Robert Plant: New path to musical heaven

Robert Plant backstage before a performance with his new group, Band of Joy. CARLO ALLEGRI / ASSOCIATED PRESS Enlarge

The fact is difficult to grasp, but Robert Plant has been a solo artist for much longer than he was the lead singer and strutting rock-and-roll god of Led Zeppelin. Those trips for millions of fans up that "Stairway to Heaven" lasted from 1968 to 1980. In the 30 years since, Plant, now a grizzled and bemused 61, has found new adventures and a new identity — and a path to musical heaven — in American blues, folk and roots music. But he remains patient with those confused by the contrast between his towering historical image and musical present.

"That's all right. It's been a great run," Plant says from the Phoenix stop of a tour and his latest project, Band of Joy. "If we can't have fun now, the game's over, isn't it?"

The last time Plant played Phoenix, some 40 years ago, he had some fun spraying fire extinguisher foam under the door of sleeping Led Zeppelin guitarist Jimmy Page's hotel room. Such memories can make touring "a bit like being in a time tunnel," Plant muses. But he has looked for mellower forms of enjoyment since Led Zeppelin split, blown apart after drummer John Bonham fell asleep drunk and suffocated on his vomit, an emblem of the dangers of rock-and-roll excess.

These days, Plant regards his reign atop the rock pantheon with a cynical eye. "I know exactly which buttons to press to make all that come back," he says. "Sometimes I get the old metal polish out and polish up bits of gold. But not often."

He doesn't need to indulge in nostalgia. "I'm singing better now than I have in a lifetime," he says. "And I'm not standing on top of a barrel hopping up and down with a chain round my neck."

Band of Joy was the name of the psychedelic blues band fronted by a teenage Plant, just before Yardbirds' guitarist Page scooped him up for Led Zeppelin. Its current incarnation, which includes Nashville luminaries guitarist/producer Buddy Miller and singer Patty Griffin, plays startlingly diverse music ranging from obscure gospel, soul, folk, and blues to more contemporary songs by Los Lobos, Townes Van Zandt, alt-rock group Low, and even Plant and Page. The group's eponymous release debuts in September.

"You can get so easily typecast," Plant says. "You can find routines and formulas that you drop into, and you say 'Hey, this is my style.' I think back on the days of Band of Joy. We were finding a brand new place to be coming from, that kind of English-psychedelic blues idiom, at the expense of popularity and success. And I see that what I do now is I stimulate myself by being in great environments, at the cost and at the joy of moving away from being typecast, and continuing to open my repertoire and using my gift just like I was doing when I was 17."

Plant's previous musical adventure, the album "Raising Sand," with bluegrass icon Alison Krauss, should have ended his strutting-rocker typecasting for good. A haunting, subtle record of blues, early rock, and obscure Americana laced with shimmering harmonies, "Raising Sand" made a surprise sweep of the 2009 Grammy Awards, winning five prizes, including Album and Record of the Year.

Long interested in music beyond the storming arena rock he pioneered, Plant explored blues, folk, and even African and Moroccan music with his group Strange Sensation, performing in Mali with African stars such as Ali Farka Toure and Tinariwen.

Sheri Sands, general manager of Rounder Records, which released "Sand" and will put out "Band of Joy," thinks Plant has always been adventurous creatively.

"On some levels I wasn't surprised by "Raising Sand," because Robert is so passionate and curious about music," Sands says. "Even from the early days of Led Zeppelin he has always had a fascination with American roots music. . . . He's not the type of artist that just continues doing the same thing."

Plant's love of American music dates to his teens, when he and a generation of British rockers found in the blues a soul and sensuality lacking in their culture, inspired a musical movement and helped power the British rock-and-roll invasion. Plant and his 1960s compatriots romanticized this country's big cars and big-busted women and what he calls "the shudder and quake of Howling Wolf. ... In Britain, austerity was the name of the game before the swinging '60s kicked in," he says. "Our music scene was basically looking at America.

"There are so many different cultures in America. We were all just Anglo-Saxons or Celts hanging onto tradition and looking quite enviously at America. So when I got to America I was never gonna let it go."

With Band of Joy, he's reaching even deeper into U.S. traditions, finding roots in Europe, Latin America, and beyond, still enthralled by the wild sounds from across the pond. "I'm using American stuff from the 19th century on this new record," Plant says. "I'm delving and digging into hill music from everywhere. Because a lot of the music comes from Ireland and Scotland anyway, and some of it comes from West Africa, and some of it comes from Cuba and Mexico, and it all melts into a great homogeneous American music."