Review: Feisty and ferocious, Chicago-born Patti Smith and band buzz with electricity at the Salt Shed

Add another feat to Patti Smith’s incredible legacy. Two weeks after falling ill, becoming hospitalized and canceling dates in Italy, where she spent a “short period of observation in emergency” for an undisclosed health issue, the poet-singer delivered a two-hour concert Wednesday at a packed Salt Shed that deserves to be remembered for years to come.

Though Smith is no stranger to remarkable performances, her transcendent showing at the former Morton Salt facility unfolded as the stuff of legend. It was the type of event where those lucky enough to witness it proudly boast they were there and those who missed out tend to fib about their attendance. Outshining their recent local appearances, including a 2022 gig at Metro and a storm-shortened 2021 engagement in Evanston, Smith and her crack band sparked a conflagration of energy, passion and resolve that wouldn’t be denied.

They rejoiced, implored, cautioned, loved, hoped, imagined and instructed. They celebrated longtime guitarist Lenny Kaye’s 77th birthday with cake and candles. Addressing loss not via sadness but by way of uplifting inspiration and tender comfort, they mourned recently deceased friends and long-departed heroes. They joked with one another, admitted minor mistakes, swapped instruments and resisted the urge to follow road maps.

Playing according to feel, the quintet traversed everything from smoky R&B and garage rock to punk, psychedelia and raga. The group steered clear of ornamentation in the same way the no-frills visual elements — standard lighting and a lone screen that displayed one static picture per song — directed attention toward the music. The epitome of understated cool in a sport coat, vest, T-shirt and boots, her silver-gray hair falling past her shoulders, Smith presided over it all. And how.

As she nears her own 77th birthday this Saturday, the Chicago-born pioneer remains an active force on the stage — a space where she excelled before and since taking a lengthy hiatus in the early 1980s to raise a family. The sudden death in 1994 of her husband, ex-MC5 member Fred “Sonic” Smith, caused her to change course.

Relocating from Michigan back to her old stomping grounds in New York City, Smith reemerged in the public eye with full force. She found time for collaborations, tours, art exhibitions and lectures, all the while releasing five albums in a dozen years. In advance of her 2007 induction into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, the singer often heard her name mentioned by a then-new wave of musicians who cited her as a primary influence.

Having last issued a new studio LP in 2012, Smith has spent a majority of the past two decades focused on her first love: the written word. Her outstanding memoir “Just Kids” won the National Book Award for Nonfiction in 2010. A follow-up, “M Train,” earned similar praise and garnered a Grammy nomination for Best Spoken Word Album. A subsequent travelogue (“Year of the Monkey”) and visual diary (“A Book of Days”) prolonged Smith’s run as a bestselling author.

As expected at Salt Shed, Smith painted vivid pictures, evoked potent images and sketched detailed characters with verse. She prefaced several numbers with brief poems or abbreviated lyrics from other songs that functioned as windows to the narratives soon at hand. In Smith’s universe, “hot liquors of the Milky Way” coexist with cloud-sailing ships, vagabonds and harlequins. Even her unaccompanied, summarized recitation of a Maria Callas aria stung with its beauty and bite.

Descriptive language, extending to a colorful account of her birth in this city on a night where a blizzard paralyzed transportation, represented one of the multitude of pro-grade tools Smith called upon at will. Her body language was equally effective and, in terms of defying limits, nearly rivaled the intact quality of her voice. Both traits bypassed the natural decline that usually accompanies older age.

Fully invested in every moment, Smith moved without restraint. She hopped, crouched, marched, danced and gestured. Her legs bent and shook; her knees literally knocked. Pumping, circling, pointing, waving, stretching, crossing, touching: The singer’s arms became animated extensions of her soul.

Vocally, Smith executed similar acrobatics. She stayed within her traditional scope — midrange and low — and effortlessly switched between them, singing with clarity and purpose. Tonally, Smith sounded almost indistinguishable from the promising upstart who made her debut record nearly 50 years ago. She still has the throatiness and grain, the swagger and sensuality, the intrinsic ability to default to pure emotion.

Those howls, moans, chants, snarls, curses and croons both summoned and admonished. During a transfixing 20-minute pairing of “Land” and “Gloria,” Smith castigated someone in the audience for throwing an ice cube at her. The feisty rebuke included a quick lesson in climate change as well as a threat that seemed pulled directly off the streets.

And to think that Smith felt “a little trepidation” due to feeling under the weather in recent days. A more accurate self-assessment of her condition — “Oh, I’m doing fine,” she said, smiling — arrived as a spontaneous reply to a question. That remark, too, failed to capture the extraordinary urgency, conviction and fearlessness with which she approached her work.

Activist, mother, dreamer, rebel, patriot, mystic, protester, motivator, believer, liberator: Smith inhabited these roles and others during an impossibly youthful performance that buzzed with electricity. With her son, Jackson, on the guitar, she relished the intimate solidarity of “Because the Night” — dedicated to her forever “boyfriend,” the departed Fred Smith — and infinite possibilities swirling in the fantasies of a struggling couple on a breathless rendition of “Free Money.”

Maintaining such enthusiasm and earnestness throughout a show often proves elusive; demonstrating keen awareness and cerebral insight presents another set of challenges. Smith and her mates held tight to all those attributes. In tribute to groundbreaking artists who died in 2023, they honored Television co-founder and fellow ‘70s CBGB-scene contemporary Tom Verlaine (a sparkling “Guiding Light”); uncompromising singer-songwriter Sinéad O’Connor (a hypnotic “Dancing Barefoot”); and Irish songsmith Shane MacGowan (a ramshackle “Dirty Old Town,” led by bassist Tony Shanahan).

Kaye also grabbed the microphone and helped give Smith a breather with an apt cover. Altering the tune’s original verses to mirror his biographical experiences, the septuagenarian interpreted Culture’s roots-reggae hit “Two Sevens Clash” with a savvy blend of humor and seriousness.

Gravity, and the consequences of complacency, informed Smith’s most profound and primal instances. As the hottest year in history concludes and war rages around the world, her thoughts turned to the planet, survival and destruction. She put a fresh spin on a mystery-filled version of Bob Dylan’s “All Along the Watchtower” by capitalizing on the potential meaning of its title before injecting an original verse in which an Eden of birds, fish and children gets spoiled by poisons, guns and bombs. “How did we stand and watch this [expletive] happen?” Smith shouted. The implications, and blatant connections to present-day circumstances, allowed nobody a safe space to hide.

She invoked Dylan again, quoting his castigating “Masters of War” as a prelude to the soft “Peaceable Kingdom,” treated as a fading wish rather than a certainty. Refusing to be a bystander amid global suffering and recognizing all that’s at stake, Smith broke near the end of the meditative dirge “Beneath the Southern Cross.”

Feisty and ferocious, the vocalist incited people to stand up against oil companies and governments trampling lands, rescinding rights and desecrating the planet. In championing joy, peace and unity — and encouraging diligence and denouncing boundaries — she fought for independence and democracy as if her, and our, very lives depend on it.

“The future is now!” Smith declared. Amen, sister.

Bob Gendron is a freelance critic.

Setlist from Patti Smith at the Salt Shed Dec. 27:

“So You Want to Be a Rock ‘N’ Roll Star” (Byrds cover)

“Ghost Dance”

“Free Money”

“Guiding Light” (Television cover)

“All Along the Watchtower” (Bob Dylan cover)

“Work” (Charlotte Day Wilson cover)

“Nine”

“Because the Night”

“Happy Birthday” (traditional)

“Two Sevens Clash” (Culture cover)

“Dirty Old Town” (Ewan MacColl cover)

“Dancing Barefoot”

“Peaceable Kingdom” / ”People Have the Power” (snippet)

“Pissing in a River”

“Beneath the Southern Cross”

“Land” / “Gloria”

Encore

“People Have the Power”