Of all the great songwriters of the last half century, Patti Smith is one of the most unknowable. That’s not because Smith is particularly private or her work is evasive or oblique—the vast majority of it is anything but—but simply because there are so many sides of her to know. There’s Smith the songwriter, Smith the poet, Smith the punk pioneer, Smith the rabble-rouser, Smith the populist, Smith the activist, Smith the elder statesman and, somehow despite all those other hats, Smith the everywoman. It’s precisely because the she has occupied so many roles that Smith has had such tremendous reach over her 40-year career, influencing noise artists and pop stars alike, and earning equal standing in both the underground and the establishment.
Smith’s versatility also makes her a ripe subject for Alverno Presents’ ongoing series of programs exploring influential American musicians. For Alverno’s Smith Uncovered program, Saturday, Oct. 18 at the college’s Pitman Theatre, curator Betty Strigens has assembled an eclectic bill that attempts to consider all angles of Smith’s multifaceted career.
“I discovered Patti Smith when I was a kid, and I just remember thinking she was outrageous,” Strigens recalls. “I loved her attitude. She had this good mix of classical training and romanticism but also this devil-may-care, fearless punk attitude. That’s one of those things in this program that we wanted to explore, that contrast in Smith’s work, because you can find in it the sacred and the profane, the feminine and the masculine, the angelic and the dark. She goes through all these personas, and yet they all still seem to be her; there’s always something truthful about her.
“It’s funny,” Strigens adds. “One of the people I had been thinking about as a possible subject for a program was Dolly Parton, who is also great. But Dolly Parton is always Dolly Parton. Patti Smith is kind of this chameleon. She just continually channels all these different types of people. Whatever you’re looking for you can find it in her work.”
Smith Uncovered will intersperse performances of Smith’s songs with readings of her poems. Its cast includes Stringens’ band Testa Rosa, the chamber-rock trio Nineteen Thirteen, songwriter Chris DeMay, the earthy folk ensemble Hello Death (joined by singer Mark Waldoch) and, perhaps most eventfully, the reunited Milwaukee punk institution Die Kreuzen, who will tackle a trio of songs, including her visceral 1976 rocker “Ask The Angels.”
“There’s going to be an arc to the evening, where the instrumentation starts out a little more classical and acoustic and it eventually progresses into more avant-garde noisy rock,” Strigens says. “The evening will also include some sound performances, as well as a visual component. Our primary goal is to make sure that these performances aren’t covers but rather true reinterpretations of her work. If we can show the audience something that’s never been seen before and will never be seen again then we’ll consider the night a success.”
Alverno College’s Pitman Theatre hosts Smith Uncovered at 8 p.m. on Saturday, Oct. 18.
