Robert Plant and Alison Krauss are in Toronto this week, playing the Ontario Place Ampitheatre on Wednesday. They’re touring behind their second album together, 2021’s Raise the Roof, which came 14 years after their top-Grammy-winning Raising Sand. (What will they raise next? Hell?)
(Looking for this week’s Toronto live music listings? They’re here.)
Here they are covering another veteran act: Calexico, whose Feast of Wire album turns 20 this year. That’s right, millenials: Calexico is now classic rock canon.
Their work together was initially considered a left turn for the recovering rock god (and, for Krauss, a beauty-and-the-beast situation). But everything about it makes perfect sense for the elder musical wanderer, one of the few of his generation who has consistently got better and more curious with age.
And let’s just say it: he’s infinitely less embarrassing. Unlike, say, Mick Jagger.
Look, I like lots of Led Zeppelin just like any other suburban white boy with a tiny amount of testosterone, but… becoming a man vs childish things and all that. I still have a soft spot for a lot of it (I am learning to play drums), and not just the “cool” stuff: I found myself unironically enjoying to “Stairway to Heaven” recently, of all things, perhaps mostly because I instantly shut it off any time I heard it in the last 35 years. Part of what I loved most about the White Stripes way back when was how Jack White channelled Zeppelin without imitating Robert Plant’s clenched-testicle cries.
And so I ignored Plant’s solo work for most of my life, until, yes, the Raising Sand album, and then his decision to cover both Los Lobos and Low on his 2010 album Band of Joy. I also respected him for bringing Tinariwen to the world’s attention in the mid-2000s; a North African influence in his music has been obvious since his mid-’90s reunion with Jimmy Page (and has been much better incorporated since). It wasn’t until his 2014 album Lullaby and the Ceaseless Roar, though, that I realized I was a big Robert Plant fan.
I saw the Gossip’s Beth Ditto play an amazing solo show a few years ago, where she pointed out a fan’s wardrobe in the crowd. “Check out this person! They’re wearing a Robert Plant tour T-shirt. Not Zeppelin: Robert Plant solo! That’s cool.” Ditto, ditto.
In 2020 Plant put out a career collection of sorts, Digging Deeper, focusing mostly on the last 20 years and avoiding most of his ’80s and ’90s missteps (but keeping some quieter gems like “Big Log” and “Ship of Fools”). Its omissions prompted me to slowly compile my own 30-song Tidal playlist here. For paid subscribers, here are some key tracks annotated (and YouTube playlist):
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