Robert Plant Channels ‘Zep III’ on Latest Solo Album

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For two years, before he joined Led Zeppelin in the summer of 1968, Robert Plant sang with an underground rock band that never released any records. In September, more than 40 years later, Plant is releasing a new album named after that group, Band of Joy.

“It was a British blues-roots psychedelic band with everyone soloing at the same time,” Plant says fondly of the combo, which included future Zeppelin drummer John Bonham. “There was a devil-may-care thing about it. That’s why I brought the name back. I was sure the style we had in Band of Joy would work. A lot of that attitude and style is present on the first Zeppelin album.” Band of Joy, Plant contends during rehearsals in Nashville for his summer US tour, goes even further: “This is Elephant Mountain,” he says, citing the Youngbloods’ 1969 classic, “gone crazy.”

Band of Joy is Plant’s solo extension of the country-roots explorations on Raising Sand, his 2007 Grammy-winning collaboration with singer-fiddler Alison Krauss. Like Raising Sand, the new record is mostly covers ”“ ranging in vintage from the old folk hymn ”˜Satan, Your Kingdom Must Come Down’ to songs by Los Lobos, Townes Van Zandt and the haunted-rock group Low ”“ rendered with what Plant calls “swampy sultry slink” by a band featuring singer Patty Griffin and alternative-country guitarist and singer-songwriter Buddy Miller, who played on the Raising Sand album and tour. Plant also cites the acid-folk and progressive-blues dynamics on 1970’s Led Zeppelin III as an inspiration. “I’d always wanted to go back to the place that album captured,” he explains, recalling how he and Zeppelin guitarist Jimmy Page “worked in great harmony and that wonderful pastoral setting in Bron-Yr-Aur [in Wales].”

Band of Joy came about after Plant and Krauss started, then aborted, a follow-up to Raising Sand last year. “It’s not a huge, sensitive issue,” Plant claims. “We just didn’t have the songs that suited the occasion. The serendipity of the first adventure was fine.” But after two weeks in the studio, he and Krauss couldn’t replicate “that charismatic thing.” Plant turned to Miller, who co-produced Band of Joy, for a simple reason: On the Raising Sand tour, the singer says, “I used to huddle on the side of the stage and marvel at his playing, with this huge grin and furry zigzag through my body.”

Plant, 61, and Miller, 57, also had the same psychedelic boyhoods. The first time they met, Miller says, “we had a long talk about Arthur Lee [of Love] and Moby Grape, these bands I used to love to see ”“ before I discovered Porter Wagoner and Dolly Parton,” he adds, laughing. “Robert has a deep well of that stuff to draw on. When it came time to do this record, the songs laid out the path we were going to follow.” Miller confirms the Zeppelin III connection too, noting that Plant has worked up fresh attacks on ”˜Tangerine,’ ”˜That’s the Way’ and ”˜Gallows Pole’ from that record for the tour.

“There are so many new ideas developing, inspired by old structures,” Plant says excitedly. “The thing is, you cannot wander through the garden of song and dance without listening to everything that opportunity allows.” And, he insists, “I’m here for the journey, for the whole adventure, right through to the end.”