Buddy Miller, John Fogerty honored at Americana Music Awards

A CD that Robert Plant appears on was named Album of the Year at the 2009 Americana Music Awards ceremony last night.

Multi-instrumentalist and singer Buddy Miller won the Artist of the Year category, while he and his wife Julie Miller picked up Duo/Group of the Year, the category Plant and Alison Krauss claimed a year ago.

Meanwhile, the Buddy and Julie Miller album Written in Chalk received last night's top honor in the Americana Music Association's annual awards ceremony held last night at the Sommet Center in Nashville.

Plant duets with Buddy Miller on one track on that album, "What You Gonna Do Leroy." Also playing lap steel on the track is Gurf Morlix, who was awarded Instrumentalist of the Year.

It was the first time since 2006 that somebody other than Buddy Miller won in that category.

It was another one of Miller's duets on Written in Chalk, with Patty Griffin on the song called "Chalk," that took home Song of the Year. The song was written by Julie Miller.

The Americana Music Association also presented a lifetime achievement award to American rocker John Fogerty. The former Creedence Clearwater Revival singer was on hand to receive the award, one day after performing a surprise set at Nashville's Mercy Lounge.

Miller is among the musicians on Fogerty's latest solo offering, The Blue Ridge Rangers Rides Again. It is the follow-up to a disc of his in 1972.

Plant was not known to be in attendance last night, although it is possible he will rear his head in Nashville again next month as his current record label, Rounder, prepares an evening celebration in honor of the label's 40th anniversary.

Krauss is scheduled to perform with her band, Union Station, at an Oct. 12 event, to be held at the Grand Ole Opry House. The show is to be filmed for an upcoming PBS television special.

As for a second album with Plant and Krauss, it has previously been reported that progress in pre-production this January was sidetracked prior to their Grammy sweep in February.

While Plant was spotted in Nashville midway through the year, a source familiar with behind-the-scenes operations indicated to LedZeppelinNews.com midway through the year that, on one hand, Krauss had "declared a moratorium on all work for 12-18 months with Robert because she wants to do an album and extended tour with Union Station." On the other hand, the source said, Plant was left "frustrated" as he "wants to finish the thing off and be done with it."

The last time Krauss is known to have publicly addressed any further collaboration with Plant came this July, when she commented to the U.K. Telegraph that their second album would "be different, as if we hadn't made the first." The writer of that article said Plant and Krauss had only "listening meetings about potential material" pertaining to their next musical project together.