At the end of the show after nearly two hours on stage, Margo Price ran down to the barricade, leaned into the crowd and belted out a beautiful a cappella version of Janis Joplin’s “Mercedes Benz.”

As she finished, a fan offered her a smoke. She took a big drag and blew a cloud high over the crowd. Then, with a quick nod to her benefactor, as if to say, “OK if I take this with me?” she ran backstage with it.

This is how you build your legend, with shows like the one Price delivered at the Fonda Theatre in Hollywood on Thursday, Feb. 9.

The finale was both fantastic – that Janis cover a stunner – and funny – hijacking some dude’s smoke. Not that anyone in the crowd wouldn’t have given Price anything she wanted by that point.

And it left the crowd with one more highlight in a night full of them.

Earlier, there was a pair of surprise guests, guitarist Mike Campbell of the Heartbreakers, and singer-songwriter Sharon Van Etten. They each joined Price for the songs they did on her new album, and then stuck around for one of their own. In Campbell’s case, a raucous run through the Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers‘ song “You Wreck Me.”

There were more terrific covers, too, including Elvis Costello‘s “Pump It Up” – sung by Price as she pounded her own drum kit, dressed in what looked like an iridescent, sparkling unitard – and Paul McCartney‘s “Let Me Roll It,” for which Van Etten and opening act Lola Kirke sang backing vocals.

Most of all, though, there were Price’s own songs, built from country, rock, folk and blues, which in four albums for her 2016 debut “Midwest Farmer’s Daughter” to the just-released “Strays” have made her one of the brightest talents in American music today.

Price arrived on stage after an opening set by Kirke, who in addition to the ’80s-influenced country pop of her latest album “Lady For Sale,” is an actress best known for her starring role in “Mozart in the Jungle.”

Price’s band – three guitarists, bassist, drummer, and husband Jeremy Ivey on keyboards – preceded her, building a groove that burst open into “Been To The Mountain” the moment Price strolled on stage to sing its opening lines.

That rock ‘n’ roll feel carried on into “Letting Me Down” and “Four Years of Chances,” older songs but ones that fit with the rock vibes of “Strays,” from which seven of the 22 songs in her nearly two-hour set were drawn.

“Change of Heart” downshifted in a swampy Southern blues-rock feel with Price running to the back of the stage to play drums on her own kit as the band jammed up front. “County Road” slowed things down for a gentler, wistful vocal.

And to that point, the show had followed her sets from earlier shows across Texas and the Southwest to San Diego on Tuesday. Then the Fonda and the L.A. crowd got the first of the special moments that pushed this show on the ‘Til The Wheels Fall Off tour, her first tour in five years, beyond all the rest.

Mike Campbell walked out to join Price for “Light Me Up,” a psychedelic rocker he collaborated on for “Strays” – wild applause for a beloved hometown hero – and stayed around for his fiery run through “You Wreck Me” that had the Fonda floor shaking from the crowd’s dancing.

“Well, I don’t know what we do now,” Price said with a big grin after Campbell hugged her and left. “But we’ll go on.”

Things slowed down for the Southern rock anthem “Tennessee Song” and the dreamy, softer rock of “All American Made” and “Landfill.” The tempo and volume increased for Sharon Van Etten’s guest spots on “Radio,” which the pair had sung on “The Late, Late Show with James Corden” on Wednesday, and Van Etten’s own “Seventeen.”

“That’s How Rumors Get Started,” the title track of her 2022 release, continued in that same gentler vibe before shifting, while Price ran off stage for a wardrobe change, into a long jam that ended with the guitars roaring and Price again at her drum kit.

The last six songs raced by from there, with highlights including her own “Twinkle Twinkle” and “Time Machine,” as well as the Costello and McCartney covers, “Pump It Up” and “Let Me Roll It.”

That only left Price’s powerful cover of “Mercedes Benz.” It’s a great closer and she knows it, using it in this spot every night on tour. Tonight, though, it’s nice to imagine that a mile and a half across Hollywood the ghost of Janis Joplin might have felt it and smiled in her final room at the Highland Gardens Hotel.

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