New Patti Smith Album Set For 2011

Spinner reports that Patti Smith has recorded a new album and it is set to be released in early 2011. Sessions took place in Italy and France, but the bulk of the studio work apparently was done at Electric Lady in New York City.

"My work on the book sidestepped the album for awhile, but Columbia [Records] has been patient," Smith tells Spinner. "I recorded it with my band and my daughter [Jesse] played piano on it. [Television's] Tom Verlaine played some guitar on it."

Verlaine contributed guitar on some very early Smith sides and the two have been acquaintances since the halcyon days at CBGB.

Electric Lady is the studio created by Jimi Hendrix. In her memoir Just Kids, Smith recounts her initial, accidental encounter with Hendrix on the stairs leading up to the recording lair. Years after his death, she cut her first 45 rpm single there: "Hey Joe" (whispering hello to the guitar hero in the opening of the song that Hendrix made famous on his first album) b/w her own composition "Piss Factory," an elegy to Smith's days on a non-union manufacturing line.

Patti Smith and her band, led by long-time collaborator Lenny Kaye, will once again play a three night stand 29-31 December at the Bowery Ballroom in New York.

Here's a classic performance of "Horses" and the aforementioned "Hey Joe" by the Patti Smith Group - Kaye on guitar, Ivan Krall on bass, Jay Dee Daugherty on drums and Richard Sohl on keyboards - from the Old Grey Whistle Test back in 1976: