Robert Plant could’ve trotted out a greatest hits set Saturday at the Auditorium Theatre and no one likely would’ve complained. Just even a hint of that old Led Zeppelin mojo, and he’d be basking in standing ovations.

Instead, the 62-year-old singer gave easy nostalgia the brushoff at the sold-out concert and went for something far more elusive. He’s chased the muse of American music from his European home for several decades, and now he’s got an American band to help him explore the roots of blues, country and folk. But again, the angle he took on these traditions was not always obvious, shadow-boxing with tradition and putting greater stock in rolling rhythm than rock bombast.

Plant glided through the concert like a lean, ringlet-haired ghost rather than a chest-thumping golden god; his voice evinced suppleness and nuance, his hands twirled shapes in the air, and he frequently deferred to his band and drifted into the shadows. At one point he played a harmonica in the darkness as if holding a private séance with the spirit of Sonny Boy Williamson.

Even Zeppelin perennials such as “Black Dog” and “Ramble On” didn’t sound quite like themselves. Plant and his Band of Joy didn’t try to replicate them in the least, instead aiming for a loose ebb and flow that suggested cosmic folk more than the proto-metal of the originals. Plant knew it would’ve been pointless to try to replicate the thunderous Jimmy Page riff at the heart of Zep’s “Houses of the Holy,” so he didn’t bother with it at all. Instead the song was refashioned around Darrell Scott’s pedal-steel moan into a country lament,  then shifted into a gospel-tinged affirmation.

Besides Plant, the band boasted three excellent lead vocalists in guitarist Buddy Miller, multi-instrumentalist Scott and Patty Griffin, and the arrangements exploited the power of their instruments, notably on a cappella passages in the old Porter Wagoner country hit “A Satisfied Mind” and the five-part harmonies that turned Bob Dylan’s “A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall” into a moving elegy.

Those harmonies are a new weapon in Plant’s arsenal; he often blended in with the ensemble, putting the focus on songs he admired, whether Richard Thompson’s “House of Cards” or Townes Van Zandt’s “Harm’s Swift Way.” He was wise to let the band do the heavy lifting, because they were up for it. It shimmied at every opportunity, thanks to the work of bassist Byron House and drummer Marco Giovino, who mixed mallets, brushes and percussion knickknacks like a master painter. Miller played the resident mystic, even more so than Plant. He played guitar solos that simmered like a hot sun on asphalt during “Please Read the Letter” and a cover of Low’s luminous “Silver Rider.”

It was music that couldn’t easily be defined or pinned down, elusive and allusive, much like Plant himself.

The openers, a stripped-down version of the North Mississippi Allstars, did some roots-excavating of their own. Guitarist Luther Dickinson and his younger brother, drummer Cody Dickinson, dug into the trance-boogie traditions of their hill-country neighborhood. Even more impressive was a brief acoustic set by the duo, swapping rapid-fire guitar runs like back-porch virtuosos.
     
greg@gregkot.com

Robert Plant’s set Saturday at the Auditorium Theatre:

1. Black Dog
2. Down to the Sea
3. Angel Dance
4. Black Country Woman
5. House of Cards
6. Monkey
7. Somewhere Trouble Don’t Go (Buddy Miller vocal)
8. Silver Rider
9. A Satisfied Mind (Darrell Scott vocal)
10. Satan Your Kingdom Must Come Down
11. Twelve Gates to the City/Wade in the Water/In My Time of Dying
12. Ocean of Tears (Patty Griffin vocal)
13. Please Read the Letter
14. Houses of the Holy
15. Ramble On

Encore:
16. Tangerine
17. Harm’s Swift Way
18. A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall

3.5 stars (out of 4)

Producer-musician Jim Dickinson was a gentlemanly maverick who served as the unofficial historian and advocate for the most deeply imbedded strands of Southern music. His death in 2009 was a huge blow, not least of which to his family, which includes his sons Luther and Cody Dickinson. They’re the core members with bassist Chris Chew of the North Mississippi Allstars, who have been recording blues-steeped rock, soul and gospel for more than a decade.

The death of the Dickinson patriarch and the birth three months later of Luther Dickinson’s child inform the trio’s best album since its 2000 debut, “Shake Hands With Shorty.”

“Keys to the Kingdom” (Songs of the South) moves from anger (“This A’Way,” “Jumpercable Blues”) to acceptance (“How I Wish My Train Would Come,” “Hear the Hills”). Along the way there are potent collaborations with Mavis Staples on the gospel testifying of “The Meeting” and Ry Cooder on the sobering conviction of “Ain’t No Grave.” The album wraps with rollicking, randy takes on mortality (“New Orleans Walkin’ Dead,” “Jellyrollin’ All Over Heaven”) and a haunting coda by Jim Dickinson’s favorite piano player, Spooner Oldham.

The Allstars play with unassuming ardor, letting the rawness seep through the edges of the arrangements. Drummer Cody Dickinson in particular delivers exactly what each song needs, nothing less, and keeps things swinging. It’s the kind of unsentimental yet passionate tribute a musical legend and family cornerstone would surely appreciate.

greg@gregkot.com