Robert Plant is about to turn 62, but apparently, getting older doesn’t mean playing it safe. After 2007’s one-off Led Zeppelin charity gig prompted concert promoters to stack piles of cash at Plant’s door, he rejected the overtures to continue touring his Americana project Raising Sand with Alison Krauss. After collecting no small amount of critical acclaim for that endeavor, Plant has now blown it all up again, emerging with a new brand of weirder, louder roots rock in his current project, Band Of Joy.
Since the Band Of Joy record won’t be released until fall, the audience was mostly flying blind and hoping to hear some Raising Sand and Zeppelin album cuts. While those tunes did show up on this strangely mild July evening, the show also featured an eclectic collection of covers of tunes from Los Lobos, Low, Richard Thompson, and Townes Van Zandt. The Los Lobos cover (”Angel Dance”) was far from reverent, and took a rather bright and happy original to a darker, scarier place. Other highlights included an affable “In The Mood” and a “Houses Of The Holy” rendition that traded the power chords of the original in for a twangier cousin that sounded a bit winking - far more Sticky Fingers than Physical Graffiti, if you will.
While the KSGR/KUT listening, folkster-heavy audience roared at everything that Austin resident Patty Griffin did, she seemed to go out of her way to take a backseat to both Plant and Miller, playing a lot of acoustic guitar and generally shying away from the use of her substantial vocal power. Miller, however, seemed more comfortable sharing Plant’s spotlight, and carried the band with a nice stylistic range and some memorable (but never bombastic) guitar work.
Throughout the show, Plant had the air of an accomplished artist both comfortable in his own skin and pleased to be in the company of musicians that intrigued him. Like Elvis Costello’s recent Sugarcanes project, Plant is obviously doing this to explore a genre he loves, touring receipts and record sales be damned. While back-to-back Americana projects might have been a surprise to Plant’s casual followers, the Zeppelin material showed that Plant wasn’t reinventing himself so much as paying a belated acknowledgment to the litany of traditional folk and blues influences that influenced his most famous works. As the evening worked toward a close with shambolic but enjoyable runs through “Thank You” and “Rock And Roll,” the Band Of Joy moniker seemed apt given the 2,000 smiling faces scattered across the Stubb’s lawn. The night actually ended with a lullaby (”And We Bid You Goodnight”), and with a strange bit of magic. As the band played, some blown bubbles floated through the air and caught the stage lights in a matter that resembled summer fireflies - making for a perfect end to a surprising evening of weather, music, and warmth.
By Tom Thornton
http://austinist.com/2010/07/27/music_review_robert_plant_band_of_j.php
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