Sam Shepard og Patti Smith

I’m doin’ some stuff with Patti

Det svarte Sam Shepard da John DeFore i Washington Post spurte ham om han spiller no musikk for tiden. Sam Shepard, som er dramatiker og noen ganger skuespiller, spilte trommer i sin ungdom. Patti Smith og han skrev et teaterstykke sammen, og var kjærester, på tidlig 70-tall.

Smith is recording an album at Jimi Hendrix’s Electric Lady Studios, it seems, and Shepard is “doin’ some old tunes” with her. And he’s singing, not playing drums.

Asked if “old tunes” means songs from Smith’s early career, he laughs. “No, no — old songs, before we met,” he explains, rattling off names of bluesmen, gospel singers and banjo players, most from the dawn of the recording era: “Ivory Joe Hunter, Richard ‘Rabbit’ Brown, Washington Phillips, Charlie Poole — those guys.”

Fans of the Holy Modal Rounders, the folk group Shepard once recorded with, will be happy to hear that “Hesitation Blues” (a traditional tune they famously covered) is on the set list.



I fjor satt de to på samme scene og fortalte historier og leste tekster og da sa Sam Shepard: “I thought this could make a good story,” Sam Shepard said last night at the 92nd Street Y in Manhattan, going on to outline a premise whereby two people are together for a year, go their separate ways for the next four decades, marry other lovers and start families, have separate careers, become a rock singer in the case of one, and then, “forty years later they get back together and see what happens.”

Patti Smith, who was sharing the stage with Shepard, laughed and said, “That is what happens.”