Patti Smith and Lenny Kaye will celebrate forty years since they first played together at the Poetry Project on Wednesday night (photo by twi-ny/mdr)
The Poetry Project at St. Marks Church-in-the-Bowery
131 East Tenth St. at Second Ave.
Wednesday, February 9, $15, 7:30
212-674-0910
www.poetryproject.org
“Everything changed after Lenny Kaye and I performed at St. Mark’s,” Patti Smith writes in JUST KIDS, her National Book Award-winning memoir about her life with Robert Mapplethorpe. That career-making event took place at the Poetry Project on February 10, 1971, as Smith read her work and Kaye played guitar. Kaye, a music journalist and record-store employee, would go on to play in the Patti Smith Group and the Jim Carroll Band, produce hits for the likes of Suzanne Vega, and put together the seminal Nuggets collection, while Smith went on to become one of the leading woman punk rockers and an influential poet who took nearly a decade off to raise two children with her husband, Fred “Sonic” Smith. Smith and Kaye, who have played together on and off ever since that historic moment, will be back at the Poetry Project on February 9, celebrating the fortieth anniversary of that initial performance in a benefit to raise funds for the nonprofit organization. They will be joined by poet, artist, and Jersey City native Janet Hamill for the special show; tickets are only $15 but available at the door only, not in advance, so be sure to get there early — and we mean early.
(Smith will also be at the 92nd St. Y the following Wednesday, February 16, at 8:00 for “An Evening with Patti Smith,” in which she will discuss her relationship with Mapplethorpe and JUST KIDS and sign copies of the book; although tickets [$29] are sold out, a limited number might be made available an hour before showtime.)