“Hello St Louie. It’s been a while,” Robert Plant said with a slight grin. On September 18, the rock legend graced St. Louis with a stop at The Pageant, accompanied by his band Saving Grace and singer Suzi Dian, for the first night of this leg of the Up the Sharp End tour.
Austin-based Rosie Flores, the queen of cowpunk, opened the night to the growing crowd with a 30-minute set featuring her rockabilly band, The Talisman. Currently on her third run opening for Plant and Co., Flores is a legend in her own right, breaking molds as the first Latina to break onto Billboard’s country chart and paving the way for Latinx country musicians ever since. At 76, Flores shone on stage performing mostly covers, including The Everly Brothers’ “So Sad (to Watch Good Love Go Bad)” and Elvis Presley’s “Let’s Have a Party.” She and her band also performed their bluesy, spiritual “Mercy Fell Like Rain.”
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Plant arrived with simple staging, mainly bathed in soft orange hues throughout much of the concert, in front of a large backdrop of a bison that is featured on the 2025 album Saving Grace, which he recorded with Dian. The sold-out, mostly seated concert kept fans rapt throughout the 100-minute set. At age 78, Plant’s bluesy vocals did not waver and paired well with Dian’s flowing harmonies throughout the night. While the fans were mostly focused on Plant, he made sure to feature the talents of each band member (percussionist and drummer Oli Jefferson, guitarist and mandolin player Tony Kelsey, banjo and multi-instrumentalist Matt Worley, and cellist Barney Morse-Brown), as well as give Dian much of the deserved spotlight, including a soaring, touching solo on Gillian Welch’s ballad “Orphan Girl.”
The night included a lush, haunting, ethereal cover of the English/Irish traditional song “As I Roved Out,” as well as the English traditional song “The Cuckoo,” and a jaunty cover of Martha Scanlan’s “Higher Rock,” which featured Plant’s harmonica skills. The biggest responses from the older crowd came when the band covered Led Zeppelin songs “Ramble On,” “Friends,” and “The Rain Song.” Other covers included a reimagined, more lush-than-harder rock “Calling to You” and the night’s finale, an upbeat, jangly version of Low’s “Everybody’s Song.”
See more photos from the St. Louis concert at bit.ly/RobertPlant26cz.
