Anybody seeing Robert Plant/Alison Krauss on tour this June/July?
Veddernarian
Posts: 1,924
6.02.08 Roanoke, VA Roanoke Civic Center 8:00pm
6.04.08 Uncasville, CT Mohegan Sun 8:00PM
6.05.08 Boston, MA Bank Of America Pavilion 8:00pm
6.07.08 Canandaigua, NY CMAC 8:00pm
6.08.08 Atlantic City, NJ Borgata 8:00pm
6.10.08 New York, NY Madison Square Garden Theatre 8:00pm
6.11.08 New York, NY Madison Square Garden Theatre 8:00pm
6.13.08 Columbia (Washington, DC), MD Merriweather Pavilion 8:00pm
6.14.08 Asheville, NC Asheville Civic Center 8:00pm
6.15.08 Manchester, TN Bonnaroo
6.17.08 Detroit, MI Fox Theatre 8:00pm
6.18.08 Highland Park, IL Ravinia 8:00pm
6.19.08 St. Louis, MO Fox Theatre 8:00pm
6.21.08 Denver, CO Red Rocks Amphitheatre 8:00pm
6.23.08 Los Angeles, CA Greek Theatre 8:00pm
**My show**6.24.08 Los Angeles, CA Greek Theatre 8:00pm
6.25.08 Santa Barbara, CA Santa Barbara Bowl 8:00pm
6.27.08 Berkeley, CA Greek Theatre 8:00pm
6.28.08 Lake Tahoe/Stateline, NV Harvey's 8:00pm
6.30.08 San Diego, CA Humphrey's 8:00pm
7.01.08 Phoenix, AZ Dodge Theatre 8:00pm
7.07.08 Grand Prairie (Dallas), TX Nokia Theatre 8:00pm
7.08.08 Memphis, TN Mud Island Amphitheatre 8:00pm
7.10.08 Atlanta, GA Chastain Park Amphitheatre 8:00pm
7.11.08 Raleigh, NC RBC Center 8:00pm
7.12.08 Philadelphia, PA Mann Center For Performing Arts 8:00pm
7.14.08 Toronto, ON Molson Amphitheatre 8:00pm
7.15.08 Cleveland, OH Time Warner Cable Amphitheater At Tower City 7.18.08 Lexington, KY Rupp Arena 8:00pm
7.19.08 Nashville, TN Sommet Center 8:00pm
Robert Plant & Alison Krauss
Wembley Arena, London
Review of May 22, 2008
independent.co.uk | by Andy Gill
The staging is distinctly understated: save for a gold curtain that unfurls before the closing number, Robert Plant and Alison Krauss’s show is almost completely devoid of visual distraction. Just a few rugs, a discreet curtain backdrop, and a couple of modest screens either side of the stage.
Even the band have the low-key demeanour of upscale bouncers. But although they don’t make any flashy moves it’s sometimes hard to tell whether it’s Buddy Miller or Stuart Duncan that’s picking out a specific guitar solo they have the lived-in look of great character actors. Bassist Dennis Crouch bears a resemblance to the late, great Peter Boyle; and bandleader T Bone Burnett could be a riverboat gambler from some Anthony Mann Western.
The important thing is that they’re all masters of their instruments, none more evidently than drummer Jay Bellerose, a constant blur of movement as he employs a wealth of techniques to draw every last breath of drama out of each song. This isn’t drumming, it’s inhabiting the songs so intimately that they burst vividly into life, whether he’s dashing off a frisky second-line shuffle behind Burnett on “Bon Ton Roulay”, driving the bold, dynamic shifts of a bluegrass “Black Country Woman”, or draping cloths over drumskins to dampen the beats on a slow, sultry “Black Dog”.
Then, of course, there are Plant and Krauss themselves, a pairing whose unlikeliness is still evident in the occasional slight twinge in their harmonies. But all the best musical couplings have this kind of unexpected eccentricity about them, and this one works magically, from the sly warmth of “Rich Woman” to the rockabilly “Gone Gone Gone”, reaching its apogee on a tremendous “Please Read the Letter”.
For much of the show, Krauss leaves the violin duties to Duncan to concentrate on singing. And what a voice she has! Her keening wail on “Trampled Rose” is spine-tingling, quite supernatural in its haunting purity, while her delivery on “Sister Rosetta Goes before Us” and “Through the Morning, Through the Night” stands as testament to the one-inch-punch emotional power packed by the gentlest of voices. “Down to the River to Pray” gets a particularly warm reception, too.
Plant, meanwhile, proves there’s more to his game than the shriek of yore, with the warm vocal caresses of his harmonies interspersed with more rousing bonhomie on “Fortune Teller”, before he dives bravely into the maelstrom of despair that is Townes van Zandt’s “Nothin’”. A pertinent reminder that sometimes, some music demands to be taken seriously.
(Rated 5/5)
________________________________
Robert Plant and Alison Krauss
London Wembley Arena
Thursday, May 22 2008
From ‘Uncut’, by Allan Jones
“Good evening” says Robert Plant, flinging back a mane of tangled hair from his face, early on in tonight‘s extraordinary show. “And welcome to. . .” he goes on, and pauses. “Well, I don’t know what it is,” he says then with a smile that before it‘s finished turns into a grin, and a big one at that, visible evidence of a man clearly enjoying what he’s doing, even if he can‘t put a name to it. “But you’re welcome to it,” he adds, “whatever it is.”
I‘m sure, thinking about it, there are people who remain more than somewhat baffled by what Plant is currently up to – Jimmy Page, you imagine, principal among them – and can’t for the life of them understand why the singer would turn his back on what may have been a last opportunity for a reformed Led Zeppelin to sweep all before them, the world once more in thrall to their rampaging glory, making millions in the process.
For these people, Plant‘s decision to defer a full-scale Zeppelin reunion tour in favour of taking on the road Raising Sand, the album of “dark, sexy Americana” he recorded in Nashville with bluegrass singer and fiddle player Alison Krauss, may seem wilfully perverse, the album and accompanying dates an indulgence of sorts, a superstar somehow slumming it, the whole thing, in their opinion, a self-flattering vanity project, Plant doing it for reasons they find unfathomable and therefore questionable, as if Raising Sand was no more than a preening vanity project, recorded on a superstar’s indulgent whim.
This is a point of view, of course, that dramatically underestimates the depth of Plant‘s feelings towards the beautiful and eerie music he has created with Krauss and producer T Bone Burnett on Raising Sand, the way it has revitalised him, filled him with new energies and ambitions that have allowed him at last, after years of sometimes inconclusive solo meanderings, to step out of the shadows of Zeppelin’s ominously looming legacy, the past that is forever calling out to him and by which I‘d hazard he feels nothing but confined, reined-in.
Watching him at Wembley, you could clearly see a man who has discovered, however belatedly, a musical universe in which he feels uniquely, if unexpectedly, at home – and you sense that what he’s doing now, which for him involves the charting of entirely new musical territories, is wholly more gratifying than, at 60, parading the stages of the world‘s biggest venues as the rock god of yore, which you suspect is a role he no longer feels comfortable playing, in a circus in which he wants no more to perform, private planes, vast entourages and knee-bowing attendants not a part at all of his current reality.
With Plant and Krauss waiting in opposite wings, T Bone Burnett, dressed in a preacher’s long black coat, as if he‘s on his way to a pulpit to deliver a sermon of apocalyptic content, leads out the superlative band he’s pit together. He‘s joined by drummer Jay Bellerose, double bassist Denis Crouch, multi-instrumentalist Stuart Duncan, with Nashville guitar legend Buddy Miller, who I saw last as a member of Emmylou Harris’
touring band, replacing Marc Ribot, who played on Raising Sand.
The band in place, and locking quickly into the shimmering reverb groove of “Rich Woman”, Plant and Krauss make their entrance to huge cheers, standing shoulder to shoulder at separate microphones, the astonishing vocal chemistry they have discovered between them at once in evidence.
There is an ease and grace to their work, an unforced natural playfulness that gives way when appropriate to a sombre gravity. The band, meanwhile, are simply sublime – their nearest sonic equivalent Dylan‘s current touring band of virtuoso road warriors, whose collective excellence they serially rival.
I suspect for some, the music that follows over the next couple of hours, will have seemed rather too sedate. But the choreographed formality of the show’s presentation is cleverly judged, and its unhurried elegant stateliness, what they play often assumes a wonderful grandeur, at times seems positively regal.
Highlights from the Raising Sand album are many – including Krauss‘s sublime reading of Gene Clark’s “Through The Morning, Through The Night”, Plant‘s powerfully mesmerising “Please Read The Letter”, a riveting “Fortune Teller” and a tender, heartbreaking “Killing The Blues”.
There are versions, as you will have heard, of three Zeppelin songs – a banjo-led “Black Dog”, which is brilliantly transformed, the original’s rampant carnality replaced by something more subtly insidious and sexy, a dramatically executed “Battle Of Evermore”, with Krauss invoking the ghost of Sandy Denny, and, even better, a stunning reworking of “When The Levee Breaks”, which now echoes the similar dramatic eschatology of Dylan‘s “High Water”.
Best of all, though, is the version of the uncompromisingly bleak “Nothing” – introduced by Plant as a “profound piece of pain by Townes Van Zandt”. When I interviewed him last year, just before raising Sand came out, Plant explained that originally he didn’t get this song, couldn‘t make sense of it, its meaning elusive to him. A series of explanatory e-mails from T Bone helped him ’get inside‘ the song, as he put it, and now he inhabits it totally, gives authentic voice to its poetic desolation, Krauss’s fiddle and the torrential guitars of Burnett and Miller providing devastating back-up.
When it‘s over, and a chilling hush settles, Plant stands centre stage, head for a moment bowed. He lifts it then, and stares out at the cheering crowd, allows himself just the flicker of a vindicated smile, a man in a place he wants to be rather than the place others wish he was, which is somewhere you suspect he will want to linger a while longer, this musical journey just beginning.
6.04.08 Uncasville, CT Mohegan Sun 8:00PM
6.05.08 Boston, MA Bank Of America Pavilion 8:00pm
6.07.08 Canandaigua, NY CMAC 8:00pm
6.08.08 Atlantic City, NJ Borgata 8:00pm
6.10.08 New York, NY Madison Square Garden Theatre 8:00pm
6.11.08 New York, NY Madison Square Garden Theatre 8:00pm
6.13.08 Columbia (Washington, DC), MD Merriweather Pavilion 8:00pm
6.14.08 Asheville, NC Asheville Civic Center 8:00pm
6.15.08 Manchester, TN Bonnaroo
6.17.08 Detroit, MI Fox Theatre 8:00pm
6.18.08 Highland Park, IL Ravinia 8:00pm
6.19.08 St. Louis, MO Fox Theatre 8:00pm
6.21.08 Denver, CO Red Rocks Amphitheatre 8:00pm
6.23.08 Los Angeles, CA Greek Theatre 8:00pm
**My show**6.24.08 Los Angeles, CA Greek Theatre 8:00pm
6.25.08 Santa Barbara, CA Santa Barbara Bowl 8:00pm
6.27.08 Berkeley, CA Greek Theatre 8:00pm
6.28.08 Lake Tahoe/Stateline, NV Harvey's 8:00pm
6.30.08 San Diego, CA Humphrey's 8:00pm
7.01.08 Phoenix, AZ Dodge Theatre 8:00pm
7.07.08 Grand Prairie (Dallas), TX Nokia Theatre 8:00pm
7.08.08 Memphis, TN Mud Island Amphitheatre 8:00pm
7.10.08 Atlanta, GA Chastain Park Amphitheatre 8:00pm
7.11.08 Raleigh, NC RBC Center 8:00pm
7.12.08 Philadelphia, PA Mann Center For Performing Arts 8:00pm
7.14.08 Toronto, ON Molson Amphitheatre 8:00pm
7.15.08 Cleveland, OH Time Warner Cable Amphitheater At Tower City 7.18.08 Lexington, KY Rupp Arena 8:00pm
7.19.08 Nashville, TN Sommet Center 8:00pm
Robert Plant & Alison Krauss
Wembley Arena, London
Review of May 22, 2008
independent.co.uk | by Andy Gill
The staging is distinctly understated: save for a gold curtain that unfurls before the closing number, Robert Plant and Alison Krauss’s show is almost completely devoid of visual distraction. Just a few rugs, a discreet curtain backdrop, and a couple of modest screens either side of the stage.
Even the band have the low-key demeanour of upscale bouncers. But although they don’t make any flashy moves it’s sometimes hard to tell whether it’s Buddy Miller or Stuart Duncan that’s picking out a specific guitar solo they have the lived-in look of great character actors. Bassist Dennis Crouch bears a resemblance to the late, great Peter Boyle; and bandleader T Bone Burnett could be a riverboat gambler from some Anthony Mann Western.
The important thing is that they’re all masters of their instruments, none more evidently than drummer Jay Bellerose, a constant blur of movement as he employs a wealth of techniques to draw every last breath of drama out of each song. This isn’t drumming, it’s inhabiting the songs so intimately that they burst vividly into life, whether he’s dashing off a frisky second-line shuffle behind Burnett on “Bon Ton Roulay”, driving the bold, dynamic shifts of a bluegrass “Black Country Woman”, or draping cloths over drumskins to dampen the beats on a slow, sultry “Black Dog”.
Then, of course, there are Plant and Krauss themselves, a pairing whose unlikeliness is still evident in the occasional slight twinge in their harmonies. But all the best musical couplings have this kind of unexpected eccentricity about them, and this one works magically, from the sly warmth of “Rich Woman” to the rockabilly “Gone Gone Gone”, reaching its apogee on a tremendous “Please Read the Letter”.
For much of the show, Krauss leaves the violin duties to Duncan to concentrate on singing. And what a voice she has! Her keening wail on “Trampled Rose” is spine-tingling, quite supernatural in its haunting purity, while her delivery on “Sister Rosetta Goes before Us” and “Through the Morning, Through the Night” stands as testament to the one-inch-punch emotional power packed by the gentlest of voices. “Down to the River to Pray” gets a particularly warm reception, too.
Plant, meanwhile, proves there’s more to his game than the shriek of yore, with the warm vocal caresses of his harmonies interspersed with more rousing bonhomie on “Fortune Teller”, before he dives bravely into the maelstrom of despair that is Townes van Zandt’s “Nothin’”. A pertinent reminder that sometimes, some music demands to be taken seriously.
(Rated 5/5)
________________________________
Robert Plant and Alison Krauss
London Wembley Arena
Thursday, May 22 2008
From ‘Uncut’, by Allan Jones
“Good evening” says Robert Plant, flinging back a mane of tangled hair from his face, early on in tonight‘s extraordinary show. “And welcome to. . .” he goes on, and pauses. “Well, I don’t know what it is,” he says then with a smile that before it‘s finished turns into a grin, and a big one at that, visible evidence of a man clearly enjoying what he’s doing, even if he can‘t put a name to it. “But you’re welcome to it,” he adds, “whatever it is.”
I‘m sure, thinking about it, there are people who remain more than somewhat baffled by what Plant is currently up to – Jimmy Page, you imagine, principal among them – and can’t for the life of them understand why the singer would turn his back on what may have been a last opportunity for a reformed Led Zeppelin to sweep all before them, the world once more in thrall to their rampaging glory, making millions in the process.
For these people, Plant‘s decision to defer a full-scale Zeppelin reunion tour in favour of taking on the road Raising Sand, the album of “dark, sexy Americana” he recorded in Nashville with bluegrass singer and fiddle player Alison Krauss, may seem wilfully perverse, the album and accompanying dates an indulgence of sorts, a superstar somehow slumming it, the whole thing, in their opinion, a self-flattering vanity project, Plant doing it for reasons they find unfathomable and therefore questionable, as if Raising Sand was no more than a preening vanity project, recorded on a superstar’s indulgent whim.
This is a point of view, of course, that dramatically underestimates the depth of Plant‘s feelings towards the beautiful and eerie music he has created with Krauss and producer T Bone Burnett on Raising Sand, the way it has revitalised him, filled him with new energies and ambitions that have allowed him at last, after years of sometimes inconclusive solo meanderings, to step out of the shadows of Zeppelin’s ominously looming legacy, the past that is forever calling out to him and by which I‘d hazard he feels nothing but confined, reined-in.
Watching him at Wembley, you could clearly see a man who has discovered, however belatedly, a musical universe in which he feels uniquely, if unexpectedly, at home – and you sense that what he’s doing now, which for him involves the charting of entirely new musical territories, is wholly more gratifying than, at 60, parading the stages of the world‘s biggest venues as the rock god of yore, which you suspect is a role he no longer feels comfortable playing, in a circus in which he wants no more to perform, private planes, vast entourages and knee-bowing attendants not a part at all of his current reality.
With Plant and Krauss waiting in opposite wings, T Bone Burnett, dressed in a preacher’s long black coat, as if he‘s on his way to a pulpit to deliver a sermon of apocalyptic content, leads out the superlative band he’s pit together. He‘s joined by drummer Jay Bellerose, double bassist Denis Crouch, multi-instrumentalist Stuart Duncan, with Nashville guitar legend Buddy Miller, who I saw last as a member of Emmylou Harris’
touring band, replacing Marc Ribot, who played on Raising Sand.
The band in place, and locking quickly into the shimmering reverb groove of “Rich Woman”, Plant and Krauss make their entrance to huge cheers, standing shoulder to shoulder at separate microphones, the astonishing vocal chemistry they have discovered between them at once in evidence.
There is an ease and grace to their work, an unforced natural playfulness that gives way when appropriate to a sombre gravity. The band, meanwhile, are simply sublime – their nearest sonic equivalent Dylan‘s current touring band of virtuoso road warriors, whose collective excellence they serially rival.
I suspect for some, the music that follows over the next couple of hours, will have seemed rather too sedate. But the choreographed formality of the show’s presentation is cleverly judged, and its unhurried elegant stateliness, what they play often assumes a wonderful grandeur, at times seems positively regal.
Highlights from the Raising Sand album are many – including Krauss‘s sublime reading of Gene Clark’s “Through The Morning, Through The Night”, Plant‘s powerfully mesmerising “Please Read The Letter”, a riveting “Fortune Teller” and a tender, heartbreaking “Killing The Blues”.
There are versions, as you will have heard, of three Zeppelin songs – a banjo-led “Black Dog”, which is brilliantly transformed, the original’s rampant carnality replaced by something more subtly insidious and sexy, a dramatically executed “Battle Of Evermore”, with Krauss invoking the ghost of Sandy Denny, and, even better, a stunning reworking of “When The Levee Breaks”, which now echoes the similar dramatic eschatology of Dylan‘s “High Water”.
Best of all, though, is the version of the uncompromisingly bleak “Nothing” – introduced by Plant as a “profound piece of pain by Townes Van Zandt”. When I interviewed him last year, just before raising Sand came out, Plant explained that originally he didn’t get this song, couldn‘t make sense of it, its meaning elusive to him. A series of explanatory e-mails from T Bone helped him ’get inside‘ the song, as he put it, and now he inhabits it totally, gives authentic voice to its poetic desolation, Krauss’s fiddle and the torrential guitars of Burnett and Miller providing devastating back-up.
When it‘s over, and a chilling hush settles, Plant stands centre stage, head for a moment bowed. He lifts it then, and stares out at the cheering crowd, allows himself just the flicker of a vindicated smile, a man in a place he wants to be rather than the place others wish he was, which is somewhere you suspect he will want to linger a while longer, this musical journey just beginning.
Up here so high I start to shake, Up here so high the sky I scrape, I've no fear but for falling down, So look out below I am falling now, Falling down,...not staying down, Could’ve held me up, rather tear me down, Drown in the river
Post edited by Unknown User on
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Comments
But, yeah, I'm fucking stoked for this, especially since they aren't coming anywhere near here (not even Chicago!).
Chicago: http://www.ravinia.org/BuyTickets/eventdetail.aspx?xid_show=99793846&month=6&year=2008
http://www.tightbutloose.co.uk/rp2008.html
Most of the blue underlined links have setlists, reviews and some fanviews.
By the way, they do "Battle of Evermore"!
http://www.last.fm/user/merkinball/
spotify:user:merkinball
Huh. No idea how I missed it.
Too close to Roo for me to see it anyway.
Can't wait to see that. I saw they're doing "In The Mood", too. I've always liked that song.
gets to me every time
It was beautiful, I saw the Cardiff show May 8th. It was one of the first outings for it, Robert said they'd been inside rehearsing it most of the day "whilst all of Cardiff went about their business....wearing very few clothes":D It was a very hot day:)
The Roanoke Times
By: Tad Dickens
Classic rock tunes, including some Led Zeppelin hits, blared from a radio station’s promo van outside Roanoke Civic Center on Monday night.
Inside, Led Zeppelin’s former frontman, Robert Plant, was taking some of his old songs and a deep catalog of American roots gems to new places with his new cohorts, Alison Krauss and T Bone Burnett.
The results blew away an audience of 4,065. There might not have been many people inside — they only half-filled the civic center — but they were wildly receptive to new takes on classics, giving the group three long, standing ovations and remaining on their feet through the four-song encore.
But the best news in the two-hour show was in Plant’s goodbye before the encore: “Come back and see us again soon.”
Those words made it clear — this is now officially a band. You could even call it the first roots music supergroup, or at least the one with the highest profile.
Sure, bluegrass and Americana music are filled with hot players teaming up in different combos. But on stage Monday night you had in Plant the greatest rock singer of his generation, in Krauss the greatest bluegrass and country singer of hers, and in Burnett the producer of, among other acclaimed records, the “O Brother, Where Art Thou?” soundtrack.
On the back line, you had more of the best in the music business — multi-instrumentalists/vocalists Buddy Miller and Stuart Duncan, bassist Dennis Crouch and drummer Jay Bellerose.
This wasn’t an ego fest, though. This was a seven-person group devoted to the art of interpretation. Aside from the reworked Zeppelin hits (and one from the Plant and Jimmy Page record, “Walking Into Clarksdale”), the crowd heard songs written by Sam Phillips, Phil and Don Everly, Tom Waits, and Kathleen Brennan, and Townes Van Zandt.
Most of them had two distinctive stamps — Burnett’s often spooky arrangements, and the vocals of Krauss and Plant, who also harmonized beautifully.
The only question remaining after the show was: If this is in fact a real band, will it continue to be a band of interpreters, or will it produce a record of originals? Either result will likely be satisfying.
In a night of highlight after highlight, two performances stood out — both from the pair’s platinum-selling, Grammy-winning CD, “Raising Sand.”
Plant hit his apex with the Van Zandt song, “Nothin’.” To introduce it, he told the audience about how Burnett turned him on to the brilliant but tortured songwriter, whose music often reflected the darker side of his life.
“In truth, it was a rough ride,” for Van Zandt. “This is one of the mirrors he looked into.”
The song brought out the wailing, raga-infused Plant of Led Zeppelin legend, of “Whole Lotta Love” menace. But this was a humbled rock god.
“Being born is going blind/And bowin’ down a thousand times/To echoes strung on pure temptation.”
Inserted in the middle, planned probably sometime shortly before the show, was the Bo Diddley song, “Who Do You Love?” Plant blew blues harp to honor Diddley, one of his idols, who died earlier that day.
The Waits and Brennan song, “Trampled Rose,” inspired Krauss’s best work of the night.
Finishing the verse, “I know that rose/Like I know my name/The one I gave my love/It was the same/Now I find it in the street/A trampled rose,” she hit extended, crystal-clear high notes that elicited gasps from audience members.
The stage lighting hit her pale skin in such a way during those notes that she looked like an otherworldly figure.
Together, Plant and Krauss excited the crowd with their harmonies on the Zeppelin songs “The Battle of Evermore” and “When the Levee Breaks,” and Plant’s “In the Mood.”
Burnett, whom Plant credited as “the genius” behind his new collaboration, got a couple of tunes to himself. But sandwiched between Plant and Krauss songs, they didn't bring the same excitement.
Opening act Sharon Little sang neo-folk and Americana songs with a big, high voice reminiscent of Grace Potter. With original songs such as “Try” and “Follow That Sound,” she was a good warm-up act.
But you can’t steal a show from artists such as Plant and Krauss. We can only hope that Plant wasn’t just fooling around when he hinted that the band would be back. This is an act that can become legendary.