Andrew Curry writes: I never liked Led Zeppelin when I was younger, which made me a bit of an outlier among my friends. I found them bombastic, thought Stairway to Heaven pretentious tosh (I thought the same of Bohemian Rhapsody, so I have form here), and as a blues fan I hated Jimmy Page’s habit of changing the names of other people’s songs and claiming a writing credit. (Not just blues songs, of course.)
So all of this meant that it took me a long time to notice that Robert Plant’s post-Zep career was a lot more interesting. The first clue came with his appearance in 2003 on the world music compilation Festival in the Desert. He was in his mid-50s then, two decades after Led Zeppelin broke up. The festival was in Mali, and according to the sleeve notes African musicians were surprised to find Plant sitting on the floor listening to the music, with no rock star airs and graces.
This meant, in turn, that I was primed by the time that Raising Sand, his first collaboration with the queen of bluegrass, Alison Krauss, was deservedly showered with awards.
And it also meant that I wasn’t completely surprised that his latest record, Saving Grace, is pretty much a folk and blues record, played mostly on acoustic instruments, with a group of musicians from the area of Worcestershire where Plant now lives, who he’s now been playing with on and off since 2018.
Roots music
The genesis of the band was in a pub, when Plant got talking to the banjo player and guitarist Matt Worley, and discovered a shared love of a whole range of roots music. The other musicians are Suzi Dian, who shares vocals and plays accoridon, Tony Kelsey on guitars, Oli Jefferson on drums and percussion, and Barney Morse-Brown on cello.
Their sound is somewhere between folk and Americana, and the repertoire is a mix of traditional and older folk and blues songs, and re-versioned covers of more recent songs.
I’m not going to do a track by track listing here—if you want to read that, head over to Seura Og’s review at At The Barrier—but here’s an indication of the range. The opener, Chevrolet, is a Memphis Minnie song that was adapted by Donovan in the ‘60s. Everybody’s Song is originally by Low, and the closer, Gospel Plough, is a traditional gospel song. There are some traditional folk songs in the mix as well: I Never Will Marry sounds as if it ought to be a Child ballad (I don’t have internet access while writing this, so if it is indeed a Child ballad, let me know in the comments.)
Of course, Plant has always listened to folk music. (And one of his secrets seems to be that in his late 70s, he is still listening.) He duetted with Sandy Denny on Led Zeppelin IV, and he turned up to perform at the Bert Jansch birthday concerts in London in both 2013 and 2023. Writing this now, I realise with hindsight it was the Saving Grace band that played the 2023 concert.
Smaller venues
Saving Grace has a good and rich sound, which might be down to the fact that it has developed slowly, partly delayed by Covid, and has spent time finding its feet in smaller venues. Plant talked about this in an interview with Esquire UK:
The cohesion we have now, the melding and intertwining of styles, came from playing so many tiny shows with no advertising, no website, no merch, no nothing, just playing these little Welsh towns or a magnificent tour of the art and folk festivals of the west coast of Ireland. It was just incredible—heaven-sent, to be honest.
It clearly helps to have Robert Plant’s name attached to the band. I saw Saving Grace on Later with…Jools Holland, and in their December tour of the UK they are playing substantial venues like Edinburgh’s Usher Hall and Newcastle City Hall, which also seem mostly to be sold out already.
But this definitely isn’t a Robert Plant vehicle. He’s just a member of the band, and Suzi Dian does her fair share of the vocals. One reviewer suggested that he’d learned well from Alison Krauss the art of sharing the vocals and harmonising. The style is much more distinctive than on his Band of Holy Joy records made during the 2010s. Saving Grace—both band and album—is a real pleasure.
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The picture of Robert Plant’s at the top of the post is courtesy of Wikimedia. AXS TV: CC BY 3.0.
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