Fox Theatre
St. Louis, MO
Wednesday, September 24th, 2008
Box T, Table 1, Seat 1
$55
I've always liked Led Zeppelin, and I've managed to see Jimmy Page and John Paul Jones in concert over the years. Never got around to seeing Robert Plant. I was intrigued when he did an album with Alison Krauss and moreso when he put off touring with a reunited Led Zeppelin so he could tour with her. Roy and I were so happy that they booked a date for the Fox Theater in St. Louis. This is a show I'd like to see. It's not a style of music I really love - I'm going to sound uneducated here and describe it as "old-timey" - but it was a chance to see a musical legend doing something he is clearly happy about in a nice venue. And I enjoyed seeing Alison Krauss last year at the Crossroads Guitar Festival too. We bought their album Raising Sand, so we'd be familiar with the material.
The concert was originally supposed to take place on Thursday, June 19th. It was postponed until September. It was really a bad night for me to be going to a concert. At work, we were having a week long conference. The day of the show, a coworker and I were giving presentations lasting almost the whole day. I figured I'd be exhausted and just want to crawl into bed afterwards to recover. If I had to go to a concert, I'd want something loud and upbeat. I was worried I wouldn't be in the right mood for this performance.
The company I work for owns one of the corporate boxes at the Fox. It's an employee perk that we're allowed to buy tickets for it at the same price as general orchestra seats. The box holds eight people, and I called our recreation office early enough to reserve seats for Roy and me. The boxes are in their own level, just underneath the mezzanine. Having tickets in the Fox Club Box Seats also opens up other Fox Club amenities. We were able to have dinner in the Fox Club Dining Room, great food in a setting that overlooks the lobby.
The box seats have waiter service, so theoretically, I wouldn't have to face the crowds in the lobby. However, I wanted to buy a program. It was really nice, a hard bound book, even though it cost $40. While I was waiting in line, the guy in front of me told me I looked like I didn't want to be there. It had been am upsetting day at work, and it still showed on my face. I chatted with him a bit, no, I really did want to be there, I promise. He and his brother had driven in from Iowa for the show. I think he was expecting a lot of Led Zeppelin material, I wonder what he thought of the show. I still wondered if I were in the right mood for it.
I shouldn't have worried. The show was captivating.
The opening act was a singer named Sharon Little. We liked the set well enough, but I was anxious to hear the headliners.
The pacing of the show worked really well. Plant and Krauss started out sharing vocals on their first song. They did a few songs like this, including a quite reworked Black Dog. Then, they each did some songs with solo vocals.
Robert Plant was a great frontman. He was entertaining, witty, charismatic and regal. He started out by apologizing to the audience for the delayed show, "so sorry, so very Englishly sorry" and described his singing partner Alison Krauss as "the Queen of Everything". I thought his voice sounded great, but he was mostly singing at the lower end of his register.
I wish our seats were close enough to really see both Plant and Krauss. I don't usually like dealing with binoculars at concerts, but I would have liked them for this one. I thought about buying a pair at the Fox, but they were selling cheap plastic ones. The vendor told me to look through them before buying, and it was blurry. Maybe I should buy a pair for the future.
As I mentioned before, the album Plant and Krauss did together, Raising Sand, isn't a style of music I know much about. It was produced by T-Bone Burnett, and like some of his other work, consists of songs with a pre-rock era Americana feel. One of the songs is from the Everly Brothers.
There were three highlights for me, all in a row. They really packed a punch. First was a song that Alison Krauss started singing a capella. For the second verse, Plant and some of the other musicians came back on stage to sing harmony vocals. It sounded beautiful!
Next, Plant announced they were going to do a Townes Van Zandt song. The song started off slow but built with intensity as it went on. I suddenly realized that this "old timey" backing band was playing with the intensity of Led Zeppelin. It felt so natural as the song progressed.
The third song that got to me was the Battle of Evermore. I had read that they were going to play this one, and it seemed like a great idea. The original version had Sandy Denny on vocals, and Alison Krauss certainly has the voice to pull it off. It's definitely the lighter side of Led Zeppelin and it fit in well with the rest of the material without being reworked. Hearing it just gave me tingles.
The concert put me mentally in a much better place. I needed it, because I got home after 11, and had to be at work the next day at 7 for another day of the conference.
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