Anita Baker brings a little rapture — and a few curveballs — to Pine Knob homecoming show

A late start. An unexpected venture into the crowd that had security scrambling. A set list that clocked in at just 11 full songs.

It was an offbeat, off-the-cuff sort of night with Anita Baker at Pine Knob Music Theatre on Sunday, as the Detroit-raised R&B star staged her latest homecoming show, 13 years after her last appearance at the Clarkston venue.

Baker was a little dynamo of energy at a packed though not sold-out Pine Knob, dipping into her catalog of jazz-inflected hits while scatting, chatting and vocally improvising between songs with the quirky rapport to which fans are accustomed.

This year’s U.S. tour, which will run in spurts through December, is Baker’s first major road outing since 1995. Sunday’s stop came nearly a year after she played Little Caesars Arena in a long-awaited Detroit comeback.

Pine Knob was also just her second concert since drama erupted in June after Baker announced she had dropped opener Babyface from the tour — a saga that played out on social media and left R&B fans divided.

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It all started at a May 10 tour stop in New Jersey, when Babyface’s opening set was axed as crews worked to fix an issue with Baker’s video wall. In a series of tweets a month later accusing Babyface fans of cyberbullying, Baker declared she would be continuing the tour alone. (She didn't address the situation during the Pine Knob show.)

If any show could have benefited from an opener — Babyface or otherwise — it was Sunday’s concert. Under ongoing rain, fans were packed into Pine Knob by early evening but sat listening to the piped-in sounds of smooth jazz and ocean waves as the clock ticked past 9 p.m.

With an 11 p.m. noise curfew looming, there was a restlessness across the venue when Baker at last hit the stage just before 9:30, sparkling in a red jumpsuit as her backing trio sang Patti LaBelle’s “Lady Marmalade.”

Amid the production polish — a top-shelf band, a high-end video backdrop, a pair of dancers — there was a homespun feel to the festivities. Baker was bubbly and down to earth, noting that she was now 65 and joking to one photo-snapping fan not to shoot too tight: “Take care of your auntie,” she said. With wind-blown hair, she pointed down to an onstage device she dubbed her “baby Beyoncé fan.”

Baker reminisced about the days when she regularly played Pine Knob (before Sunday, the last one was in 2010) and hinted she’d like to revive the tradition.

“As long as you keep coming back here, I’ll keep coming back,” she said to cheers from the hometown crowd. “Because there ain’t no one in the world like you.”

Later, addressing her crew, Baker insisted that bright lights illuminate the audience for the rest of the show — even if it meant degrading her own video display and stage lighting. It was important that she see her fans, she said.

Keeping that theme, she soon indicated she wanted to visit concertgoers at the back of the amphitheater. With a microphone in hand — and singing “Same Ole Love (365 Days a Year)” — Baker ventured up a stage-left aisle and headed toward the Pine Knob lawn. Fans rushed to surround her as security staffers hustled to clear a path amid the sudden chaos.

“I gotta see my people!” said Baker, who was eventually whisked back to the stage in a golf cart while heard on mic repeatedly asking the driver to slow down.

When she was in the vocal zone, Baker was reliably great — summoning the sumptuous husky notes in songs such as “Sweet Love” and “Caught Up in the Rapture,” creating pure loveliness with the likes of “Just Because,” and titillating with the top of her range on “Been So Long” and “No One in the World.” With just 15 minutes till curfew following her concourse adventure, she slammed to a finish with “Giving You the Best That I Got,” “Angel” and “Fairy Tales.”

Much like her Little Caesars Arena performance last summer, Baker was at her best when she was absorbed with the music, feeling her songs and working her voice. Leaving Pine Knob late Sunday, you couldn’t help but wish there had been fewer antics and more of that.

Contact Detroit Free Press music writer Brian McCollum: 313-223-4450 or bmccollum@freepress.com.

This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Anita Baker at Pine Knob: Some musical rapture, a few curveballs