Robert Plant and Alison Krauss are not in top form at Stanford
The title of Robert Plant and Alison Krauss’s current roadshow is “Can’t Let Go Tour”.
The thing is, though, maybe they should.
Plant and Krauss released their first album together, Raising Sand, back in 2007. Technically, this means that this duo has now outlived Plant’s Rock and Roll Hall of Fame-inducted band Led Zeppelin, which was formed in 1968 and ended its career in 1980.
“We’ve been doing this a long time,” Plant joked to fans who came to the beautiful Frost Amphitheater on Stanford University’s campus Thursday night to see the duo and supporting cast. “This is our 100th show.”
So it’s perhaps understandable why the whole thing felt so tedious and draining as Plant, Krauss and their talented friends – drummer Jay Bellerose, multi-instrumentalists Viktor Krauss and Stuart Duncan, bassist Dennis Crouch and guitarist JD McPherson – trudged through a leisurely 90-minute set of T-Bone Burnett-influenced lo-fi Americana.
Plant and Krauss showed little energy or even joy as they opened the show – just as they did on “Raising Sand” – with the ’50s R&B number “Rich Woman” and then moved on to the Allen Toussaint-penned “Fortune Teller.”
They seemed to be on autopilot from start to finish – especially Krauss, who barely spoke to the audience or displayed the kind of personality she’s known for in her solo performances. Even more disturbing was that she barely played the violin, instead letting Duncan do most of the work in that regard. Duncan is a great player, but it still seemed like an odd decision given Krauss’ extreme skill on the instrument.
No wonder I heard a fan say as he left the venue after the show, “I just needed more Alison Krauss.”
Indeed.
Plant tried a little harder to connect with the audience, but admitted that stage talk is not his strong suit.
“I’m not really good at doing that kind of (swear word) between songs,” he explained. “I’ve been told it’s just better to be mystical.”
The crowd was even more relaxed than the music, and for most of the show only a very small percentage stood up to dance or applaud. The first excitement came, not surprisingly, when the seven musicians on stage played the first Zeppelin cover of the evening, delivering a country version of “Rock and Roll.”
It was a decent version, but it just made me curious about the original. The group was a little better with “Gallows Pole,” a standout song from 1970’s Led Zeppelin III, which came about an hour into the concert and provided the first real crowd excitement of the evening.
There was a certain smooth sameness to everything they performed, with the steady alt-Americana vibe of T-Bone Burnett (who produced “Raising Sand” and its 2021 follow-up “Raise the Roof”) trumping any sort of slight variation on specific musical genres.
The vocal work was passable, but the harmonies and interplay rarely reached the heights we hear on the duo’s two albums.
There were only a few “wow” moments. The first was “Matty Grove,” an English folk ballad covered by the likes of Joan Baez, Ralph Stanley and Christy Moore, which was Krauss’ most powerful – and perhaps only – vocal performance of the evening. The other was the superb rendition of Led Zep’s famous reworking of “When the Levee Breaks” – highlighted by Duncan’s superb violin playing and some truly satisfying moments from the entire ensemble – which closed out a fairly average 80-minute main set.
Overall, Led Zep’s material was the most interesting of the night, with the Americana arrangements giving the lyrics more weight than on the original groundbreaking hard rock records. But that only served to remind us that it wasn’t really the lyrics that got us cranking up these songs.
They opened the encore with a fairly pleasant version of “Stick With Me Baby” and then went straight into a second Everly Brothers number – “Gone Gone Gone (Done Moved On).” It was an adequate performance, but also left me feeling like it was high time for Krauss and Plant to actually move on to something else.
Based on what we have seen and heard at Stanford, this project appears to have achieved its purpose.
Setlist:
1. “Rich Woman”
2. “Fortune teller”
3. “Can’t let go”
4. “The Price of Love”
5. “Rock and Roll”
6. “Please read the letter”
7. “High and lonely”
8. “Last Kind Words, Blues”
9. “You have led me astray”
10. “Trouble with my lover”
11. “In the mood”
12. “Matty Groves”
13. “Gallows post”
14. “The Battle of Evermore”
15. “When the dam breaks”
Encore:
16. “Stay with me, baby”
17. “Gone, gone, gone (Done, moved on)”
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