Matt Worley sang lead vocals on Blind Willie Johnson’s gospel blues “Soul Of a Man.”

Robert Plant sang back up.

It was Plant’s show. The packed and thrilled house at the Shubert Theater on Thursday came to see Plant, the frontman of Led Zeppelin, the greatest rock star of all time. But across the 90-minute set, the gray golden god often ceded the spotlight to every member of his new backing band, Saving Grace. That was by design.

For the last few decades, Plant has mostly ignored his legacy, his stature, his solo hits, his catalog with an All-Time Top 5 rock band. Instead, he has celebrated his deep love for music through half a dozen bands, a score of genres, and a hundred different covers.

At the Shubert show, the 77-year-old and Saving Grace — string player and singer Worley, singer and accordionist Suzi Dian, guitarist Tony Kelsey, cellist Barney Morse-Brown, and drummer Oli Jefferson — kept up that cooperative celebration. They did it through a set that touched on country, gospel, Delta blues, ’60s flower power, electronica-tinged modern rock, Celtic and Appalachian folk, and rhythms and melodies from North Africa, the Middle East, and South Asia.

The songs pulled from new LP “Saving Grace,” most of which are duets with Dian, resemble Plant’s work with Alison Krauss if they had tramped further into darker, jagged spaces. Performed live, the band leaned hard into those edgy, menacing vibes.

Plant’s solo song “Let the Four Winds Blow” had the singer cooing and screaming with guitarist Kelsey digging into an angular guitar solo that sounded — wonderfully — like an experimental jazz musician trying to play rockabilly. Traditional tune “As I Roved Out” evoked the monster stomp and epic crescendos of Zeppelin’s reinvention “In My Time of Dying” (another Blind Willie Johnson gospel blues). Indie rock band Low’s “Another Cup” had the band shifting tempos, driving up the volume then dropping it to a hush, while Plant and Dian sang ghostly harmonies.

Plant’s voice, and his calculated vocal delivery, was more than up to the task of enchanting the audience. But it helps to have a singer like Dian there to elevate those harmonies, provide a counterpoint, and carry some of the load. Between keeping up with the legend on rougher stuff, Dian added some tender and delicate vocals to contemporary folk singer Sarah Siskind’s “Too Far From You.”

When the band did cover Led Zeppelin, it made no effort to replicate the classic rock bombast. Plant inherently knows which of his old tunes work best with each of his backing groups. “Ramble On” rambled but didn’t charge with Dian’s understated accordion somehow evoking Jimmy Page’s guitar. The encore medley of “Gallow’s Pole/Black Dog” perfectly captured the dreamy Celtic and earthy blues blend that dominated so much of the set. (The others Zep songs were “Four Sticks” and “Friends.”)

The “Saving Grace” album cover has Plant’s name in large letters. The Saving Grace banner behind the band on Thursday didn’t even include Plant’s name. That captured the frontman’s unique and restless artistic heart: Nods to the past are fine, but no nostalgia, no bright spotlight, no attempt to be who he used to be.