BY FRED MILLS

It was a subtle form of electricity…

As we wandered through the doors of the sold-out Asheville Civic Center the sweet-twanging strains of opening act Sharon Little greeted our ears. Earlier this year the Philly-based songbird’s debut Perfect Time for a Breakdown had caught the ear of T Bone Burnett, the Robert Plant/Allison Krauss producer in turn passing a copy of the album along to his famous friends, and in short order Little found herself booked for the Plant & Krauss tour. Not bad for a gal who just a few months earlier had been waiting tables.

Mark my words: this tour will make her more than just a “rising star.” Backed by a 5-piece band attired in hipster black suits, the blonde-haired Little sported an off-the-shoulder white chiffon dress that subliminally suggested wedding-day rituals, but her slinky, swaying dance moves were anything but virginal. She had the room-filling pipes — bluesy-brassy like Grace Potter but with a sultry jazziness as well — to back up the moves, too. No fear in this young lady. Stomping, alt-country/gospel/rock anthem “Try,” which closed out the set, summed things up for Little: “Don’t even try running.” That voice gonna get ya one way or another.

During the break I conversed with my date, who happened to be my 7-year old son. He’s been to outdoor happenings and some club shows, but the only time he’s been in an arena was for the circus. So you’ve never been to a big rock concert, huh? I asked. Unh-uh, he replied, offering a tentative smile, like he couldn’t tell if I was teasing him or not. (Daddies like to tease their kids and otherwise fill their heads with disinformation. It’s in the job description. The kid figured this out some time ago.) He stared at the stage, then screwed his head around to look at the people way in the back up in the balcony. We had pretty sweet floor seats, great sound, perfect sight lines. This should impress him, I thought to myself, as the lights went down and a loud cheer went up.

As far as rock concerts go, Plant & Krauss definitely aim for the minimalist-is-best approach. Stage design-wise, there’s no clutter or extraneous props, just the gear set up in front of a thick curtain backdrop to give the illusion of theater-styled intimacy. They let the music perform the actual magic of creating that intimacy.

With the drapes glowing neon purple, the band — guitarists Burnett and Buddy Miller, multi-instrumentalist Stuart Duncan, bassist Dennis Crouch and drummer Jay Bellerose (Duncan and Miller would also provide backing vocals) — came out and took their places, easing straight into “Rich Woman,” the lead-off track from Plant & Krauss’ acclaimed Raising Sand album. After a few bars of the musicians’ vamping, P&K also strode onstage, one golden god, one golden goddess. (Everyone was dressed in black —where’s the funeral, guys?) The tune’s swampy, hypnotic tone set in motion a general vibe that would prevail throughout the evening. Quiet virtuosos all, the band members bobbed their heads in time to the music, occasionally looking across at one another for cues or simply to exchange a satisfied smile, while the two vocalists commanded stage center, both swaying as if secretly delighted but determined not to let their individual personalities overshadow the songs themselves. Longtime Plant watchers, of course, could probably pick up on some of Percy’s telltale physical signatures — an occasional slight arching backwards, a waist-level fluttering of his hands for emphasis — but for the most part he kept his larger-than-life presence under wraps.

These were all veteran musicians clearly at ease with each other. Considering that the Raising Sand combo is essentially a novice one — Bellerose and Crouch played on the album along with producer Burnett, but Miller (replacing Marc Ribot, who handled guitar chores in the studio) and Duncan (replacing several session musicians) only came into the fold when it was time to mount a tour — they were extraordinarily well-rehearsed, to the point of demonstrating the kind of onstage telepathy that some groups never muster after years of being on the road. In particular, Miller and Burnett, respectively positioned stage left and stage right, provided both a visual set of bookends and, with their precision fretwork, musical focal points whenever the vocalists weren’t commanding the mics.

Highlights followed quickly:

• “Leave My Woman Alone” — with a rockabilly vibe replacing the swampy one, this old Ray Charles nugget (not included on Raising Sand, incidentally) received an additional bluegrass injection when Krauss picked up her fiddle and Duncan swapped his guitar for a mandolin.
• “Black Dog” — yes, that Black Dog, although the Led Zep classic was dialed back a tempo or two, darker and swampier, but occasionally pierced by teeth-rattling lead guitar breaks just to give a wink-nudge to its heavy metal origins; the singers also indulged in some almost doo-woppy flourishes during the “aah-ahh-ahh-ahh…” vocal parts.
• “Sister Rosetta Goes Before Us”/”Through the Morning, Through the Night”/”So Long, Goodbye To You” — essentially a three-song Krauss mini-set, commencing with the slightly Balkan-feeling “Rosetta” spotlighting a virtuoso violin solo; moving through country weeper “Morning” (a showcase for her honeyed voice) with Miller on pedal steel and Plant (who had moved to the back of the stage) on backing vocals; and finally to the rousing, uptempo bluegrass number “So Long.”
• “Fortune Teller” — Plant’s turn to take the mic, solo, and he clearly relished the number as the band chugged and throbbed on well-oiled cylinders behind him, although Krauss didn’t forget to reappear from stage left just in time to lend some vampish, wordless vocal wails (am I the only person to think that she modeled those wails on some of Plant’s signature sounds from back in the day?).
• “In The Mood” — one of the evening’s big surprises, the hit from Plant’s ’83 solo album The Principle of Moments was transformed into a kind of Brit-rock-goes-Appalachian drone-pop number powered by the twin fiddle attack of Krauss and Duncan; midway through it morphed into a few verses of Fairport Convention’s “Matty Groves,” eliciting stray whoops of recognition from a few crowd members.

Speaking of which, the audience was consistently appreciative and respectful of the musicians. Considering the statures of Plant and Krauss — superstars of the rock/pop and country/bluegrass worlds — it was startling to sit in the arena and not have to contend with over-excited fans insisting upon their right to stand up the whole time while loudly voicing their approval. But maybe that “subtle electricity” I mentioned above kept things charged at just the right amount of voltage. Everybody won as a result.

My pint-sized date and I didn’t make it all the way to the end of the two-hour concert, of course. Even powered by a 24-oz Coca-Cola and adrenalized by the promise of staying up several hours past bedtime, a 7-year old who’s been going strong since 6:30 on a Saturday morning will eventually run out of steam. No matter. We caught a little over half of the set, and what we did take in seemed to impress him, and that was good enough for me. At one point I looked over at him and he was leaning forward in his seat, slackjawed and utterly transfixed, and for a brief instant I got to view the musicians and their performance through the eyes of a child. Call it an early Father’s Day gift.

After the show I learned through the grapevine from a local friend of Krauss that the songbird was “completely exhausted” from the tour’s somewhat punishing schedule. Following a preliminary U.S. leg in April they spent May in the UK and then upon their return immediately launched another U.S. leg starting June 2 that’s due to run through the middle of July (including a stop at Bonnaroo the night after the Asheville show). You couldn’t tell it from her Asheville performance, though. Powerful, but controlled. Just like Plant’s. Like I said, a subtle form of electricity.

[Photo credit: Pamela Springsteen]