Band of Joy - Robert Plant (Album)
Band of Joy, stems back to late 60’s when it was formed by Robert Plant and shortly after joined by first choice drummer, the late John Bonham. In a recent interview by Plant, he eloquently refers to Band of Joy as ‘this British psychedelic blues rock band represented an attempt to create diversifying and celebrate the great dynamics of the music scene of that era’.
There is to my knowledge only 1 song floating around that was ever released on a promo tape which circulated in the Midlands in 1968 'I got To Find My Baby’. It would take a further four decades until another release would be available, this was on Sixty Six to Timbuktu (2003), Robert Plant’s retrospective solo album; those tracks are “Hey Joe” and “For what it’s worth”. With all due respect, those recordings were with a different line up of musicians. By this time, and following his Zeppelin years, Plant had cultivated an individual superlative vocal technique that was inspired from the Mississippi delta and Chicago great blues music scenes.
The past 5 years have taken Plant on an even wider musical journey; in 2007 he calibrated with Alison Krauss, and released an album, Raising Sands. This folk, bluegrass, country , blues rock, flamboyant Eastern essence combination resinates with Plant’s core, which evoked times of yore, where he just wanted to bring Band of Joy back to this point in his career.
Robert Plant is an album made up of mostly covers, opening with the single from the album, Los Lobos timeless classic ‘Angel Dance’, two Los Lobos band members also appear in the film clip, a song of Richard Thompson ‘House of Cards’, Low ‘Monkey’ and ‘Silver Rider’, Bascom Lamar Lunsford English/Appalachian folk ballad ‘Cindy I’ll Marry You Someday’, Milton Mapes ‘The Only Sound That Matters’, and Townes Van Zandt ‘Harms Swift Way’. Plant has tuned into music that has been undiscovered, he has put his own personality into other people’s songs, and sings the way he sings, and attacks those songs Plant like style.
United with some very fine musicians for the reprising of Robert Plant’s, Band of Joy are folk singer songwriter, Patty Griffin who adds the main vocal foils to Plant’s lead parts, Country singer, guitarist, and producer Buddy Miller adds a lot of resemblance of fifties rockabilly, soul, and R&B from Memphis, country songwriter, multi-instrumentalist Darrell Scott who provides the mandolin, guitar, accordion, pedal, lap steel and banjo, Byron House provides the bass, and Percussionist, Marco Giovino. The album was recorded in Nashville, and produced by Buddy Miller and Robert Plant.
Robert Plant has gone back to the past and picked up where he left off with Band of Joy, only this time he is being recognized as an illustrious musician with an enormous eclectic intelligent portfolio.
