Robert Plant: The Unlikely King Of Americana

*****

“They got these liberal, low-flow toilets,” a man I’ve never met before in my life is saying to me from somewhere outside my scope of vision as I wash my hands in the men’s room of the Intercontinental Tampa. “Guess Obama is working out.” These are the wonderfully non-sequitur first words I hear as I await my conversation with Robert Plant, and they’re a refreshing blast of randomness amidst the bustle of a very busy establishment. Located in Tampa’s cluttered Westshore district, the Intercontinental boasts a fairly regal lobby, arcing fountains, tall glass columns of windows everywhere, flat-screen televisions and posh seating areas just as ubiquitous. People in suits talk loudly in every corner and drinks start to flow quickly as the six o’clock hour approaches.

Despite the racket of the hotel lobby, the tree-dotted oasis in between its buildings is eerily quiet, scattered marble tables on black metal legs everywhere. The table we’re situated on either side of is positioned too high in proportion to its chairs, and it feels almost as if two youths have chosen this discreet spot to conspire mischief and discuss strategies of fort-building and cootie-avoidance. Plant is chipper and talkative from the moment we sit down in the courtyard and he doesn’t waste a second, starting in before I’ve even turned my recorder on. “I feel like a naughty, naughty boy,” he says, a grin widening across his face as he attempts to position himself above the table with his elbows. Half a moment later, apropos of nothing, he recalls the last time he visited Tampa.

“I was banned from here for life,” he begins. “It was a Zeppelin concert at the stadium and the weather turned. In those days, there were no isolating transformers or anything to stop electrocution from water and power. So we had to stop the show and then the crowd got a little restless, and so the police moved in rather vividly with sort of Perspex see-through shields. There were 57,000 people. The authorities decided it was our fault and that would be the end of it and we wouldn’t come back together as a group again. But I can creep in on my own now, under cover.”

At no point during our conversation do we discuss mudsharks, the meaning of “ZOSO” or what might prompt a man to utter the words “I am a golden god.” While Plant did, in fact, once write the line: “When your conscience hits you, knock it back with pills,” he’s now the wizened man who says things like, “I traded drugs for Rand McNally. And you know what? It’s better than drugs.” He sounds energized, too, clearly invigorated by the recent direction his career arc has taken him. This direction, two albums in, has consisted almost solely of cover songs, so I ask him why he’s relying on the material of others.

“I’m through with trying to express stuff in three minutes until I’ve got something really interesting, ironic or humorous. I’ve got books and books of anecdotes and one-line quips. Sometimes, I’m so funny, I catch myself going forward and trip over, because I see a lot of funny things and a lot of ironies as I get older. But I was looking for substance to get my head around it and my motive to project into other people’s songs, you know. I just think there’s so many different strains and filigrees in our record, which require a different mind to get into them as a singer, to tell them.”

Band of Joy’s cross-section of music history cuts a wide swath, Richard Thompson (“House Of Cards”) making an appearance after Los Lobos (“Angel Dance”), The Kelly Brothers (“I’m Falling In Love Again”) preceding Milton Mapes (“The Only Sound That Matters”). Townes Van Zandt (“Harm’s Swift Way”) gets a treatment, as does Barbara Lynn (“You Can’t Buy Me Love”), a standard or two and a poem put to music. The only act that gets two songs is Minnesota “slowcore” duo, Low.

“They can have two hundred if they like,” says Plant. “They can come and live at my house if they want to. [Laughs.] I mean, they’re in my car, they’re in my head and they’re on stage now.”

“He’s an interpreter of song,” says Low’s Alan Sparhawk. “I think it’s a compliment to American songwriters, or at least the history of music in America, that someone of that caliber and that taste keeps coming to that material,” he says. “Specifically pertaining to us, it’s really sort of amazing that he’s not just watching. He’s listening to music, you know? He’s drawing from a lot of things. I don’t know where he picked us up or who handed him our CD or where he got stuck having to listen to us over and over again.”