The rock & roll singer has become an integral figure in Americana roots music over the past two decades, thanks to collabs with Alison Krauss and T Bone Burnett
Back in 2008, Robert Plant’s appearance Nashville’s Ryman Auditorium for the Americana Honors & Awards was still something of a novelty: The rock & roll god in the Mother Church of Country Music! That night, the former Led Zeppelin frontman celebrated Album of the Year honors with Alison Krauss for their LP Raising Sand with T Bone Burnett (the twosome scored Duo of the Year honors too), a feat that Plant would repeat three years later when his Band of Joy LP was named that year’s best album.
Now fully ensconced in the Americana genre, Plant will return to Nashville on Sept. 16 to receive one of the Americana Music Association’s highest honors: a Lifetime Achievement Award. Past recipients include Buddy Guy, Elvis Costello, Patty Griffin, Don Henley, Los Lobos, and Bonnie Raitt.
Plant is currently on tour in support of last year’s Saving Grace album, a record made with English singer Suzi Dian, who’s been joining Plant on the road.
“In recent years, I’ve worked with both Alison Krauss and Patty Griffin. It was such a departure for me to come out of [my band] Strange Sensation into this world of sharing vocals and working around another singer, adapting to someone else’s vocal style. And so I wanted to try and see whether or not there was another voice for me,” Plant told Rolling Stone last year. “I was introduced to Suzi and to her husband, the drummer, Oli Jefferson, and I just really enjoyed her plaintive style and the freshness of her and enthusiasm of her approach to the songs I presented. It was almost like something I couldn’t have even imagined for such a long time. There it was. And there it is. And there you have it.”
Plant’s Saving Grace tour hit Nashville’s Ryman Auditorium in March. The tour resumes Sept. 18 in Missouri, just two days after Plant’s return to the Ryman for the Americana Honors ceremony.
This year’s Album of the Year contenders include Tyler Childers’ Snipe Hunter, Kathleen Edwards’ Billionaire, S.G. Goodman’s Planting by the Signs, Ken Pomeroy’s Cruel Joke, and Margo Price’s Hard Headed Woman.
