Silver Rider (Band of Joy song of the week, No. 12 of 12)

The songwriting team of the band Low strikes gold not once but twice on Robert Plant's Band of Joy, released today in the U.K. just as this 12-part series concludes on LedZeppelinNews.com. Plant has told the Arkansas Times he'd had some Low CDs in his car for about eight or nine years. Evidently, their album The Great Destroyer was a favorite of his, as both of the Low songs on Band of Joy can be found on that 2005 disc.

Some songwriters Plant has covered multiple times are blues/gospel singer/guitarist Blind Willie Johnson, Jerry Miller of '60s psychedelic rock band Moby Grape, and folkie traveler Townes Van Zandt. However, because Plant has covered Low more than once on a single album, that band's Alan Sparhawk, Mimi Parker and former member Zak Sally are now placed into a more exclusive club also consisting of Willie Dixon, who was credited twice on Led Zeppelin's debut album and originally uncredited twice on Led Zeppelin II, and the Everly Brothers, a pair of whose songs were covered on Raising Sand.

An attractive hushed intensity marks the chorus of the Band of Joy version as Plant duets with Patty Griffin.

On my own cover version recorded in June, I duet with myself over a simple piano arrangement that draws influence from Pink Floyd's "Breathe" and Coldplay's "Trouble."