Steve Hochman on September 17th, 2018

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Global warming is what brought people together for the Pathway to Paris concert at the Theater at the Ace Hotel on Sunday. The multi-artist show — topped by Patti Smith and featuring Talib Kweli, Lucinda Williams, Karen O, Eric Burdon, Jim James, Dhani Harrison, Flea and Tenzin Choegyal among the acts — was put on by the titular organization, campaigning since 2014 for the goals of (and more recently, against our government’s break from) the climate crisis-focused Paris Accord.

The warmth in the room, though, was a different kind, that of family and friends and community and purpose, radiating from the stage, embracing the audience, and circling back around to the clearly inspired performers. Smith’s rock-poet maternal nature was in full flower, not just with the extended family of fans she always embraces so tightly, but literally as Pathway was co-founded by her daughter Jesse Paris Smith with Rebecca Foon, the two of them serving as co-hosts of the concert and performers on piano and cello, respectively. 

It was all rather endearing, as well as pointed. Skateboard champion/mogul Tony Hawk was giddy introducing Harrison with his story of how George’s son, then 10, invited Hawk and some friends visiting London to dinner at his dad’s house, with Tom Petty and Bob Dylan happening to be there as well. Harrison brought out Jim James to duet on George Harrison’s “Run of the Mill,” a deep track from 1970’s “All Things Must Pass” that Dhani said had never been performed live, the first lines o the pick-yourself-up ode summing up the night: “Everyone has choice / When to or not to raise their voices.” James followed with two fine songs of his own.

Later, Hawk was downright tongue-tied introducing Patti Smith with a convoluted but charming tale of getting to know her and Jesse. Patti dedicated her levitating “Dancing Barefoot” to Flea’s daughter Claire who turned 30 on Sunday — Flea on stage with Smith, playing bass, alongside Smith regular Tony Shanahan on piano and guitar. 

Smith introduced Eric Burdon by saying how much his band, the Animals, meant to her in her youth, and Burdon exalted the dedication and artistry of the Smiths, mother and daughter, and reveled in “the vibes” he felt this night. And then Burdon did three blues/R&B songs with his voice hardly changed from, and every bit as powerful and gripping as, more than five decades ago when we first heard it.

Perhaps the key moments came in the appearance by Choegyal, a Tibetan exile living many years now in Australia. He had reached out to the Dalai Lama, a fellow exile and spiritual leader of his people, for a letter that could be read at the two Pathways concerts this year (the first was Friday in San Francisco), which he presented as a surprise to the Jesse Paris Smith and Foon the other day. At the Ace, with Choegyal playing his three-stringed dranyen and Foon on cello, the younger Smith read the letter, a poetic plea for the planet, and for humanity as “one family,” putting perfect point on the night’s issues and vibe. 

Choegyal then talked of Tibet’s image as “the Roof of the World,” noting that the roof is leaking and that, as we would with our own homes, we need to repair it. At that he had us all stand, put our hands over our heads in the shape of peaked roofs, and pledge to do those repairs. As we sat again, Smith moved to the piano and the three of them played a song, Cheogyal wailing wordlessly a Tibetan blues, or hymn, a Roof-Of-the-World “Dark Was the Night, Cold Was the Ground” — or scorched was the ground. Rather than Blind Willie Johnson’s deep despair, though, this moan contained hope and light.

Williams followed this, gobsmacked: “I just stood there and wept,” she said of watching it from the side of the stage. “If the whole world could have heard what I just heard …”

And then she did a deeply affecting solo version of her recent gospel-tinged anthem, “We Have Come Too Far to Turn Around,” not a protest song, per se, but a plea rooted in the still-in-process civil rights movement to fight the forces of hate and evil. There really were no protest songs overall, which is a good thing. Rather, there were songs of inspiration and urgency (many of a more personal/romantic nature, but the energy still worked in the context). 

Smith started her three-song set talking about how she didn’t know how to be an activist, so she became an artist, opening with the calmed “Peaceable Kingdom,” a 2004 song about building a world of harmony again, before the transcendent “Dancing Barefoot” and simmering “Pissing In a River” — hey, it specifically mentions waters rising, so that fits!

Other highlights abounded: Parisian singer Imany showed off her strong voice and emotional power in three songs, including a version of  Whitney Houston’s “I Wanna Dance With Somebody,” trading the hit’s skippy joy for a muted, yearning tone and spurring the night’s first sing-and-clap-along. Flea dazzled with a suite of instrumental pieces in which he created loops of bass patterns and then soloed over them on both that instrument and trumpet. Karen O, of the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, was deeply sweet with two songs she’d done for the Spike Jonze movie of Maurice Sendak’s “Where the Wild Things Are.” And Kweli stirred things up with some forceful and personable take-no-B.S. rap.

Of course there were some speeches and films promoting Pathway and spotlighting the issues at hand — most profoundly Bill McKibben of the environmental group 350.org showing some “vacation slides” of a recent trip to Greenland– a cell phone video he took from a helicopter as a big chunk of the ice sheet there caved into the sea, stating the case more strongly than any words could, though words of the current record storms sweeping across the Eastern U.S. and the Philippines and China gave shape to the ideas as well. 

And also of course, the night finished with all hands on deck to join Patti Smith for “People Have the Power” (co-written by Jesse’s late dad, Fred “Sonic” Smith of the MC5), audience on its collective feet, voices collectively raised, fists collectively pumped. Heart-warming.

Photos by Andie Mills