Lenny Kaye to Release First Solo Album, *Goin’ Local*

Lenny Kaye’s name is threaded through a half-century of rock history in ways that don’t rely on solo billing. As a founding member of the Patti Smith Group, he shaped the sound of *Horses* with a guitar style that was part slash, part shimmer. He compiled *Nuggets: Original Artyfacts of the First Psychedelic Era*, a compilation that effectively named a genre. He produced records for Jessi Colter, Allen Ginsberg, and Suzanne Vega, and wrote books on Waylon Jennings and the shifting tectonic plates of rock and roll. But a solo album—an entire set of songs under his own name—has remained absent until now.

On July 17, Yep Roc Records will release *Goin’ Local*, Kaye’s first proper solo outing. Cut alongside longtime collaborator Tony Shanahan and featuring Patti Smith, the record pulls from a wide palette: country & western ease, garage rock snarl, folk openness, and the kind of psychedelic energy that has always lurked in Kaye’s playing. It doesn’t read as a late-career grab for the spotlight, but as a natural extension of a life spent in bands, studios, and archives—a musician finally putting his own name on a set of songs that have been waiting for the right moment.