Robert Plant honored

Robert Plant is getting a new plaque in a record shop, not a museum. Record Store Day has named him a Record Store Legend just before this year’s event on April 18, 2026, and the ceremony was tied to a visit to Spillers Records in Cardiff. (recordstoreday.com) The award is a Record Store Day honor, not a chart prize. Record Store Day says the event began in 2007 to celebrate nearly 1,400 independently owned record stores in the United States and thousands more worldwide, with the first official day held on April 19, 2008. (recordstoreday.com) Plant’s name fits that setting because his 2026 release is being built for the bins at those stores. Record Store Day’s official list shows a Robert Plant release called *Saving Grace: All That Glitters… with Suzi Dian* arriving as a 12-inch vinyl extended play record on April 18, 2026. (recordstoreday.com) That extended play record is small on purpose. The official listing says it has four studio tracks and a run of 3,500 copies, which makes it the kind of limited item fans line up for when doors open on Record Store Day morning. (recordstoreday.com) The songs also show what Plant is doing now, which is different from the hard-rock image most people still carry from Led Zeppelin. The four tracks are “Blackest Crow,” “Poison,” “Orphan Girl,” and “She Cried,” and three of those songs come from older writers including Bert Jansch and Gillian Welch. (recordstoreday.com) Saving Grace is the band Plant has been working with in recent years, and Suzi Dian is the singer featured alongside him in that group. Record Store Day describes the new extended play record as a continuation of the *Saving Grace* album, which it lists as Plant’s first album with this band. (recordstoreday.com; recordstoreday.com) That band is not a studio side project that appears once and vanishes. An April 2026 report said Plant and Saving Grace had just finished a United States spring tour that began on March 14 in Albuquerque and ended on April 7 in New York City. (everettpost.com) Record Store Day has been using this Legend award to connect big names to the culture of independent shops. Everett Post reports that Elton John was the first recipient in 2017, and Johnny Marr of The Smiths received the honor in 2025 before Plant was chosen for 2026. (everettpost.com) So the news is not just that Robert Plant got another career trophy. It is that one of rock’s most famous voices is being honored by an event built around local stores at the exact moment he is putting out a 3,500-copy vinyl release made for those counters and shelves. (recordstoreday.com; recordstoreday.com)