Two years after her appearance at Liss Ard, Patti Smith (left) is back with her original band to play two eagerly-awaited gigs…

Two years after her appearance at Liss Ard, Patti Smith (left) is back with her original band to play two eagerly-awaited gigs in Dublin. She has been saddled with the sobriquet of punk poetess, but the 52-year-old mother of two children still has spit and fire in her voice, and band members Jay Dee Daugherty, Lenny Kaye, Oliver Ray and Tony Shanahan have enough grit to keep things sounding down and dirty.

Following success in the 1970s with such seminal albums as Horses and Easter, Smith quit recording to concentrate on raising her family. In recent years, she suffered the death of her husband, Fred Smith, and her younger brother, Todd, but she also rekindled her rock 'n' roll spirit via such albums as Gone Again and Peace And Noise, while still stoking her passion for writing prose and, naturally, poetry.

Kevin Courtney

Kevin Courtney

Kevin Courtney is an Irish Times journalist