MICHAEL STAHL, portraitsbymichaelstahl.com
Lenny Kaye performs at Outpost in the Burbs in Montclair, Dec. 14.
“Do we have a drummer in the house?” said Lenny Kaye near the end of his Dec. 14 concert at The Outpost in the Burbs in Montclair, which was a benefit for NJArts.net. Indeed — as Kaye knew before he asked the question — there was.
Singer-songwriter-guitarist Kaye had played his own set with James Mastro on bass and John Jackson on mandolin and other instruments, mixing in some solo numbers as well. But for the set-closing “Gloria” — the Van Morrison-written garage-rock classic that The Patti Smith Group (featuring Kaye) dynamically covered on its landmark 1975 album Horses — the trio added a driving rock beat courtesy of drummer Ron Metz (who had played with the show’s double-billed opener, Tammy Faye Starlite).
Kaye sang by himself at first, following the original template of the song (as recorded by Morrison with his ’60s band Them). But then he was joined by Starlite, who did an incredible job of channeling Smith, briefly quoting from Smith’s “Babelogue” poem (from the Easter album) before performing the audacious intro Smith added to “Gloria” on Horses (see video below). Kaye and Starlite then sang the rest of the song together, with Steve Strunsky and Heidi Lieb of the Montclair-based band Lonesome Prairie Dogs joining in as well, on backing vocals.
It was an explosive ending for a set that represented more than just another gig for Kaye, who was celebrating his 60 years of playing in bands. “I feel privileged to have lived a life as ‘a friend to music,’ as I was once accused (of being),” he said when he took the stage.
MICHAEL STAHL, portraitsbymichaelstahl.com
Lenny Kaye at Outpost in the Burbs.
Kaye has contributed to rock history in many different, substantial ways, and it is possible that he will never present another show that will sum it all up as well as this one did.
He began by reading from his 2021 book “Lightning Striking: Ten Transformative Moments in Rock and Roll,” and playing a solo version of his own song “World Book Night — a kind of love letter to the world of books — as a tribute to his work, over the years, as an author.
Nearly every song that followed also had a strong personal meaning for Kaye, which he explained in his introductions. Next came “Riding the Avenue” (also performed solo), which was about his youth in the New Brunswick area. Mastro joined him for a cover of The Kinks’ “You Really Got Me,” which Kaye said he played with The Vandals, his band while attending Rutgers University. (Mastro continued to play with Kaye for the rest of the show, except for its final number.)
Kaye talked about the influential 1972 garage-rock compilation album Nuggets: Original Artyfacts from the First Psychedelic Era, 1965–1968, which he produced, before playing a song from that album, The Electric Prunes’ “I Had Too Much to Dream (Last Night).” And he read from Waylon Jennings’ 1996 book “Waylon: An Autobiography,” which he co-wrote, before performing “Love of the Common People,” which he said he learned from Jennings. (Jackson joined the show for this song, too, and continued playing for most of the rest of the evening.) Continuing in the country vein, Kaye welcomed Strunsky onstage, to sing lead and play guitar on “Everytime I Hear a Country Song.”
Kaye mentioned his cousin Jeff, who recently died, before performing “Deserie” by the ’50s doo-wop group The Charts. It was Jeff’s favorite song, Kaye said. “Jeff was my oldest cousin,” he added. “I kind of looked up to him. He was a year or two older than me. He got into music and collecting records, and was really kind of a fun guy. And he loved doo-wop music.”
MICHAEL STAHL, portraitsbymichaelstahl.com
Lenny Kaye, in his Christmas sweater.
Kaye acknowledged his own work as a record producer by performing one of his favorite tracks he worked on: “Naked as the Day You Were Born” from The Weather Prophets’ 1987 album Mayflower, which he produced. Then he jumped to the present with his new novelty song, “Walking in a Weeded Wonderland” (a song about marijuana, to the tune of “Winter Wonderland”), donning a garish purple Christmas sweater, decorated with marijuana leaves, for it.
He performed his own “The Things You Leave Behind” — a meditation on mortality, among other things — before reading the passage from “Lightning Striking” in which he described how he and Smith began their friendship and working relationship. This led to the Easter track “Ghost Dance” (which he and Smith co-wrote), enhanced by Jackson’s haunting violin and sing-along vocals by the audience.
Next came his 2023 Christmas single “Santa’s Knee.” This was followed by a few words on the “dark times” our country, and the world, are now facing. “When I believed that ‘All You Need Is Love’ … I guess I was wrong,” he said, sadly, before noting that he wrote the show’s next song, the rousing “I’ve Got a Right,” as an protest anthem “when the Reagan administration was in power. Little did I think I’d be nostalgic for those days.”
“Gloria” (see above) came next, and then, as the first encore, “Crazy Like a Fox,” written by his uncle Larry Kusik and released as a single in 1966, with Kaye, still a teenager, on lead vocals. Kusick “really helped encourage me when I was a kid,” said Kaye, adding the experience of making that record “gave me a sense that I could a part of this,” meaning the music industry. He added that the lyrics, about a long-haired outsider who makes his own way in life without “working and slaving” like everyone else, “is kind of the truth about me, weirdly enough.”
Then, to end the show — and bringing everything full circle, powerfully — he played the sweet ballad “Yes I Will,” which he wrote, using Kusick’s lyrics, and played for him the day before he died in 2022.
MICHAEL STAHL, portraitsbymichaelstahl.com
Tammy Faye Starlite at Outpost in the Burbs.
While Kaye’s song choices were far-ranging, in terms of the years from which they were drawn, Starlite’s nearly equally long set had pinpoint focus, with her and her six-piece band (Metz on drums, Keith Hartel and Rich Feridun on guitars, Jared Michael Nickerson on bass, David Nagler on piano and Eszter Balint on violin) playing the 10 songs from The Rolling Stones’ 1968 Beggars Banquet album, in their original order. Nothing more and nothing less.
Still, Starlite put her own spin on the material, like when she extended the intense wailing at the end of “Sympathy for the Devil,” or capped her intro to “No Expectations” with a wry twist. It started as a tribute to Rolling Stones co-founder Brian Jones, who was on his way out of the band at the time Beggars Banquet was released, with Starlite, imitating Mick Jagger’s British accent, saying the song was written “for a really beautiful chap who had so much potential and promise.” Starlite continued talking about Jones, but ended by saying that “through a series of really bad choices, he became just a disillusioned, useless husk, incapable of functioning. And so today, I’d like to take this song and dedicate it to the Democratic Party. It’s called ‘No Expectations.’ ”
In her comments about “Jigsaw Puzzle” and “Street Fighting Man,” meanwhile, she imagined them as expressions of a 2020s sort of malaise and dissatisfaction, even though they were written nearly 60 years ago. And while her introductions to “Parachute Woman” and “Stray Cat Blues” satirized the sexism and seediness of the Stones in the Beggars Banquet era, when it came to the songs themselves, she didn’t have any problem embracing their raunch.
MICHAEL STAHL, portraitsbymichaelstahl.com
Tammy Faye Starlite at Outpost in the Burbs.
Her band nailed every musical style on this sonically diverse album, from the roiling percussion of “Sympathy for the Devil” to the minimal acoustic blues of “Prodigal Son” and the celebratory gospel of “Salt of the Earth.” The Robert Wilkins-written “Prodigal Son” in particular, I thought, was brighter and more hypnotic than the Beggars Banquet version of it.
In the course of her career, Nico has presented uncanny impersonations of Marianne Faithfull, Nico and other artists. She has also sung Rolling Stones songs in her own Mike Hunt Band.
I realize that we live in an era in which tribute bands, specializing in one artist or another, are filling up the schedules of rock clubs to an unprecedented degree. But Starlite goes one step beyond nearly anyone else who does this sort of thing. Not only does she get the voice, the mannerisms and the attitude exactly right, but she puts so much of her own personality and her own ideas into the show that you can’t help but marvel at the fact that you are watching both a perfect imitation, and something that is utterly unique.
Lenny Kaye and Tammy Faye Starlite will both perform at The Lonesome Prairie Dogs’ annual “Hank-o-Rama” Hank Williams tribute show, taking place at The Bowery Electric in New York, Jan. 1 at 7 p.m.; visit ticketweb.com.
Thanks to Loretta Alirangues and Cindy Stagoff for these videos:
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