to pin down. As soon as it gets too easy to understand, it may detract from the wonderful music that it is. It’s a funny spot between Americana being promoted, talked about and understood, then defined. Once it’s defined too specifically, it will get pigeonholed for everyone. I kind of like the hard-to-define place that the music is in. I want the music to be as free as it can be. It can be whatever the hell it wants to be. I mean, there’s great Americana being made in Canada and even Ireland, so I don’t mean for Americana to imply flag-waving or that it’s only from here in the states. I do still think Americana is an alternative form. Bluegrass fits into Americana. Honky-tonk fits into Americana, and Texas Swing does too. I love that Americana’s just a big, ol’ messy catch-all that no one knows what the hell it really is. I want to keep it as weird as it can be. When it’s defined, its power will be gone. Instead of that campaign in Austin to “Keep Austin Weird,” I want to keep Americana indefinable.

Now that you’ve had a string of success writing hit songs, do you often catch yourself writing songs with a specific artist in mind, or does that come later?

I try to just write. I do have those thoughts, but have to just keep them away if you can. I guess there are times where that can be healthy, but when you’re in the throes of writing a song, that’s the very thing I don’t want to be thinking about. As soon as that part of the brain kicks in and you think, “Oh, this will be perfect for so-and-so,” or “My girlfriend will really like this,” the song may very well leave the room. The song is then telling you that you just wanted to be patted on the back and it is gone. I’m exaggerating a bit, but not much. I can’t think of where a song will be placed or where it will end up, or I’m just a marketer or a consultant. I’ve just removed myself from the very act of writing and moved myself into song-pitching. I try to bring it back to the song, or you won’t have a song.

By Kelly Dearmore

http://blogs.dallasobserver.com/dc9/2012/01/qa_darrell_scott_tries_to_pin.php

Projects from Robert Plant’s Band of Joy garnered nominations in four categories, including Record Production for the eponymous album and single “Angel Dance”; Remote Production for an NPR radio broadcast; and a nomination in Tour Sound Production.

NOMINATIONS:

1) Record Production/Single

“Angel Dance”, Robert Plant
Recording Engineers: Mike Poole, Gordon Hammond
Mixing Engineers: Mike Poole, Gordon Hammond, Ted Wheeler
Mixing Facility: House of Blues Studios
Producers: Robert Plant, Buddy Miller
Recording Studios: Woodland Studios, House of Blues Studios
Mastering Engineers: Jim DeMain, Alex McCollough
Mastering Facility: Yes Master Studios

2) Remote Production/Recording or Broadcast

Robert Plant and Band of Joy, Live in Concert, NPR Music
Remote Engineers: Ed Haber, Irene Trudel, George Wellington, Mike Poole
Music Mixers: Mike Pool, Ed Haber
Remote Facility: New York Public Radio

3) Tour Sound Production

“Robert Plant and the Band of Joy” Tour
FOH Engineer: Roy Williams
Monitor Engineer: Dee Miller
Tour Company: Thunder Audio

4) Record Production/Album

Band of Joy, Robert Plant
Recording Engineers: Mike Poole, Gordon Hammond, Tim Mitchell
Mixing Engineers: Mike Poole, Gordon Hammond, Ted Wheeler
Mixing Facility: House of Blues Studios
Producers: Robert Plant, Buddy Miller
Recording Studios: Woodland Studios, House of Blues, Clinton Recording Studio
Mastering Engineer: Jim DeMain, Alex McCollough
Mastering Facility: Yes Master Studios

http://www.tecfoundation.com/tec/11nomineescreat.html

CBC Radio 2 will broadcast Robert Plant & The Band of Joy live in Winnipeg, recorded at the Winnipeg Jazz Festival, June 21, 2011. Broadcast: Nov. 18, 19:00 to 20:00 Eastern Standard Time.

The concert is also available On Demand, from the CBC website here.

Robert Plant and Band of Joy live in Winnipeg
Recorded: Jun. 21, 2011
Venue: Centennial Concert Hall, Winnipeg, MB

There are few artists in the music world who have maintained a vibrant 40 plus year career. One such person is Robert Plant.  From his work with Led Zeppelin to his Grammy award winning project with Allison Krause, Plant has reinvented himself yet stayed true to his passion for music.  In June of 2011, he appeared with his group Band of Joy at the TD International Jazz Winnipeg Festival to a packed concert hall.

The audience was made up of rough-looking sixty year-old biker types who clearly went back to the early days of Plant’s career as well as twenty and thirty year olds.  This wasn’t Plant’s first trip to Winnipeg.  He performed with Led Zeppelin in 1970 and he knew exactly where he was.  As he and the producer were walking out to the CBC mobile, he asked if Burton Cummings and Randy Bachman were around.  Band of Joy features some of the most well respected musicians on the scene, including guitarist and musical director Buddy Miller, multi-instrumentalist Darrell Scott and vocalist and instrumentalist Patty Griffin.

ROBERT PLANT, LUCINDA WILLIAMS, GREGG ALLMAN
THE AVETT BROTHERS, THE CIVIL WARS & MORE FEATURED IN ONE HOUR SPECIAL

♦♦♦  For Immediate Release:

Nashville, TN-November 8, 2011-Robert Plant, Emmylou Harris, Gregg Allman, Alison Krauss, The Avett Brothers and The Civil Wars are just a few of the artists appearing on “ACL Presents: Americana Music Festival,” sponsored by Nissan and airing starting November 19th on PBS stations nationwide (check local listings). Called “the best awards show in the world” by Paste Magazine, the hour long special was filmed live at the Ryman Auditorium on October 13, 2011 during the sold-out Americana Music Association’s Honors and Awards and features special performances from the genres’ established and rising stars.

Hosted by Jim Lauderdale, with an all-star house band led by Americana favorite Buddy Miller, the show runs the gamut of Americana music. It opens with a moving performance of “I’ll Fly Away,” in tribute to the 10th anniversary of the “O’ Brother, Where Art Thou?” soundtrack, with Harris, Krauss and others, and closes with an uplifting finale spotlighting the legendary Allman.  In between are performances by Lauderdale, Miller, Plant and The Band of Joy, Candi Staton, The Avett Brothers, Lucinda Williams, The Civil Wars, Elizabeth Cook, Justin Townes Earle, Jessica Lea Mayfield, and Amos Lee. Most are backed by Miller’s ace sidemen, featuring Don Was, Greg Leisz, the McCrary Sisters, along with John Deaderick and brothers Cody and Luther Dickinson of the North Mississippi Allstars.

“It was time to bring the Americana Honors to another level,” said Jed Hilly, executive director of the Americana Music Association. “We could not have better partners than Nashville Public Television president and CEO Beth Curley for our Middle Tennessee premiere, and Austin City Limits executive producer Terry Lickona to take this to a national audience.”

The program, described by Emmylou Harris as “the shining star of Nashville and music everywhere,” was filmed by High Five Entertainment and co-produced by its president Martin Fischer and Lickona. For more on the show, photos, and clips click here.

Performance Rundown:

• Emmylou Harris Alison Krauss Buddy Miller, Jerry Douglas and Don Was /I’ll Fly Away, “O’Brother” Tribute Performance
• The Avett Brothers / The Once And Future Carpenter
• Lucinda Williams / Blessed
• Amos Lee / Cup of Sorrow
• Elizabeth Cook / El Camino
• The Civil Wars / Barton Hollow
• Justin Townes Earle / Harlem River Blues
• Jessica Lea Mayfield / For Today
• Buddy Miller / Gasoline And Matches
• Candi Staton / Heart On A String
• Jim Lauderdale / Life By Numbers
• Robert Plant / Monkey
• Gregg Allman / Melissa

###

TO FIND OUT WHEN ACL PRESENTS: AMERICANA MUSIC FESTIVAL AIRS ON YOUR LOCAL PBS STATION VISIT www.austincitylimits.org, www.pbs.org OR CLICK BELOW FOR MARKET LISTINGS BY TIMEZONE.

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About the Americana Festival and Conference, presented by Nissan
Now in its 12th year, this year’s festival and conference presented by Nissan took place October 12-15, 2011. The event brings together fans and music industry executives alike offering four days of celebration through seminars, panels and networking opportunities by day and raw, battery-recharging showcases each evening.  The Honors and Awards Show is the featured performance of the festivities taking place at the historic Ryman Auditorium. For more information and to purchase conference badges, award tickets, or festival wristbands visit www.americanamusic.org.  Dates for the 2012 Festival and Conference will be announced in the coming weeks.

About the Americana Music Association
The Americana Music Association is a professional trade organization whose mission is to provide a forum for the advocacy of Americana music and to promote public awareness of the genre to support the creative and economic viability of professionals in this field. Dedicated to building and promoting the Americana genre and the individuals who participate in that industry, the Americana Music Association works closely with artists, labels, radio stations, retailers, print media, festivals, agents, publishers and more to help organize and build the infrastructure necessary for the Americana genre to achieve success both creatively and financially.

About ACL Presents:
ACL Presents is music programming created by, or in association with, KLRU, the producers of Austin City Limits (ACL).  ACL Presents programming includes television specials, live events, web series and recorded music presentations and is made in the spirit and standards of the legendary PBS series Austin City Limits, the longest-running live music series in television history. ACL Presents collaborations have included: Hardly Strictly Bluegrass with KQED and Americana Music Festival with Nashville Public Television (NPT). For more information please visit www.austincitylimits.org

About Nashville Public Television
Nashville Public Television is available free and over the air to nearly 2.4 million people throughout the Middle Tennessee and southern Kentucky viewing area, and is watched by more than 600,000 households every week. The mission of NPT is to provide, through the power of traditional television and interactive telecommunications, high quality educational, cultural and civic experiences that address issues and concerns of the people of the Nashville region, and which there by help improve the lives of those we serve.  For more information please visit www.wnpt.org

There would be a dignity in Robert Plant’s refusal to take the easy, lazy road even if the restless exploration he chose instead had turned out to be little more than amiable, aimless wandering. But in the last few years his post-Zeppelin crusades have really started making sense, in consort with Alison Krauss and then his own Band Of Joy: a kind of hybrid twisted roots music laced with just enough of his ethereal mystic croon to give it a pleasing but sinister beauty. At 63, he seems blessed with the kind of endless curiosity that can’t be faked, and a determined humility, and he’s too polite to point out quite how far the interesting dusty back roads he has taken now separate him from most of the original rock aristocracy.

Two weeks before we speak, his most recent group, Band of Joy, played their final scheduled concert, at least for the time being. “So,” he explains, “I have to go back underground and start burrowing again.” Despite the difficulty he has in being away from England during the soccer season—”the Saturday afternoons are a little lacklustre here”—the site of his latest burrowing is Austin, Texas, home of Band of Joy’s other vocalist, Patty Griffin.

GQ: After all this time, what have you discovered that you think you do?
Robert Plant: I think I surprise myself. And I think that that’s the reason that I do it.

GQ: Surprise yourself in finding what?
Robert Plant: Finding another way to do what I know I can do pretty well. A way that stimulates me. I’m always on some sort of learning curve, and I try to apply my gift to that. If I can continually be surprised then I’m alert.

GQ: And people who have been doing what you do for a long time often get in a situation where they find themselves not learning?
Robert Plant: The thing is: How much do people really want to learn? I mean, some people get into a groove and they stay with it indefinitely. And what starts off as a great moment of explosive passion can end up as cabaret 25, 30 years later. It just depends on whether you go and find the right habitat to extend yourself.

GQ: What do you think the difference is between the people who take the left path and the right path?
Robert Plant: Probably about four or five inches on the waistline.

GQ: Slimness is the key?
Robert Plant: No, you become slim because you become lean and because you’re looking for clues. If I have to justify myself in this absurd life that I have then I have to have something that’s reasonably creditable to go with my name and my CBE [Plant was made a Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 2009] and my lifetime Vice Presidency [of the soccer team Plant supports, Wolverhampton Wanderers]. So, yeah, I’m always in school. It’s crucial that I kind of keep up, without drifting into the backslapping land of cliché and lifetime achievement awards.

GQ: Yes, it’s so easy for people to reach for their slippers.
Robert Plant: Well, I don’t think it’s easy. I think that those that have their slippers, and their Fair Isle sleeveless sweaters, getting ready for the chill of October, I think quite a few of them are in mourning for the great moments of invention and explosion. And I think it’s not supposed to go on forever. It would be wonderful if it did. But there’s no point in being judgmental. I’m just lucky because my kids are grown-up—I love them, very proud of them, and we are in close contact as big-time friends, but they don’t need me that much now and I can actually enjoy this wonderful world of music. In two weeks time I shall be playing on the north side of the Mexican border with a band led by an American-Hispanic accordionist at a little festival called El Cosmico, and there may be a thousand people there. A door swings open, I’ll have a quick peep and enjoy it. I was thinking the other day how strange it is that the generation of front men, if you want to call it that, how many are left that just sing and twirl the microphone. And there’s not many of us. And so I kind of disguise my limitations by hanging out with very talented people. The excitement of the collision between the microphone-twirling guy from 1966 to now is just a fantastic adventure. There aren’t many of us left and I’ve managed to kind of cover my tracks pretty good.

GQ: How?
Robert Plant: I hate cliché. And when you’re a rock singer in 1966, or whatever it was, psychedelic blues, through to the ’70s, which we know all about, and the ’80s, which was a scramble to hang on in, and the ’90s, which was a great time for experimentation…to get to this place, I’m really still excited. The huge vast diagonals within the music that I’ve been involved with.

GQ: What are you doing in Austin?
Robert Plant: I’m looking for clues.

GQ: Finding any?
Robert Plant: Absolutely. It is brimming with clues here. It’s a hotbed of music and good ideas. It’s good here. I suppose because of my time and my age, and forcing our way through that kind of British underground rock explosion, we were kids and we didn’t know how to handle ego and that sort of thing, and now when you get to a certain point down the line being good isn’t just about being dextrous and being flash. Being good is about being an all-round contributor in the great world of music. The Band of Joy record, we cut 23 tracks in about ten days. At the end of an evening you know that you’ve cut three or four songs and they’re virtually complete. I remember in the ’80s another Atlantic artist was being produced at [producer Trevor Horn's London recording studio] Sarm West and it took them three weeks to decide on which snare drum to use.

GQ: And we all know how it sounded.
Robert Plant: Yeah. It sounds like “Owner of a Lonely Heart”.

GQ: As the years pass, do you find it easier or harder to stay creative?
Robert Plant: Well, you’ve probably noticed that on the last two albums that I’ve made—the one with Alison and the one with Band of Joy—there’s not very much original stuff on it. But on our tour we just finished we wrote prolifically at the soundchecks, so it’s a very trippy psychedelic trance-like bunch of demos I’ve got here with me. I guess it’s perhaps a bit more languid than Primal Scream but it’s definitely got dark beautiful Link Wray overtones. And Patty, we have written a couple of great pieces together. In fact we’re having a rehearsal in about an hour and a half. And I’m playing a lot of acoustic guitar now, which is something I didn’t dare do in the ’70s. I couldn’t look at a guitar without blanching because I was with one of the most spectacular guitar players of the late twentieth century.

GQ: Over the years, have you found it more valuable to listen to other people’s advice or to completely ignore it?
Robert Plant: I’ve been advised by everybody. Everybody’s got something to tell you. And most people have told me to do the obvious thing as far as my career goes. Which would have sent me tottering into the abyss.

GQ: They mean: “Put your old band back together”?
Robert Plant: Well, I think that’s gone now.

GQ: While you should obviously feel free to do what the hell you want either way, it seems such an important part of what you are and who you are now that that wouldn’t be the path you’d take.
Robert Plant: No, exactly. The thing is: How far can you go with it? And that’s the whole deal about what I do is that I’m only a singer. I want to do lots of different things. I got a baritone ukulele yesterday and I’ve tuned it already so I can play along with [the Saharan band of Tuareg musicians] Tinariwen. But advice is valid and wonderful.

GQ: Did you really seriously think about giving it up and becoming a teacher?
Robert Plant: Yeah. I lost my son when he was five, in ’77. We lost our boy. [Karac Plant, his oldest son, died of a viral infection.] Our family had always been close to the Rudolf Steiner Waldorf education in the West Midlands and I just liked the way it all worked. Obviously, it’s not something that we, as a family, have been able to get over yet, having lost him. So I just thought there was something far more honest and wholesome about just digging in and putting the ego away in the closet. Because no matter what we say, entertainers are usually quite insecure, wobbly characters underneath, and maybe that bit of glory or that bit of expression or whatever it is compensates in some area. But I thought I should be rid of it. Yeah, I thought it was not a bad idea. Sometimes I still feel like that. Alison Kraus’s boy, Sam, he goes to a Steiner school, a Waldorf school in Tennessee, and I’ve been with her a few times to pick him up from school—I must admit that the smell of carbolic soap, and the clamour of joy of kids, doesn’t hurt at all.

GQ: What would you have taught?
Robert Plant: It would be pretty general if it was young kids, but I’ve got five grandchildren, and they marvel at my madness. I think I would just have told them great stories. I can put people to sleep on a twelve-hour journey on a bus. Talking about the Black Shield Irish walking two-by-two from Cardigan Bay to Hereford to ransack the cathedral—I can put Patty to sleep in seconds.

GQ: Those aren’t the wild tour stories I used to read about!
Robert Plant: [Laughs] This is a different time, pal. I mean, everybody is aware of those stories, and they are stories—they are fables.

GQ: After all these years, how on earth have you managed to keep your hair like that?
Robert Plant: Well, I don’t know. We could be quite serious about it. I just have been very lucky. My mother was a gypsy, and she had a lot of dark blood in her, and her hair was very, very thick—she couldn’t even get a brush through it. So I have been very fortunate. And every time I go to cut it off, hairdressers refuse to do it.

GQ: You have Samson moments where you’re: “Begone with it!”?
Robert Plant: Well, thinking about being a teacher, it’s just one token too many. But it’s great. I realize that I am typecast, but not saddened by it. Whenever I feel in doubt I play some David Crosby song. You know that song “Almost cut my hair”: “just the other day…it’s getting kind of long, I could have said it was in my way…but I’m not giving in…I’m going to let my freak flag fly”. When I walk through an airport now with my friends I’m proud that it didn’t happen, that I kept it going, and I still feel a lot of the attachments to that whole period and era. So I’m not a sad old hippie—I’m a joyous old hippie, I suppose.

GQ: And, as a general principle, keeping your freak flag is still a valid one?
Robert Plant: Absolutely. Especially more and more and more. Yeah. When we’ve finished with Murdoch, who do we go for next? Once upon a time the subculture was huge, and challenged the corruption that prevails, and I was so lucky to be around then to see what positivity could come about by constructive and clinical discourse. I mean, how much more can we watch this place devour itself when we see what the answers are and what’s going on? It seems that the news is so vivid now that it almost just becomes a moment to stare at something but then you move on to the next thing. So, yes, is that anything to do with long hair? Quite possibly.

GQ: If the 25-year-old you met you now, what would surprise him?
Robert Plant: Well, I can stay up late. What I lack in style and craft, I can make up for in joy and enthusiasm. I like to be around people who are at ease so I like to think the 25-year-old would find me quite an easy-going late-middle-aged hippie.

GQ: What would you murmur in his ear?
Robert Plant: Very good question. Don’t be hard on yourself. And take as many chances, risks, as you can. You’ve got to be out there adventuring with the voice. Because if you’re just a singer for the sake of it, it’s not quite enough.

by Chris Heath

http://www.gq.com/entertainment/music/201111/robert-plant-gq-music-issue

Led Zeppelin’s Robert Plant lends support for program.

Newswise — Legendary rockers Roger Daltrey and Pete Townshend of the Who say they owe much of their musical success to teenagers. In a heartfelt repayment of that debt, the two today announced the launch of the UCLA Daltrey/Townshend Teen & Young Adult Cancer Program, which will serve teens and young adult cancer patients at Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center.

The new program — the first of its kind in the United States — will build on the previous successful efforts of the Teenage Cancer Trust, which has helped fund 19 special teen cancer units in the United Kingdom.

The vision of the UCLA Daltrey/Townshend Teen & Young Adult Cancer Program is to ensure that every young person receives the best possible care and professional support to help them meet the physical and emotional challenges of a cancer diagnosis. The belief is that teenagers and young adults shouldn’t stop enjoying their youth just because they have cancer.

“At a time when your body is changing, your social life is everything and you’re still trying to figure out who you are, getting cancer can seem like an impossible blow to take,” Daltrey said.

Often, when hospitalization is required for teens with cancer, they are placed in a pediatric unit or in an adult oncology unit filled primarily with elderly patients. The UCLA Daltrey/Townshend Teen & Young Adult Cancer Program’s special hospital unit will be a comforting environment where young people with cancer are treated together and housed in adjoined patient rooms around a common lounge so they can provide emotional support for each other. The units are designed to provide, as closely as possible, a normal life, helping the youngsters cope with grueling treatments and long hospital stays.

Rock icon Robert Plant of Led Zeppelin, who has been closely involved with the program in the U.K., has also lent his support to the new UCLA program.

“We hope to bring the success of the Teenage Cancer Trust program in the U.K. to this inaugural program at UCLA,” Plant said. “The caring and support the program provides have made a huge difference in the lives of many teens and young adults who are battling cancer.”

In July of this year, a team of UCLA pediatric and medical oncologists, child life specialists, nurses, psychologists, and several young adult cancer survivors traveled to the U.K. to visit and train with established experts from the Teenage Cancer Trust program, in preparation for establishing the first American program at Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center.

“We feel confident that this historic partnership and the launch of the first Daltrey/Townshend Teen & Young Adult Cancer Program in America will establish a more truly healing environment for our adolescent patients and set the stage for an expansion of the program to medical institutions across the United States,” said Dr. David Feinberg, CEO of the UCLA Health System and associate vice chancellor for health sciences.

Under Feinberg’s leadership, UCLA is exploring an early expansion of the program to teens and young adults receiving in-patient cancer care at Santa Monica–UCLA Medical Center and Orthopaedic Hospital and out-patient care at UCLA Medical Plaza.

Dr. Jacqueline Casillas, who will head the program at UCLA, led the delegation that visited the U.K. centers.

“We were very impressed during our visit and witnessed firsthand the positive impact that the U.K. Teenage Cancer Trust units have on the lives of young people affected by cancer,” said Casillas, an associate professor of pediatrics. “Our UCLA multidisciplinary team returned from the trip energized and enthusiastic to begin developing our own specialized unit for teens and young adults. Our goal for the UCLA Daltrey/Townshend Teen & Young Adult Cancer Program is to lead the movement of improving outcomes, quality of life and quality of care for teens and young adults whose lives have been touched by cancer.

“The specialized program within the UCLA Health System will focus on the care of the whole person, including their medical, emotional and social needs, in a nurturing, unique environment. The program will be tailored to meet their individual needs throughout their cancer journey, from diagnosis to treatment and into survivorship. It will also bring young people together so they can be teens and young adults first and foremost, enabling them to have their voices heard and to see the faces of other young people in the setting of cancer care.”

The UCLA Daltrey/Townshend Teen & Young Adult Cancer Program will be supported by Who Cares, a fundraising initiative for fans of the Who, started so that the band could respond quickly to charitable causes. Through Who Cares, Daltrey and Townshend have helped raise millions of dollars with a series of all-star concerts that have grown into one of the most highly revered and anticipated annual music events in the world.

Two linked events, today and Nov. 5, will help raise funds for UCLA’s new program. In addition, a portion of each ticket sale from Daltrey’s current “Tommy” tour in Canada and the U.S. will be donated to the UCLA Teen & Young Adult Cancer Program through the Who Cares organization. For more information, visit www.uclahealth.org/rockevent.

“We believe that teenagers have a much better chance in their fight against cancer if they are treated by experts specializing in their care in a compassionate environment tailored to their needs,” Daltrey said.

“I hope that our fans will really get behind Who Cares and do their bit to make a difference to young people living with cancer,” he said. “We are grateful to UCLA for helping bring the treatment successes we’ve made with young people in the U.K. to teens in America.”

The UCLA Health System has for more than half a century provided the best in health care and the latest in medical technology to the people of Los Angeles and the world. Comprised of Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center, Santa Monica–UCLA Medical Center and Orthopaedic Hospital, the Resnick Neuropsychiatric Hospital at UCLA, Mattel Children’s Hospital UCLA and the UCLA Medical Group, with its wide-reaching system of primary care and specialty care offices throughout the region, the UCLA Health System is among the most comprehensive and advanced health care systems in the world.

http://www.newswise.com/articles/the-who-rock-icons-launch-daltrey-townshend-teen-and-young-adult-cancer-program-at-ucla-first-of-its-kind-in-america

Plant has been on World Cafe several times. In a 2007 interview (one of our best), he talks about discovering the music of Alison Krauss, an accomplished vocalist and fiddler who’s been instrumental in bringing folk and bluegrass to a wider audience. Their Grammy-winning collaboration, Raising Sand, was recorded in Nashville and Los Angeles with legendary producer T-Bone Burnett, and finds the duo interpreting blues, R&B, folk and country by classic songwriters.

With his backing band Strange Sensation, Plant came by in 2005 after the release of The Mighty Rearranger, a blend of world and Western music that features World Cafe favorite “Shine It All Around.” His co-writer Justin Adams joined Plant, and the two discuss their inspiring trip to Mali and the Festival of the Desert.

Finally, we’ll revisit a 2002 interview, in which Plant tells one of his funniest stories — it involves pledging to a Portland public radio station so it would never again play “Stairway to Heaven.”

http://www.npr.org/2011/10/14/141331804/world-cafe-looks-back-robert-plant