Patti Smith – Surly Brewing – Minneapolis MN – August 7th 2021

First Avenue and Surly Brewing present Patti Smith

Review and photos by Kyle Hansen

The return of live music to Surly Brewing is finally here. They have had artists such as Violent Femmes, Courtney Barnett, and Gary Clark Jr to name just a few. It has been since 2019 since they have hosted a show.

Opening the show, by Patti’s request was Gregory Alan Isakov. He is a folk rock musician. Very good at what he does and was a great addition to the show. There were a number of people talking about him and how excited they were to see him also. He did state that when Patti asked him to join the tour he couldn’t refuse cause he also gets to see her twice. He has amazing talent and if you are into folk music check him out HERE.

The evening was cloudy and perfect temperature for a classic rock n roll show. She released her debut album in 1975 called Horses and has been a pop icon ever since. I always get excited to see legends of rock n roll and tonight was no exception.

She addressed the crowd with how nice it was to see faces and she had not seen this many unmasked faces since the republican national convention. Which did get a laugh from the crowd. She opened with Redondo Beach and Grateful. Grateful was dedicated to Jerry Garcia as it is his birthday and death day week. She said they always celebrated a week with Jerry for his birthday cause he was such a presence. She talked about Almont festival and how they told Jerry there had been some violence and his response was Violence, Bummer.

They then performed My Bleaken Year and Bob Dylan’s A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall. Lenny Kaye who has been with her forever dedicated the next tune to his favorite Minneapolis band Soul Asylum and went into I’m Free with Walk on the Wild Side mixed in. Closing the set was a cover from Them, Land and Gloria medley and People Have the Power.

It was a small set of only 8 songs but the stories and return to live music was well worth it.