GRACE UNDER NO PRESSURE

Robert Plant talks about his latest group Saving Grace, the joy of operating low-key and without an agenda, and embracing the freedom to musically do whatever he likes, when he likes.

- Dave Everley

Many moons ago, at the height of Led Zeppelin's success, Robert Plant and Jimmy Page had an idea. They would buy an old bus and convert it into a kind of travelling stage on wheels. “We were going to have a hydraulic side on it, which would open up, and a small generator underneath it, so we could do acoustic shows anywhere,” says Plant. “We could drive through the world and just set up and play. The exchange of energy when you don’t pump the thing up is priceless.”

What exactly the 'thing' was is one of the great intangibles that come more than once in a 45-minute conversation with Robert Plant, but in this case he probably means playing music - specifically, playing music purely for the joy of it. That certainly seems to be one of his defining characteristics, particularly for the past 30-odd years.

It's definitely one of the driving forces behind his new band, Saving Grace; although 'band' seems to be a little too formal a description. It's more of a collection of like-minded musicians from the same corner of England who got together to play a bunch of old and slightly less old songs they loved, then spent the next few years accidentally recording an album.

That album, also called Saving Grace, comprises 10 of those songs, ranging from the well-travelled spiritual Gospel Plough and Chevrolet, the latter evolved from an old Memphis Minnie number, to more recent songs by cult alt.country band The Low Anthem (Ticket Taker) and Plant favourites Low (Everybody’s Song, the third track of theirs he’s recorded).

They’re not covers so much as interpretations of songs he likes and thinks he and the rest of Saving Grace - co-vocalist and accordion player Suzi Dian, her husband, drummer Oli Jefferson, banjo and string player Matt Worley, guitarist Tony Kelsey and cellist Barney Morse-Brown — can find something interesting and hopefully new in.

In that respect,