The title of Robert Plant and Alison Krauss’ current road show is the Can’t Let Go Tour.
Thing is, however, maybe they should.
Plant and Krauss released their first collaborative album, “Raising Sand,” way back in 2007. Technically speaking, that means that this pairing has now outlived Plant’s Rock and Roll Hall of Fame act Led Zeppelin, which formed in 1968 and hung it up in 1980.
“We have been doing this a long time,” Plant quipped to the fans who turned out to see the duo and supporting cast on Thursday night at the lovely Frost Amphitheater on the Stanford University campus. “This is our 100th show.”
So, perhaps it’s understandable why the whole thing felt so tired and spent as Plant, Krauss and their talented friends — drummer Jay Bellerose, multi-instrumentalists Viktor Krauss and Stuart Duncan, bassist Dennis Crouch and guitarist JD McPherson — creeped through a slow-moving 90-minute set of T-Bone Burnett-forged lo-fi Americana music.
Robert Plant and Alison Krauss perform at Frost Amphitheater in Stanford, Calif., on Thursday, Aug. 22, 2024. (Shae Hammond/Bay Area News Group)
Plant and Krauss showed very little energy or, really, even joy as they opened the show — just like they did on “Raising Sand” — with the ’50s R&B number “Rich Woman” and then moved into the Allen Toussaint-penned “Fortune Teller.”
They seemed to be on cruise control pretty much from start to finish — especially Krauss, who rarely spoke with the crowd or shared the type of personality that she’s known for her in her solo shows. More troubling was that she played very little fiddle, instead letting Duncan do most of the heavy lifting in that regard. Duncan is a great player, but it still seemed like an odd decision given Krauss’ extreme prowess on the instrument.
It’s no wonder that I heard one fan say as he made his out of the venue after the show, “I just needed more Alison Krauss.”
Indeed.
Robert Plant performs at Frost Amphitheater in Stanford, Calif., on Thursday, Aug. 22, 2024. (Shae Hammond/Bay Area News Group)
Plant did a little more to connect to the crowd, although he admitted that stage banter is hardly his forte.
“I’m not really good at doing this kind of (expletive) between songs,” he explained. “I’m told it’s just better to be mystical.”
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The crowd was even more mellow than the music, with only a very small percentage getting up to dance or applaud for the much of the show. The first bit of excitement came, not surprisingly, when the seven musicians onstage locked onto the first Zeppelin cover of the night and delivered a country-fied version of “Rock and Roll.”
It was a decent take, but it just made me want to hear the real deal. The group did a bit better with “Gallows Pole,” a standout from 1970’s “Led Zeppelin III,” which, coming at roughly the one-hour mark of the concert, stirred up the first real batch of crowd excitement all night.
There was a certain slick sameness to everything they performed, with that steady alt-Americana vibe of T-Bone Burnett (who produced “Raising Sand” and the 2021 follow-up “Raise the Roof”) trumping any kind of mild variation of specific musical genres.
Robert Plant and Alison Krauss perform at Frost Amphitheater in Stanford, Calif., on Thursday, Aug. 22, 2024. (Shae Hammond/Bay Area News Group)
The vocal work was passable, yet the harmonies and interplay rarely reached the heights we hear on the duo’s two albums.
There were only a couple of what you might call “wow” moments. The first came with “Matty Grove,” an English folk ballad that has been covered by such greats as Joan Baez, Ralph Stanley and Christy Moore, which resulted in Krauss’ most — and, perhaps, sole — powerful vocal performance of the night. The other was the tremendous take on Led Zep’s famed reworking of “When the Levee Breaks” — highlighted by Duncan’s soaring fiddle work and some truly satisfying moments from the entire ensemble — which closed what had been a pretty run-of-the-mill 80-minute main set.
Robert Plant performs at Frost Amphitheater in Stanford, Calif., on Thursday, Aug. 22, 2024. (Shae Hammond/Bay Area News Group)
In general, the Led Zep material was the most interesting of the night, with the Americana arrangements putting a stronger emphasis on the lyrics than what one finds on the original groundbreaking hard-rock records. Yet, that only served to remind us that it wasn’t really the lyrics that led us to crank up those songs in the first place.
They opened the encore segment with a pleasant enough take on the “Stick With Me Baby” then moved right into a second consecutive Everly Brothers number — “Gone Gone Gone (Done Moved On).” It was an adequate performance, but also one that left me with the feeling that it’s high time for Krauss and Plant to, indeed, move on to something else.
Based on what we saw and heard at Stanford, this project sure feels like it’s run its course.
Robert Plant and Alison Krauss perform at Frost Amphitheater in Stanford, Calif., on Thursday, Aug. 22, 2024. (Shae Hammond/Bay Area News Group)
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 Lonesome”
8. “Last Kind Words Blues”
9. “You Led Me to the Wrong”
10. “Trouble With My Lover”
11. “In the Mood”
12. “Matty Groves”
13. “Gallows Pole”
14. “The Battle of Evermore”
15. “When the Levee Breaks”
Encore:
16. “Stick With Me Baby”
17. “Gone Gone Gone (Done Moved On)”
Robert Plant and Alison Krauss perform at Frost Amphitheater in Stanford, Calif., on Thursday, Aug. 22, 2024. (Shae Hammond/Bay Area News Group)
