Review: A magic show from Robert Plant and Alison Krauss
Robert Plant and Alison Krauss
July 5 at the Budweiser Stage, Toronto
While raising sand and raising the roof, they raised us up.
In what can only be described as a mesmerizing evening, two of music’s most distinctive voices – legendary rocker Robert Plant and bluegrass nightingale Alison Krauss, along with a dream team of sidemen – delivered a brilliant set of songs on Budweiser Stage on Wednesday night under the umbrella of Americana, but whose roots sprang from numerous genres.
Before you ask, yes, vintage Led Zeppelin songs were prominent in the mix, but reimagined in such a way that sometimes they took a few bars to become familiar. Once that happened, the listener was compensated with highly imaginative, tasteful and mind blowing renditions that offered left field moments of pure aural delight and satisfied the taste buds of those looking for something other than copying the original records.
The duo’s first Toronto performance in 15 years began with a pair of songs from their 2007 Grammy Album of the Year “Raising Sand”: Li’l’s New Orleans obscurity “Rich Woman.” Millet and His Creoles, and the Allen Toussaint-written “Fortune Teller.”
“Rich Woman” opened with a lively yet relaxed pace, spurred on by JD McPherson’s reverberating guitar, before the gorgeous Krauss and the handsome and slim Plant joined the mics to share lead vocals, followed by the equally resounding “Fortune Teller” with the 74-year-old taking his first lead, with his counterpart’s angelic vocals providing harmony.
“Are you ready to rock?” Plant asked the receptive audience.
“Difficult!” he joked as he plunged into the first of two selections from 2021’s “Raise the Roof,” while things took a livelier turn with “Can’t Let Go” before returning to a subdued groove with the first Everly Brothers- cover of the night, “The Price of Love”, tendering the first Krauss lead vocal of the 90 minute set.
Then Plant repeated his original question.
“Are you ready to rock?”
Fiddler Stuart Duncan launched into an extended intro revealing itself as the Led Zep classic ‘Rock and Roll’, but reworked as country blues with Plant refraining from full vocals, yet offering a take as powerful as the original.
On “Please Read the Letter”—a Plant and Jimmy Page original—Krauss performed her own lyrical phrasing on violin; though she and Duncan are both engineering prodigies capable of playing circles around each other, Krauss left the more difficult passages to her sideman and focused on providing more ambient nuance.
This abandonment of the heavier stuff was due in no small part to the great accompanists the tandem used as backup: drummer Jay Bellerose was a constantly driven tastemaker, using everything from brushes to hammers to bring rhythmic diversity to his kit. to take. Dennis Crouch on stand-up acoustic bass and Alison’s esteemed brother, Viktor, on multiple strings filled the superb sound, and both McPherson – who had opened the show with a fine but unremarkable set – and Duncan on guitar, fiddle and mandolin were revelations .
Plant must also be given credit here, who has made a career out of challenging himself and progressing stylistically when he could easily have rested on his Led Zeppelin laurels. He’s always been somewhat of a musicologist with a particular fondness for older and obscure blues, R&B and rockabilly, and teaming up with Krauss for the occasional album and tour plays to his strengths and love for this kind of music.
Towards the end of the show, the pair took things up a notch: a medley of “In the Mood” from Plant’s “The Principle of Moments” gave way to a stunning Krauss rendition of the northern English traditional folk song “Matty Groves.” closed with a dazzling “Gallows Pole.”
After an entertaining take on another Zep classic – “The Battle of Evermore” – came the pièce-de-resistance: a breathtaking rendition of “When the Levee Breaks” that opened with Krauss and Duncan’s twin fiddle spheres before into an extended jam of exotic rhythms and ended with Plant almost whispering the last words of the tune.
Simply, it was masterful and that mastery continued with the encore to the Everly Brothers as Plant and Krauss put their harmonies together for “Stick With Me Baby” and “Gone Gone Gone.”
The only mystery is why more people weren’t on hand to enjoy this celestial duo, since both Plant and Krauss were in fine shape: a liberal estimate of 10,000 in attendance in a venue that can seat nearly 16,000.
At one point, Plant said there were 14 years between albums for him and Krauss, and joked that it could be another 14 years before they make it a trio.
Let’s hope the wait isn’t that long: the world could use more songs like this.
A magical night – and a concert of the year contender.
