In 1966, over the top of a spangled and jangly, Spector-ish pop-rock arrangement, the artist very briefly known as Link Cromwell sang, “They say that I’m crazy and they call me lazy ‘cause I don’t like to work all day long…’Cause while they’re working on the inside, I’m having fun on the outside…While they’re working and slaving, I get by without saving.” “Crazy Like a Fox,” this cocky little ode to youthful freedom and hedonism without a safety net, also hints subtly at the resourcefulness, risk-taking, and community reliance required to actually conduct a life off the normative socio-economic grid—a prophetic truth that has gotten exponentially truer since this delightful nugget of rock arcana was released.
Jump ahead nearly six decades and the same artist, known now and forever as Lenny Kaye, released a rare single called “Lost on Xandu,” a collaboration with the Fleshtones, on the storied Yep Roc label. A genuinely important figure in American music and letters, Mr. Kaye has released precious little music under his own name, enabling a rather direct conversation between 1966 and 2020. Having lived a magnificent and celebrated life “on the outside,” “Lost on Xandu” finds Mr. Kaye concerned less with his own prerogatives and nose-thumbing at the establishment and more concerned with things like… planet Earth and its people.
For all its period pleasures and legit hooks, “Crazy Like a Fox” was a bit of a copycat single over which, one presumes, the young artist had little control. “Lost on Xandu,” on the other hand, bears all the earmarks of the timeless, high New York punk aesthetic of which Kaye was a principal architect. It’s a searing specimen of exotic primitivism in its melody and guitar work; its lyrics, obviously topical, are equally imbued with a post-beatnik oracular, symbolist, visionary quality. Kaye’s singing, shaky on the level of pure technique but fully possessed of unironic gravity and conviction, swerves in and out of melody and speak-sing. It all displays a distinct resemblance to the urgent musical poetics of Patti Smith, the artist with whom Kaye will always be most closely associated. I have no problem making that comparison so long as we both understand that Kaye is not heir to that style and that voice but co-signer.
For the better of 60 years, Lenny Kaye has maintained parallel careers as musician and writer well outside the grid of the corporate-career establishment but solidly within the confines of a different grid—that of the Manhattan streets. A quintessential New Yorker, his accomplishments are dazzlingly varied. As a musician, he was a critical accomplice not just of Patti Smith but of Jim Carroll, Suzanne Vega, and countless other artists. He is equally respected as a music critic, a major biographer and cultural historian, curator/interpreter of outsider musical arcana, and as leading authority on the phenomenon of the science fiction fanzine.
When Lenny Kaye appears at the Local in Saugerties on Saturday, February he will be wearing all of these hats. The advance promotion describes the event as “an intimate evening of strumming, musings, and readings from his new book Lightning Striking, Lenny’s insider’s take on the evolution and enduring legacy of the music that rocked the twentieth century.” The Local, a converted protestant chapel (bookending a 40-year stint as a daycare facility) in the suddenly swinging town of Saugerties, provides the ideal environment, acoustically and culturally, for the kind of intimacies that will be transacted on February 3. It is the labor-of-love brainchild of Isabel Soffer and Danny Melnick, two absurdly accomplished and credentialed live music producers who make their homes now in the Hudson valley.
Danny’s 30-plus-year run as a festival producer positions him at the center of international jazz curation and artist management. Just believe me on that so I don’t have to resort to list making. Also believe me when I say Isabel is indisputably one of the country’s leading advocates and programmers of what we call, rather coarsely, World music and has been for a similar 30+ years.
To the eyes of this Hudson valley musical/literary dilettante, and in an era when our anchor venues have been disappearing literally overnight, The Local seemed to drop in out of nowhere in full stride, presenting a stunning variety of chamber-leaning, style-agnostic music in this heightened, re-consecrated space. Isabel and Danny, however, assure me that the Local’s conception and birth story was considerably more complicated and less immaculate than that.
“Danny and I have known each other for about 30 years, both of us being NY arts professionals although with different expertise – mine primarily in global music and dance traditions and Danny in jazz,” says Isabel. “We’ve had similar yet parallel careers and we both found ourselves living in Saugerties. Danny moved here 10 years ago and me eight years ago. As colleagues and friends, we often talked about how we could bring what we do in NYC, the USA and around the world here to the Hudson Valley.
“Isabel and I have spent quite a few years talking about how we could bring together our mutual experience and history and contacts and love of so many different styles of music, and to share that with our neighbors and friends,” says Danny. “We did a few things together at The Colony a few summers ago and she did a fabulous series at White Feather Farm on Rt. 212, but we knew we needed a home and we magically found the chapel in the summer of 2022.”
“When the Dutch Chapel in the village became available after being a daycare center for 40 years (at one time called Giant Steps, which remains on the door!),” says Isabel, “we jumped at the opportunity to try and turn it into a cultural and community center. We thought it would be a great addition to the Village of Saugerties’ burgeoning cultural corridor with Inquiring Minds bookstore, Jane St. Art Center, the Newberry Artisan Market, the Orpheum Theater and all the great bars, restaurants and businesses that are all in walking distance.”
“Isabel went there first,” says Danny, “and then I came over and it took us about nine months to get it together with the Reformed Church of Saugerties, which owns the chapel, and with a low-interest loan from the Village of Saugerties to do the American with Disabilities Act-compliant work. But we signed a multi-year lease, got the construction started in April 2023 and our first concert was in September 2023. It may seem as though it just magically appeared but that is not the case. It was a tremendous amount of work and thought, and then booking all of the artists, putting all the shows on sale, doing the marketing and promotion. Isabel took the lead on a lot of it and it’s been mind-blowing to me how successful the concerts have been. People have been extremely supportive.”
“Our vision,” says Isabel, “is to create a space for musical and cultural discovery, to bring some of the world’s great artists to the Hudson Valley, to center the arts and culture in Saugerties and the Hudson Valley, to produce high quality concerts for open minded listeners of all ages and backgrounds that nurture a sense of exploration and wonder, and to create economic opportunities in a beautiful, welcoming, and inviting setting.”
I ask the pair about the Local’s refreshing emphasis on international styles and performers, whether it is an explicit part of the Local’s mission or whether it was just a natural by-product of following their bliss as music fans and industry professionals. “I think it’s a combination of following our bliss,” says Danny, “and making a clear decision that we are going to do what we know, book artists who we know, work with agents we know and offer a diverse season of programming unlike anything else that’s being done in the region. What Isabel and I bring to the table is our decades of experience, and we are unicorns in that sense here in the Hudson Valley.”
“We love music from all over the world,” adds Isabel, “and we work with artists from around the world, so it’s natural for us to bring such diverse music and dance to The Local side by side with music from around the corner and across the country. We hope, through the power of music, we can bring people together and help break down cultural barriers while creating opportunities for artists to spend time in the Hudson Valley.”
Lenny Kaye performs at The Local, 16 John St., Saugerties, NY, on Sat., February 3 at 8pm. For tickets and the full schedule of concerts at The Local, visit thelocalsaugerties.com.
Join the family! 
