Just kids. We were just kids.

Those are the words I found refraining in my brain as my chiming iPhone awoke me New Year’s morning.

Only nine hours earlier – as roadies readied the Bowery Ballroom stage for her annual New Year’s Eve performance - I had pondered what Patti Smith and Her Band would spend 2011 promoting. Sounds cynical I know, especially for an artist as anti-commercial as Patti Smith, but concert performances these past two years have been often scheduled in conjunction with product. In 2009, it was Steven Sebring’s documentary Dream Of Life. In 2010, it was Smith’s National Book Award winning memoir Just Kids. I had been at the previous night’s show – the ‘When I’m Sixty-Four’ birthday bash – and having noticed the absence of any of the Twelve covers a thought popped in my brain: ‘In 2011 the product should be a new album.’

Apparently Patti Smith agrees because towards the end of the longest show I’ve seen her give in some time – as a ‘Land’/’Glora’ medley was drawing to a close – Patti announced that there would be a new album in 2011. Then urged on by guitarist Lenny Kaye and bassist Tony Shanahan, she was nudged into doing a new song for the new year. She admitted the idea of doing so made her nervous - especially after having played a really professional show – and apologized in advance saying she wasn’t sure if she’d remember the words. But after one aborted attempt, out came ‘Just Kids’, an instant classic. I don’t know if it’s three chords but it is merged with the word. No one knew the new song was a tie-in to her book about Robert Mapplethorpe and a lost New York City until the chorus kicked in but the crowd couldn’t help singing along the second time it heard it. ‘Just Kids’ – the song – had just given us a lot of hope for the coming year.

I love Patti Smith’s New Year Eve shows because they are almost always broadcast on Sirius-XM radio, which helps keeps her focused. The set included songs for friends past and present (a moving tribute to Robert Mapplethorpe via ‘Wild Leaves’ and a barbecuing of ‘Summer Cannibals’ because Michael Stipe was in the house); new covers (The Beatles’ ‘Strawberry Fields Forever’ (to recognize a Lennonian anniversary one wishes we didn’t have to acknowledge) and The Monkees’ ‘Daydream Believer (because as we learned the previous night, Patti shares the same birthday as two Monkees); a new Nugget for Lenny Kaye to showcase (The Blue Magoos’ You Ain’t Got Nothing Yet’) in memory of a guitarist he had played in The Zoo with (and whom had died Christmas Eve).

But when it was all over and I walked back through the slush to my Tribeca hotel, the highlight of the night for me – other than a new song I already loved – was hearing a song of Patti’s I must’ve heard live for at least two dozen times: ‘Dancing Barefoot’. It reminded me why I fly up to my dirty old home town every December to see Patti Smith and Her Band.

I don’t know if he’s officially a member, but the second guitarist in Patti’s band the last few times I’ve seen her has been Jack Petruzzelli, who is a member of The Fab Faux and has also backed up Joan Osbourne and Ian Hunter. He has an understated style with leads rooted in chords and over the course of the past year he has perfected a solo for ‘Dancing Barefoot’ that really moves it far away from the Wave arrangement. And as Patti waded into the spoken word section following his lead, the band ebbed in such a manner that I found myself looking for the boy that was going to be looking at Johnny. It didn’t happen, but the fact that could have gave the song so much possibility that I felt as if I was hearing it for the first time. The way Patti still seizes the possibilities of live performances after almost 40 years never ceases to amaze and why I implore you to pick up a ticket if Patti Smith and Her Band come to your town this year to promote their new product: their new album. I hope she calls it Just Kids too because her concerts make you feel like one.