Robert Plant & Alison Krauss playing 2 shows in Alabama: How to get tickets
Robert Plant and Alison Krauss are touring together in 2023, and their agenda includes two concerts in Alabama.
The rock legend and the bluegrass icon are set to perform in Birmingham on April 29 at Oak Mountain Amphitheatre in Pelham. On the following night, April 30, they’ll appear at the Orion Amphitheater in Huntsville. Singer/songwriter JD McPherson will be the opening act for both dates.
Tickets for the 8 p.m. show in Birmingham go on sale Friday, Feb. 3, at 10 a.m. CT via Ticketmaster/Live Nation. Prices are $29.50, $39.50, $49.50, $59.50, $79.50, $125.50, $139.50, $149.50 and $199.50, plus service charges, according to promoter Live Nation/Red Mountain Entertainment. Various pre-sales start at 10 a.m. Wednesday, Feb. 1, and run through 10 p.m. Thursday, Feb. 2. There’s a four-ticket limit for purchases, and the site says “ticket delivery will be delayed until 72 hours prior to event.”
Tickets for the 7 p.m. show in Huntsville go on sale Friday at 10 a.m. CT, as well, via the Orion Amphitheatre website. Prices are $39.50, $59.50, $79.50, $125.50, $139.50, $149.50 and $199.50, according to the website. A pre-sale starts at 10 a.m. Wednesday, Feb. 1, and runs through 10 p.m. Thursday, Feb. 2.
Plant, of course, is best known as the frontman of Led Zeppelin; Krauss is the leader of the celebrated bluegrass outfit Union Station. They’re touring in support of their Grammy-nominated album, “Raise the Roof,” released in 2021. Three Grammy nominations for the duo are pending, in the categories of Best Americana Album, Best American Roots Song (”High and Lonesome”) and Best Country Duo/Group Performance (”Going Where the Lonely Go”). Winners will be announced on Sunday, Feb. 5.
“Raise the Roof” is the follow-up to a 2007 album, “Raising Sand,” produced by T Bone Burnett. “Raising Sand” won multiple Grammys in 2008, including Record of the Year and Album of the Year. Plant and Krauss appeared in Birmingham to support the record in 2008, playing at the BJCC Arena (now known as Legacy Arena at the BJCC).
“It’s an odd collaboration that, on the face of it, really shouldn’t work,” AL.com said in its 2008 concert review. “Few would think of teaming Alison Krauss, an angelic, exacting singer and bluegrass-folk fiddler, with hard-rock pioneer and passionate yelper Robert Plant. They have vastly different energies and attitudes, not to mention a 23-year age difference. But producer T Bone Burnett has a peculiar genius: He sees, hears and conceives things that others could hardly imagine. … Krauss and Plant? Perfect, in Burnett’s hands — and perfectly wonderful on Saturday during a 9 p.m. concert in Birmingham.”
The show earned five out of five stars from AL.com, and Burnett was part of the tour band, “looking like a character from ‘Deadwood’ in his black duster.”
“Raise the Roof,” again produced by Burnett, includes covers of “The Price of Love” by the Everly Brothers, Merle Haggard’s “Going Where the Lonely Go,” “It Don’t Bother Me” by Bert Jansch and “Can’t Let Go” by Randy Weeks, famously covered by Lucinda Williams.
“I’ve heard Lucinda Williams sing ‘Can’t Let Go’ forever, and I sent that to Robert at least ten years ago,” Krauss said in a press release. “I remember riding around listening to it and thinking it would be so much fun to do together.”
The album also features Allen Toussaint’s “Trouble with My Lover” and Bobby Moore’s “Searching for My Love.”
“The Betty Harris song ‘Trouble With My Lover’ was always in the air,” Plant said in the release. “To hear Alison sing that is such a great way of her turning her gift around. And Bobby Moore’s ‘Searching for My Love’ is something I used to sing at school, another nugget of beautiful lost soul music which has been ricocheting between us for a long time.”
If the two stars follow the format established on the “Raising Sand” tour, Krauss and Plant will alternate during the April concert as frontman and frontwoman, performing nearly everything from “Raise the Roof” and blending in signature songs from their separate careers.
Plant has performed in Alabama over the years with Led Zeppelin (1977, Birmingham; 1973, Tuscaloosa and Mobile), with Krauss and with his band the Sensational Space Shifters. Krauss has played here several times with Union Station, including a memorable 2012 show at the BJCC Concert Hall.
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