This is the third consecutive summer the pair are on the road together, a tradition that began after the 2021 release of their second collaborative album Raise The Roof. The album arrived 14 years after their debut project, Raising Sand, which won album of the year at the 2009 Grammys. Both projects found the duo covering songs by artists as disparate as The Everly Brothers and Calexico, along with a few of their own originals.

Since emerging at the tail end of the CD era, much has been made about the odd couple factor in the pairing of the bluegrass country star and rock’s archetypal golden god. Today on the phone, Krauss says she and Plant are “definitely yin and yang,” a point Plant reiterates when he says working with Krauss has taught him “humility” and the sort of vocal discipline that was not necessarily required when he was ripping the warrior cries on “Immigrant Song.”

There’s magic here too, in both the sort of mystical thing their voices do in tandem and the comedic duo vibe of their rapport that may not necessarily translate to live shows but is clear during our 30 minutes on the phone, during which they make each other laugh hard and often, and not only because a leitmotif of the conversation becomes Plant’s shorts and the lengths he’s worn them at over the years.