While the rest of LA kicked off Grammy weekend in all their finery, Patti Smith put on her reading glasses, told stories, and sang songs over a three-night series of free-to-the-public performances. Night one at the Hammer Museum was a tribute to New York avant-garde figure Harry Smith, an old pal of Smith’s from her days living at the Chelsea Hotel.  Smith, who compiled the Anthology of American Folk Music makes a cameo in Just Kids, Patti’s memoir about life as a young artist in New York in the late ’60s and early ’70s, alongside her then-boyfriend photographer Robert Mapplethorpe.

Reading from the book at Skylight in trendy Silverlake and at Book Soup on the Sunset Strip (both stores are among the last of LA’s independent booksellers), during Friday’s Q&A, Smith was asked, what was the most surprising thing to happen in the course of her 30-plus-year career? “This book,” she said, noting its positive reception among critics and readers alike.  As for her current thoughts on Mapplethorpe who died in 1989: “I feel closer to him now than I ever did, and he’s been gone for 20 years.”  Watch a clip of Smith perform an impromptu version of “In My Blakeian Year” with a borrowed guitar after the jump.

Before becoming a musician, Smith worked in a bookstore to earn her pay; she jokes that she’s still often mistaken for a clerk. Intending to close the Book Soup reading with an a capella song, she apologized to the crowd for her lack of a guitar. “You’re not missing much,” she assured them. But when someone offered one up to her, she grabbed it without hesitation.  Perhaps it came as some relief to Smith to be back at her day job.

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