Robert Plant sold out Humphreys Concerts by the Bay on Shelter Island Monday night, but the former Led Zeppelin frontman spent most of his 96 minutes onstage steering clear of the band that made him famous. Backed by his acoustic roots outfit Saving Grace, Plant delivered a 15-song set built around folk, blues, gospel and Celtic traditions rather than a greatest-hits run through Zeppelin's catalog, and not everyone in the 1,400-seat waterfront crowd was thrilled about it.
According to a review by The San Diego Union-Tribune, Plant opened the show with “Down to the Sea” from his 1993 solo album Fate of Nations, and the set included only three Led Zeppelin songs all night — fresh acoustic arrangements of “Ramble On,” “Friends” and “The Rain Song,” plus a retooled version of “Babe, I'm Gonna Leave You.” The paper also quoted one concertgoer as saying, “I still want to hear a melody, man.”
A Band Built on Six Years of Quiet Collaboration
Plant teamed up with co-vocalist Suzi Dian and the rest of Saving Grace back in 2019, and the pairing has since become his primary creative outlet. Dian, who also plays accordion and electric bass, shared lead vocals with Plant on the night, including a rendition of Neil Young's “For the Turnstiles” on which she sang lead while Plant added harmony, per the same Union-Tribune account. The rest of the lineup includes drummer Oli Jefferson, who is also Dian's husband, cellist Barney Morse-Brown, guitarist Tony Kelsey, and multi-instrumentalist Matt Worley on guitar, banjo and cuatro.
The band's catalog draws from an unusually wide net of traditions — folk, blues, country, gospel, Celtic, flamenco, Indian and West African music all surfaced during the show, the paper noted. The band also performed a version of Gillian Welch and Dave Rawlings' “Orphan Girl” before closing the night with Low's “Everybody's Song.”
From Pandemic-Era Side Project to Touring Force
Saving Grace began quietly in 2019 at Plant's home in the English Welsh borderlands, an informal acoustic collective that briefly debuted as an unheralded opener for Fairport Convention before the pandemic paused any formal plans until 2025, according to AXS TV. That slow gestation turned into a full studio album, released September 26, 2025, on Nonesuch Records — ten roots and folk covers recorded between April 2019 and January 2025 across the Cotswolds and Welsh Borders, per Nonesuch's own account.
Monday's Humphreys date was part of Saving Grace's 16-date fall U.S. tour, Up the Sharp End, which runs from September 18 in St. Louis through October 15 in Chicago — the band's most extensive American run since Plant formed the ensemble, Ultimate Classic Rock notes. It marked the group's second San Diego-area show in the past 10 months.
A Local Opener and a Bigger California Swing
Opening the show was Rosie Flores, backed by a two-man band, who tore through Wanda Jackson's “Let's Have a Party” before Plant took the stage. Flores, named an NEA National Heritage Fellow in 2024, previously opened roughly 16 dates for Plant and Saving Grace in fall 2025 before rejoining the tour this year, as Hoodline reported in an earlier report on her tour slot.
The San Diego stop came just days before Plant and Saving Grace were added to the bill at San Francisco's free Hardly Strictly Bluegrass festival in Golden Gate Park on October 4, filling in after frequent collaborator Alison Krauss withdrew on doctor-ordered vocal rest, according to SFGATE.
