The Patti Smith Trio Visits The California Coast, 2023 Edition

Patti Smith was recently in California to play a string of small, intimate shows beginning in the High Desert, before heading up the coast to Santa Barbara, San Luis Obispo and Monterey and then reconvening the full band in San Francisco before heading to the Pacific Northwest. I caught the tour at SLO and Monterey, two beautiful art deco former movie theaters. She played these dates as The Patti Smith Trio, with her son Jackson Smith and erstwhile foot soldier Tony Shanahan as the sum total of her band. Given that lineup, these were stripped down, minimalist performances, but they were by no means any less compelling as any full band outing.

Tony Shanahan is the musical equivalent of a Swiss army knife in that he can sing lead or backup, play multiple instruments, act as musical director, and even clean her spectacles should she pull them out of her pocket onstage and realize she can barely see through them. Tony is a benevolent presence of good and it’s not so much that he’s ego-less, it’s that his onstage presence is always about serving the greater good. Jackson Smith is a fucking brilliant guitar player and also carries himself with positivity and grace. He can play anything, as he demonstrated when Patti introduced a cover of Television’s “Guiding Light” in honor of fallen friend and compatriot Tom Verlaine. You don’t try to play a Television song unless you are deeply certain you can do it justice.