Robert Plant and his band Saving Grace performed five tracks in the latest instalment of NPR’s Tiny Desk Concert series.
They performed four tracks from this year’s Saving Grace album – covers of Low’s Everybody’s Song, Moby Grape’s It’s a Beautiful Day Today and Martha Scanlan’s Higher Rock as well as an arrangement based on traditional gospel song Gospel Plough.
And the performance was rounded out by a cover of Gallows Pole from 1970’s Led Zeppelin III.
The full set can be viewed below.
The Tiny Desk Concert series features acts from across the musical spectrum, shedding their usual stage sound equipment and performing with minimal amplification in an intimate setting.
Plant jokes that the experience was “just like Live Aid … I couldn’t hear myself there either.”
He also describes the minimal setup as “very charming and kind,” He continues: “We are in fact not Americana, we are English-cana. We are Saving Grace. This is our very first adventure here in America. We hope you will enjoy us.”
Before launching into Gallows Pole, Plant pays tribute to American blues icon Lead Belly who was his first introduction to the track.
He says: “Lead Belly, in 1949 he left us. His memory has lived on in all of the music that I’ve ever been near and been touched by. I treasure the collection of songs that he picked both from Black and White culture. Phenomenal.”
Plant recent explained the origins and organic working practices of Saving Grave in an interview with Classic Rock.
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