Songwriter, guitarist, journalist and musical historian Lenny Kaye will appear on the Port Washington Library stage on Wednesday, July 2 at 7:30 p.m.
Kaye, who is best known as the guitarist for poet-rocker Patti Smith, has also worked with such artists as Suzanne Vega, Jim Carroll, Soul Asylum, Kristen Hersh and Allen Ginsberg. Kaye is a respected author, and his seminal anthology of sixties’ garage-rock, Nuggets, has long been regarded as genre-defining.
Kaye began amassing an immense record collection while growing up in Queens and Brooklyn in the 1950s. His performance on a song written by his uncle, Larry Kusik, gave the young music fan a sense of himself as a musician, and inspired him to continue playing.
Kaye’ reviews for Jazz and Pop magazine would lead to journalistic work with publications such as Fusion, Crawdaddy and Rolling Stone. Kaye also wrote for Melody Maker and Creem, and edited Rock Scene and Hit Parader during the 1970s.
Kaye met poet-singer Patti Smith in 1971, and the two soon began a collaboration that would last the decade, as reflected in four highly acclaimed Arista albums by The Patti Smith Group.
After the group’s final performance in September of 1979, Lenny ventured further into a successful producing career that yielded a Grammy nomination for Record of the Year for Suzanne Vega’s 1987 hit single “Luka.”
In 1995, Lenny reunited with Patti Smith, creating five studio albums, a retrospective, and a 13th anniversary release of Horses. At the library he will perform original songs from his upcoming CD, as well as earlier compositions and cover songs.
