Indie rockers Low excited to hear Robert Plant sing pair of their songs

Ask Alan Sparhawk what it's like to have a song of his covered by Robert Plant, and you're asking only half of the question. Not one but two songs written with his Duluth, Minnesota-based band Low are making it onto the release Band of Joy this September.

"Come on, man, it's Robert Plant singing your tunes," he laughs in a phone conversation. "He can do whatever he wants, man. I'm excited. I'm super excited."

The two songs, "Silver Rider" and "Monkey," originally appeared on Low's album The Great Destroyer, released five years ago on the Sub Pop Records label. Sparhawk, who plays guitar and sings alongside his wife Mimi Parker in Low, says that although he hasn't yet heard either of Plant's takes, he has a feeling they'll be to his liking -- in part based on some of Plant's past cover material.

"Because of his skills and because of the people he's working with, I think he has tons of freedom to really find the essence of how he wants to play a song," says Sparhawk. "I think songs really are sort of little roadmaps, and I think good artists can take a song and work with it and make it their own."

In an interview for Lemon Squeezings, Sparhawk discusses the meanings behind both songs, but he's also quite talkative when he's asked about some of his favorite Led Zeppelin recordings. One of them is the posthumous outtakes compilation Coda, which he says is how he first started listening to the band:

"That one really kind of got me in and, I don't know, people may disagree, but I do feel it was a great first record to absorb."

Sparhawk is also a fan of the early concert footage on Led Zeppelin's DVD set, and he's particularly impressed with how Plant comes across:

"In '69 and '70, people were barely starting to use monitors and stuff, and Robert's just totally nailing that stuff. That's really hard to do. It's really hard to sing well and in pitch and with that much tone in a live rock situation, and he was just nailing that stuff. You just don't see that when you see footage of other bands playing live even back then. It's pretty rare that somebody had it together that much."

You can listen to the interview with Alan Sparhawk of Low here:

Also, check out the group's official website, www.chairkickers.com.