Bio : Lenny Kaye

“I feel like I’m a new artist,” laughs Lenny Kaye, on the eve of the release of his debut solo album, Goin’ Local.

“I think this album will surprise those who think they know me from what I’ve done previously. The songs are personal, written over a period of years, and I’ve kept them to myself. I believe a song exists because there is a need for it to be written, to explain the dynamics of the human relationship, to look at yourself as if in a mirror and get in touch with a deeper emotion, one that needs to be sung.”

In a career spanning more than half a century, one thing is certain: Lenny’s ability to be uncategorizable, to move through genres and settings, giving each their individual place in his musical evolution. Though best known for being a founding member of Patti Smith’s band, recently celebrating fifty years of their epochal Horses album, as well as curating the landmark Nuggets album of Original Artyfacts of the First Psychedelic Era, he has been a successful record producer (Suzanne Vega, Soul Asylum, James, Microdisney, Kristin Hersh, Jessi Colter, Allen Ginsberg), as well as time well spent as a member of Jim Carroll’s band, and playing pedal steel in a New York country-billy combo, the Lonesome Prairie Dogs.

Equally known as a writer, he scribed Waylon Jennings’ Autobiography, took a deep dive into the soundscape of the 1920s and 1930s in You Call It Madness: The Sensuous Song of the Croon, and traversed the changing modes of rock and roll in Lightning Striking: Ten Transformative Moments, making himself a minor character bearing witness to the music’s generational progression. “I believe there is rhythm and melody in a sentence, as well as a narrative arc in a guitar solo, and it is my privilege to combine both of these means of expression. Writing is very solitary, not a performance art like music, and to move between each is a way for me to understand what it is I’m playing, and why it is I’m writing.”

Goin’ Local began with sessions co-produced by Lenny’s long time bandmate Tony Shanahan, whom he met at casual jam sessions in their shared home town of New Brunswick, New Jersey, in the 1990s, and who later became the bassist in Patti Smith and Her Band.  Six of the tracks they worked on became the starting point of the album, including the title song, “Goin’ Local”; but it wasn’t until two years ago that he determined to complete the record he’d begun, adding songs written in the interval, many of which began acoustically.

“I’m a true Capricorn,” he smiles with a nod, “I waited until I had a sense of who I was comfortable with becoming as a solo artist. I have the ability to be a shape-shifter, seeing how to augment and collaborate in a variety of musical settings, but it was important to be faithful to myself, to be one-on-one with the songs that were materializing out of the speakers.” 

The included tracks come from diverse inspirations and influences. “To try and specify where each protagonist in a song emerges takes away from the universal aspect of the togetherness we share when entering into the fortunes/misfortunes of human companionship.” He’d rather leave the bittersweet details within lyrics to conjecture: “We’ve all been there, loves lost, loves found, loves that are ill-fated, loves eternal, loves one never forgets, moments to treasure and relive, if only in memory.”

Some of the songs have more definable roots. “World Book Night” was originally written for a short-lived literary holiday where publishers gave out free volumes for volunteers to hand out randomly on the street. As a writer, Lenny is more than happy to celebrate the written word in all its forms. “Pennsylvania Girls” is about the state he now resides in, and as a native New Yorker, his delight in finding a Pennsylvania Girl of his own. “The Things You Leave Behind” has a resonance that strikes home with everyone who amasses cultural objects and memorabilia, amidst the collecting instinct of what-to-do-with that inevitably results. 

 “A Friend Like You” is his English language version of a hit song by French-Swiss artist Stephan Eicher, which Kaye first heard on a trip to Paris in the 1990s, and adapted lyrically. “Solstice” was written with Patti Smith, in an ongoing collaboration that has encompassed many of their classics, from “Free Money” to “Ghost Dance” to “Radio Ethiopia” to “Southern Cross.” What more needs to be said?

The most poignant song on the album is “Yes I Will,” whose lyrics were composed by his uncle, Larry Kusik. “I owe so much to him,” says Lenny. “In 1966, knowing I was starting out in a band at the time, he asked me to assume the persona of Link Cromwell and sing a folk-protest song he’d written in the wake of ‘Eve of Destruction’ called ‘Crazy Like a Fox.’ It was my first time in a recording studio, and though the resulting 45 on Hollywood Records was a non-hit, thankfully so because my life would have taken a much different path for sure, it did give me encouragement that I could be a part of this music that has become my life. And I’m still crazy!”

There is a postscript to this tale. His uncle was a noted songwriter, nominated for an Oscar for his lyrics to “Speak Softly Love,” the Love Theme from The Godfather, as well as “A Time for Us,” the Love Theme from Romeo and Juliet (“he specialized in Love Themes,” Lenny laughs), and somewhere around the turn of the millennium, on their weekly lunch dates, Kaye asked him for some lyrics. “My uncle was in the hospital for several months, and I kept asking his family when I could see him. They wanted to wait until he was better, but I knew he wasn’t going to be. One day, despairing of his condition, I put the lyrics to ‘Yes I Will’ on the music stand, the chords fell to hand, and I burst out weeping as the title circled in the coda. I insisted I needed to see him, and when I visited, sang him the song. He whispered ‘Thank you’ and the next day he passed from this mortal coil. I was so happy to give him some respect and gratitude at the end.” 

“Yes I Will” is dedicated to Andy Paley, who was the lead singer in one of Kaye’s first productions, the Sidewinders, and who went on to work with Brian Wilson and on Spongebob Squarepants. He was originally slated to orchestrate the song, but sadly died before his arrangement ideas could be made manifest; a task ably taken up by multi-instrumentalist David Mansfield. Other guests on the album include Tim Carbone (of Railroad Earth) playing violins on “Pennsylvania Girls,” renowned jazz pianist Matthew Shipp on “Let’s Make a Memory” along with background vocalist Lisa Burns of The Lovin’ Kind, John Jackson of the Jayhawks on mandolin (“Every Now and Then”); Lou Rogai (mellotron) and his son Julian (double bass); drummers Mark Sacco, Jeff Barg, and Patti Smith cohort Jay Dee Daugherty.

“It is a great blessing to be able to make music at this time in my life for the pure enjoyment and enlightenment it gifts me, the freedom of playing without expectation, to take on new challenges knowing that the work itself is its own reward.

“I’ve always loved the local, its intimacy and camaraderie, the you-are-there and then taken somewhere. It’s what Lightning Striking is about, when a new moment in time and space reveals itself, figuring out its next trajectory. I’ve learned how to be myself, to be at one with my instrument, with my creative spirit, and I guess the truest Goin’ Local is the privilege to go inside my own head, and hear how I sound to me.”