Patti Smith & Her Band at Webster Hall

Patti Smith & Lenny Kaye

Born in Chicago, Illinois, and raised in southern New Jersey, where she worked a factory job and studied to become a teacher, Patti Smith escaped her mundane surroundings by immersing herself in poetry and rock and roll. In 1967, she launched a new life by relocating to New York City, where she worked in bookstores, connected with an underground enclave of artists, photographers, playwrights and journalists, wrote about music for music publications, and began reciting her poetry in literary circles. In an effort to rattle the poetry scene in 1971, Smith invited her friend, journalist Lenny Kaye, to play guitar accompaniment alongside her public readings. Over a period of several years, Smith found herself singing more than reading, adding more musicians, and becoming revered as an alternative rock icon during the first wave of punk rock. Despite growing fame, Smith disappeared from the limelight for most of the 1980s, raising two children with her husband in Detroit, Michigan. After the passing of her husband and others close to her, she resumed live performances in 1996, with Kaye, bassist Tony Shanahan, and drummer Jay Dee Daugherty; Smith's son, guitarist Jackson Smith, was added to the band in 2016. Smith was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2007. Her 11th and most recent album is 2012's Banga.

Patti Smith's performance tonight was originally announced as the first for the newly-reopened Webster Hall until the promoters slipped in a Jay-Z performance a few nights earlier. Former R.E.M. vocalist Michael Stipe opened Smith's two-night engagement with an unannounced acoustic set comprised of three new songs. Smith followed with a nearly two-hour set, and was joined at the end by Stipe and her daughter, pianist/vocalist Jesse Paris Smith. With no new songs to promote, Patti Smith relied on her usual set list, performing her better known songs interspersed by lesser known songs and cover songs. As a performer, she was as enthralling as ever, belting nearly every song to the band's energetic rock and roll beat. She was expressive in her singing, and chatty between songs. On this night, she did not read passages from her memoirs or recite poetry. Instead, she assumed her role as rocker while the band provided the heartbeats for the songs. The venue's sound and lights were expertly handled and so they magnified the brilliance of the performance. With this concert, the refurbished Webster Hall made an auspicious reboot; the venue may prove to be the best venue in New York for a rock concert.

Setlist:

1. April Fool
2. Are You Experienced? (The Jimi Hendrix Experience cover, with “Third Stone from the Sun” riff)
3. Redondo Beach
4. My Blakean Year
5. Beds Are Burning (Midnight Oil cover)
6. We Three (Patti Smith Group song)
7. The American in Me (Avengers cover) (Lenny Kaye vocal)
8. I'm Free (The Rolling Stones cover, with Lenny Kaye on vocals)/Walk On The Wild Side (Lou Reed cover, with Tony Shanahan on vocals)
9. Dancing Barefoot (Patti Smith Group song)
10. After the Gold Rush (Neil Young cover)
11. 25th Floor (Patti Smith Group song)
12. Beneath the Southern Cross (with instrumental of the Beatles' "Within You Without You")
13. Pissing in a River (Patti Smith Group song)
14. Gloria (Them cover, with Jesse Paris Smith)

Encore:

1. Because the Night (Patti Smith Group song)
2. People Have the Power (with Jesse Paris Smith and Michael Stipe)