Jeffrey Lee Sep 05, 2022

Robert Plant and Alison Krauss bring a slow burn to a cool night at Austin's Waterloo Park
By Peter Blackstock — Austin American-Statesman — Monday, 05 September 2022

When Robert Plant and Alison Krauss first teamed up on the 2007 album "Raising Sand," the pairing of the legendary Led Zeppelin frontman with the bluegrass/Americana master seemed an odd notion ― until you heard the music. The two singers' respective levels of light and dark meshed with surprising ease and grace, helping the album do well enough to warrant the 2021 follow-up "Raise the Roof."

They've been on tour together for most of the summer, and on Sunday night at Waterloo Park, Austin got its turn. Backed by a five-piece band of ace musicians with impressive credentials, Plant and Krauss charmed a sold-out crowd on a surprisingly mild late-summer evening with a set that balanced their beautiful harmonies with slow-burn arrangements of songs from both albums.

"How great to be back in this town," Plant said a few songs into the 90-minute set, and although that could be a standard greeting anywhere along the tour, it likely resonated more deeply with him in Austin. He lived here for a stretch around a decade ago, when he and local singer-songwriter Patty Griffin were an item for a couple of years. As if to underscore his local ties, he later mentioned country dancehall the Broken Spoke and gave a shout out to Waterloo Records owner John Kunz.

Nine songs came from the new album, which like its predecessor was produced by T Bone Burnett. Plant and Burnett wrote the mid-set tune "High and Lonesome," more of a blues-rocker than its bluegrassy title suggests, and the richly textured "Quattro (World Drifts In)," a highlight of Arizona band Calexico's 2003 album "Feast of Wire." But the rest of the selections from the new album featured songs steeped in 20th century American music traditionalism.

They sometimes came in pairs, as on "Go Your Way" and "It Don't Bother Me," two songs written by Scottish folk innovator Bert Jansch (the former a collaboration with Anne Briggs). "Last Kind Words Blues" and "You Led Me to the Wrong" drew respectively from Geeshie Wiley and Ola Belle Reed, women whose contributions to American country-blues and folk music stretch back nearly a century. And they acknowledged the influence of New Orleans icon Allen Toussaint with lively renditions of his tunes "Fortune Teller" and "Trouble With My Lover."

Perhaps most central to the duo's aesthetic are the Everly Brothers. Plant and Krauss don't attempt to emulate the sibling harmonies of Phil and Don, but they tap into the emotional melodicism that made the brothers' songs so rich, and it suits their voices well.

Three Everlys tunes were spread across the set, from the new album's "The Price of Love" early on to the main-set closer "Gone Gone Gone (Done Moved On)" from "Raising Sand." (A mid-set addition was "Leave My Woman Alone," a Ray Charles tune that the Everlys covered on their 1958 debut album.)

Just as in 2008, when Plant and Krauss played the Austin City Limits Music Festival in their only other local duo appearance, a few ringers from the Led Zeppelin catalog snuck into the mix as well.

"Rock and Roll" came early in the set and sounded surprisingly well-suited for a bluegrassy arrangement with fiddle. Near the end came "The Battle of Evermore" and "When the Levee Breaks," two intense numbers that multi-instrumentalists Stuart Duncan and Viktor Krauss (Alison's brother), drummer Jay Bellerose, upright bassist Dennis Crouch and guitarist JD McPherson pushed into psychedelic territory.

The opening line of "When the Levee Breaks" ― "If it keeps on raining, the levee's going to break" ― came close to prophecy, as thunderstorms threatened on the northern horizon. The winds got gusty at times and temperatures fell into the 70s, but the show's 7 p.m. start time (with McPherson playing his own half-hour opening set) and a good break from the weather gods kept everyone at Waterloo Park dry to the end.

After a one-song encore of former Austin songwriter Randy Weeks' "Can't Let Go," the full band took a bow as Plant offered a simple farewell: "Come back and see us soon, anywhere."