Proud Larrys Presents... Lenny Kaye

July 25, 2026. Show: 8:00PM

Free show, no ticket required

ABOUT:

As musician, writer, and record producer, Lenny Kaye has been intimately involved with the creative impulse that marks the music. He is a founding member of Patti Smith and Her Band, dating from their first performance as a duo at St. Mark’s Church in New York’s East Village on February 10, 1971; and has worked in the studio with such artists as Suzanne Vega, Jim Carroll, Allen Ginsberg, Soul Asylum, Kristen Hersh, Jessie Colter, as well as his own solo muse.

Born in upper Manhattan, New York City, on December 27, 1946, he grew up in New Brunswick, New Jersey, where he began playing music on a college mixer and fraternity circuit later immortalized in Animal House, at a time when garage bands were springing up across America in the wake of the English Invasion. His uncle, songwriter Larry Kusik (“A Time For Us” from Romeo and Juliet, “Speak Softly Love” from The Godfather) took note of his lengthening hair and in spring 1966 wrote a folk-protest song for him, “Crazy Like A Fox,” released by Hollywood Records under the name of Link Cromwell.

He would use that experience to write about music, soon scribing for such magazines as Crawdaddy, Rolling Stone, and Creem. While working at Village Oldies on Bleecker Street, he met poet-singer Patti Smith, and their artistic efforts would bear fruit as a band that continues to headline stages around the world.

As a writer, his books include You Call It Madness: The Sensuous Song of the Croon (2004); Waylon: An Autobiography (1994), and the recently released Lightning Striking: Ten Transformative Moments in Rock and Roll (2022).

His seminal anthology of garage rock, Nuggets: Original Artyfacts of the First Psychedelic Era, is regarded as defining a genre and is currently celebrating its golden anniversary. On Monday and Tuesday nights, from 8 PM eastern to midnight, he can be heard on Sirius XM in Little Steven’s Underground Garage, channel 21. He was inducted into the New Jersey Hall of Fame in 2021.

In 2025, Patti and Lenny commemorated fifty years of their acclaimed debut album, Horses, with 21 sold out performances in Europe and America.

Yep Roc Records will release his new solo album, Goin’ Local, on July 17. Instagram @lenny_kaye.