Originally appeared in Louisville Courier-Journal
Review of April 19, 2008 Louisville Palace Show

BY JEFFREY LEE PUCKETT

As their impeccable band swung into “Rich Woman” with an easy flourish, Robert Plant and Alison Krauss took the stage Saturday night at the Louisville Palace to the first of several standing ovations.

Plant, still the god king of rock ‘n’ roll, strolled out with a quietly confident swagger, his hair in that tangle of curls so familiar to Led Zeppelin fans. Krauss looked like she was headed to a prom in her pink dress, maybe one with “Stairway to Heaven” as its theme.

And when they began singing, it was clear they still felt the chemistry so evident on their “Raising Sand” album, his well-traveled yowl blending perfectly with her pristine voice. There were a few goose bumps, and not the last.

This was the first night of the “Raising Sand” tour but both the singers and the band sounded fully warmed up. Krauss didn’t hit a bad note all night, almost flaunting her perfect pitch, and the band, led by T Bone Burnett, was nearly flawless. Plant was Plant, and that was plenty.

Krauss and Plant performed nearly all of “Raising Sand,” a handful of Led Zeppelin classics and a couple of songs associated with Krauss’ solo career. They also threw in a George Jones cover just because they could.

As expected, the Zeppelin songs drew a huge response — one guy screamed “Led Zeppelin rules!” barely five minutes into the show — but they weren’t the highlights (although “Black Dog,” with the world’s spookiest banjo, was pretty amazing).

“Fortune Teller” was better, with drummer Jay Bellerose exploding the song from the inside out, and Krauss broke every heart in the place with “Through the Morning, Through the Night.” “Killing the Blues” and “Trampled Rose” were also contenders.

But the most unexpected song might have also been the night’s finest. Krauss, backed by Plant, Buddy Miller and Stuart Duncan, soared through an a capella version of “Down to the River to Pray,” from “O Brother, Where Art Thou?,” that was so beautiful it sucked the air out of the room.

Everyone who went back for Sunday’s second sold-out show should be so lucky.

Rounder Records press release:

Having already won a Grammy® for their first single, and a vast collection of accolades for their album Raising Sand (Rounder Records), Robert Plant and Alison Krauss can now add a CMT award for ‘Wide Open Country Video of the Year’ for the Rocky Schenck directed video “Gone Gone Gone (Done Moved On).”

Since its October 2007 release, Raising Sand has been certified RIAA platinum, the videos for both “Gone Gone Gone (Done Moved On)” and “Please Read the Letter” are in rotation on CMT and the single “Gone Gone Gone (Done Moved On)” has won a Grammy® award for ‘Best Pop Collaboration With Vocals’. The duo is set to embark on a world tour, beginning with two sold-out nights in Louisville, KY on April 19th and 20th with a band led by T Bone Burnett and featuring a stellar cast of musicians. They will perform songs from the album as well as select pieces from their extensive discographies.

originally appeared in Knoxville News Sentinel

By Wayne Bledsoe

Alison Krauss knew she would get along with Robert Plant when the two met and began discussing the music of bluegrass great Ralph Stanley.

Alison Krauss is one of modern music’s powerhouses. In the early 1990s, she helped reinvigorate bluegrass both as a vocalist and a fiddler. She followed by crossing boundaries into other styles of music as the mood hit her, without abandoning her original genre. When legendary Led Zeppelin vocalist Robert Plant asked Krauss if she’d be interested in recording an album together, she was undaunted.

“If the kitchen’s too hot, get out!” says Krauss with a chuckle. “It was new for both of us. It was not like I was stepping into his world or him into mine. This was new territory.” ||Continue reading||

Originally appeared in the Stafford County Sun

by Paul Kent

‘I’d like to say how peculiar it is to be here.”

With those words, Robert Plant may have summed up the state of country music with a brevity that would make even Alan Jackson say, “You know, he nailed it with that line.”

He spoke them at the 2008 CMT (Country Music Television) Music Awards this past Monday, accepting an award for the Wide Open Country Video of the Year, which is their grab-bag category of things that are country-ish, but not country-fied. And let’s give the man his propers — dude is a fish out of water.

What does the lead singer of Led Zeppelin know of country? Sure, he spent most of the 70s emulating blues music as loudly as possible. If you go to the pool hall, somebody might plug in “Black Dog” and hear a few hell-yeah mutters throughout the building. Nobody’s going to tell Robert Plant he can’t do something, because he’s spent a good chunk of his lifetime proving he can do whatever he feels like, and the results tend to be awesome.

But really? A CMT Music Award? I don’t think any of us saw that coming.

His project with Alison Krauss, “Raising Sand,” is actually quite good, if you haven’t heard it. The sound is nothing like Zeppelin, nor is it a glorified Krauss project with a gimmick vocalist. Nobody had thought of making an entire album that sounded like reflections on a bad relationship while wandering through the desert, but let’s be honest with ourselves - most of us don’t think like that. We reflect on bad relationships at the bar, with our friends, on the business end of the bottle of whiskey — but in the desert? For an hour? With a pair of weary voices saying everything you’re thinking? The brown acid is necessary for such things, and we know Plant has probably had his share.

One can break into country in a variety of ways. You can make your name in other genres, as a slew of artists in the last five years have. You can pander to the crowd, as the Eagles did. You can collaborate with a friend, like Michelle Branch did with The Wreckers. You can record a duet with all manner of stars, as a number of folks have — did you know Eddie Money did a track with Vince Gill? I bet you didn’t; there’s a good reason you haven’t.

Or you could simply make music. Plant and Krauss did just that, working with T-Bone Burnett of “O Brother, Where Art Thou?” fame, simply mixing their talents together to create something that doesn’t necessarily have a home, a genre, a target market. “Raising Sand” is music for people who like music, and with a fan-driven award show like the CMT Music Awards, the fact that their work stood out above others is a testament to good music conquering all.

That’s the fun part about Robert Plant — he does whatever he feels like. And not only were the results awesome, they were award-winning. You can’t beat that.

Originally appeared on CMT.com

by Craig Shelburne

Robert Plant and Alison Krauss captured a trophy for their lively “Gone, Gone, Gone (Done Moved On)” in the Wide Open Country video of the year category. Asked about their musical versatility, Krauss said, “Well, we’ve got piles of style. We hope that more of it is on the style side than the pile side.”

Referring to his recent experiences of working in Nashville, the Led Zeppelin vocalist added, “I’m being initiated into this world. I mean, I knew about Don Gibson and all the great writers when I was a kid, but I got preoccupied for 30 years.”

The iconic rock star was quick to praise Krauss’ talent, although some reporters scrambled for online dictionaries to understand what he was saying.

“She’s multifarious,” he said. “She has a myriad of different parts to her style. Apart from the beautiful voice, the poignant vocal, she’s one of the most incredible fireworks. It’s like an incendiary of laughter and humor and sensitivity. It’s magnificent. What a find, so late in life.”

Krauss repaid the compliment by saying, “Oh, I think Robert can fit in just about anywhere. He’s comfortable in any situation. I haven’t seen anything that he couldn’t handle. He’s loved Nashville. What a great place to be, and it was a great night.”

Originally appeared in the Louisville Courier-Journal

BY JEFFREY LEE PUCKETT

By the time Alison Krauss reached her head-banging teenage years, she was already considered one of the finest bluegrass fiddlers in the country. Her world revolved around Bill Monroe, not Black Sabbath.

But her older brother, Viktor, liked it loud. Led Zeppelin loud.

“He played their music all of the time and he’d come out of his room going, ‘I just can’t believe how good this is! I can’t believe it! I don’t understand it!’,” Krauss said.

“And I think I probably remember the images of the album covers before I remember hearing the music.”

Viktor, an acclaimed bassist, paid homage on his 2004 album, “Far From Enough,” by covering a song by Led Zeppelin singer Robert Plant. Alison, however, made an entire record with Plant, last year’s sparkling “Raising Sand.”

Alison Krauss and Plant, each icons in their respective genres, are now taking their magic on the road. Their world tour begins next weekend at the Louisville Palace with sold-out shows Saturday and Sunday. A show at Lexington’s Rupp Arena on July 18 was also recently announced.

Krauss, famous for a genial personality that frequently explodes into outright goofiness, said working with Plant has been a joy.

“I was surprised at Robert’s personality,” Krauss said. “He’s really all about what’s going on right now and would make jokes about himself. He said he got stopped at airport security and said, ‘Wait a minute, don’t you know who I used to be?’

“His attitude and his encouragement to everybody at those sessions has everything to do with why the record turned out like it did.”

Krauss first met Plant via phone in 2002 when he called to tell her he was a fan. In 2004 they sang together at “Shine a Light on Me: The Life and Music of Lead Belly,” a tribute held at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. She liked him right away.

“He talked about Ralph Stanley, that’s like the first thing he said, and he talked about driving through the Appalachians with his long hair and hoping that nobody saw him,” she said. “Just a really nice, charming, funny person, always looking to be inspired by music and a very passionate person. I don’t know anybody who doesn’t get charmed by him.”

The performance, however, didn’t go so well. Krauss said they struggled with a song that didn’t suit their voices but felt a chemistry that both have credited producer/guitarist T Bone Burnett with nurturing.

“I thought it would be interesting to see what would happen with different material, and that’s where T Bone really brought it all together,” she said. “It really worked once we got that material.

“T Bone cast the team really, really beautifully … and it just kind of came together.”

The album is gorgeously atmospheric, with spare instrumentation underpinning the singers’ tender harmonies. Krauss’ delicate voice almost floats alongside Plant’s more rugged, dusky singing. Burnett picked songs from a surprising variety of sources, including Tom Waits, Mel Tillis, The Everly Brothers and Townes Van Zandt.

Krauss said that the set list will focus on “Raising Sand” but would be filled out with songs from both artists’ catalogs. For a CMT “Crossroads” special televised in February, they covered Led Zeppelin’s “When the Levee Breaks” and “Black Dog” and Krauss’ “The Boy Who Couldn’t Hoe Corn.” Burnett will lead a band that includes Stuart Duncan, Larry Bellerose, Buddy Miller and Dennis Crouch.

The music press is already buzzing about what might happen after the “Raising Sand” tour.

Rumors of a Led Zeppelin reunion have been circulating for months, with some reports stating it could begin when the “Raising Sand” tour ends. Does that mean Krauss might get to sit in with one of history’s heaviest bands?

“Oh, I don’t know about that,” she said, laughing. “I imagine when this tour is over he’ll have had enough of me.”