Lenny Kaye is one of rock ’n’ roll’s national treasures. He’s the guy who never has to pay for his drinks in bars from Stockholm to Shanghai, thanks to “Nuggets,” his now-essential compilation of what were obscure garage rock classics that became the foundation of punk rock and a lingua franca for the spirit of DIY. He’s the kind of guy who should have been given a Guggenheim Fellowship because of his galactic range of interests, knowledge and influences and for his input and his contributions to rock ‘n’ roll as an art form. 

Kaye was writing about music — for publications like Rock Scene, Crawdaddy and Rolling Stone — when the discipline was still nascent. If you read his early writing, which is well worth your time to hunt down (like this review of The Rolling Stones’ “Exile On Main Street,” in 1972), he brought knowledge and curiosity and genuine enthusiasm; even if he didn’t like something, he still gave it his serious consideration. 

It was that exact spirit of inquiry, within an article about the history of the doo-wop revival, that caught the attention of another doo-wop aficionado from South Jersey. She tracked him down and they became friends, hanging out and listening to music. One night, she asked him if he thought he could make a guitar sound like a car crash for an upcoming poetry reading she was doing, and that’s how Kaye joined forces with Patti Smith.

Lenny was at Patti’s side until she bowed out of public life and rejoined her when she returned — but he’s never sat still. Across the years, he put together a band (The Lenny Kaye Connection), accompanied Jim Carroll as he tried to work out his rock ‘n’ roll form, wrote Waylon Jennings’ biography, produced Suzanne Vega’s first two solo albums (among others), has a country and western alter ego, wrote introductions and liner notes and seemingly offered and participated in hundreds of other contributions across the decades. Lenny Kaye was the kind of cool, level-headed rock ‘n’ roll maven who was both important to and part of our history. His openness and curiosity — still, turning 80 later this year! — makes him the music fan’s music fan. 

The only thing Lenny Kaye somehow hadn’t done was release a solo record, which he rectified in July of 2026 with the release of “Goin’ Local,” out on Yep Roc on July 17. “Goin’ Local” is a collection of deliberate compositions across a range of styles, whether straight-ahead rock ‘n’ roll (the title track), ballads (“This Love,” “Let’s Make A Memory”), folk rock (“The Things You Leave Behind”) and sweet ditties (“World Book Night,” “Pennsylvania Girls”) that might seem light until you find yourself humming them later after only listening to them once. There are bulletproof pop melodies, gentle riffs, solid construction, and engaging stories. And that’s the result of a formidable quantity of skills acquired over half a century immersed in the rock ‘n’ roll trenches, whether as a listener, critic, producer, or active participant. 

“Goin’ Local” was assembled both from songs he started 15 years ago with friend and bandmate Tony Shanahan (who has a co-production credit and also plays on half the tracks), and another half dozen that were written over the last few years. “I don’t write a lot of songs,” Kaye told Salon, “I believe a song has to need to be written, if only for one to figure out a situation or to understand the dynamic of a relationship, or something occurs to me that needs framing as if in a picture. So if I write one or two songs a year, I’m happy with that, and I bring them to fruition. But I just continue to sit there with the guitar, and come up with something that is meaningful to me and hopefully, whoever listens.”

The title track is a perfectly crunchy, rock ‘n’ roll number about haunting the East Village’s watering holes and the people you meet (and the challenges of maintaining a cross-borough relationship). Emphasizing the ‘local’ point, the album’s cover is a black-and-white historical photograph from the early 1900s, taken from the New York Public Library’s historical collection, with Kaye imposed into the frame, standing under elevated train tracks. Look closer and you can just make out the street number of the Lyceum Concert Garden (“Follies of the Day!”), which was located on the Bowery at number 302. That’s across the street and about half a block away from where CBGB’s would find itself decades later, and also just happens to be adjacent to another landmark: “If you stand in front of CBGB and look in the 10:00 position, that’s where I lived,” Kaye confirmed.

One of the record’s highlights is a co-write with the musician who stood to Kaye’s right onstage for more than 50 years. “Solstice,” where he shares writing credits with Patti Smith, possesses the same kind of metaphysical shimmer that’s often intrinsic to a Patti Smith composition (think “Ghost Dance” or “Beneath the Southern Cross” to name two other relevant co-writes from the pair). As to how the song ended up on “Goin’ Local,” Kaye said, “As the song developed, Patti thought it certainly suited my new persona,” he told Salon, “and she urged me to sing it. I mean, she could have sung it quite well, but she urged me to take it under my wing and express it. And she felt it appealed to a certain sense of the celestial that I have in my solo persona.”

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Then there’s the delightful “World Book Night,” a song that Kaye performed live via livestream from Electric Lady with Smith during the days of the COVID-19 lockdown, on the anniversary of their first performance together at St. Marks On The Bowery in 1971. “I wrote it originally when there was a kind of strange day set aside called ‘World Book Night.’ Publishers would give books to people and they would spread out all over the city or wherever they were and just hand them out for free, at subway stations or on the beach, and I thought that was a beautiful thing,” Kaye explained. “. . . It’s just my tribute to the written word, how it feels putting those words one after another after another, and the readers out there who find them and find something of themselves within the pages of a book.”

On the note of physical media, there’s “The Things You Leave Behind,” a song that Kaye’s been playing at the occasional solo show for a while now. It’s a wistful, country-folk paean that offers both a wry yet realistic assessment of the disposition of collections someone leaves the planet. “Gonna pick up the pieces and your life and theirs/who gets what and why/we all cart around a whole lot of baggage/that would better be left/by the side of the road/books and records, old clothes and photos. . .” and of course, in Kaye’s case, guitars.

Even at 79 — he’ll hit octogenarian status in December — Kaye confesses he hasn’t slowed down as a collector. “I haven’t cut myself off yet, but I’ve been more discerning,” he tells Salon. “That said, I always come home from being on the road with a few well-chosen records and a few well-chosen books that I will read one of these days.”

Does he still have a holy grail?

Kaye laughs. “Absolutely not. At this point my holy grails are things I have yet to discover. I found most of the things I really needed to have, but every once in a while you’re exposed to a new record, and sometimes it’s not that great to just be able to go on eBay and poke the bid. You want to find it. You want to find it in context.”

He’s on a roll now: “The other day I was in the East Village and I went past a store on E. 2nd Street called Ergot and I walked in and they had 12 Umm Kulthum 45s from the ’60s and I just put my money down, came home with them, and they’re all fascinating. I have certain genres that I always check out: I’m particularly into Jamaican gospel now, which is kind of primitive and not reggae, very illuminated, great singers. I’m into Egyptian music too; I really like the music of the Middle East. And of course then there’s the rock band that I’ve never heard of that really needs to be part of my collection.” He pauses. “I always think, like the song, about cleaning it up or at least culling it so I could get all the records off the floor and onto the shelves.” 

Kaye was good friends with Tom Verlaine, the late Television guitarist whose epic collections of books are still being distributed and caused hour-long lines when they were first put up for sale, and whose music equipment is next for dissemination. Salon asked Kaye if he had any clue to the extent of his friend’s collection, or its future plans for disposition? 

“No, but I’m very excited because it’s kind of a way for me to perhaps move my accumulations into the world at large,” he said. “I knew that Tom loved records, books, all of the above, and often would find the weirdest, which is of course great. I think it’s wonderful that his legacy of intellectual curiosity is being moved into the world at large so other people can be illuminated by his quest for the unusual.”

On the subject of holy grails, there’s the first recording by Lenny Kaye, “Crazy Like A Fox,” released under the nom de guerre Link Cromwell. That was the result of Kaye’s uncle Larry Kusik, who was a working film songwriter (his credits include the love themes from both “The Godfather” and “Romeo and Juliet”), trying to get in on the burgeoning protest music movement in the 1960s. He recruited his nephew to sing the vocals and although the song didn’t chart (it got re-released a decade later under the auspices of Ork Records, the label that launched in order to release the first Television single), it did give the young hopeful Kaye the conviction that he could find a way in the music business. And decades later, that’s Uncle Larry’s lyrics behind the plaintive and gorgeously intricate “Yes I Will,” the album’s closer. 

So while “Goin’ Local” is technically Kaye’s first solo record, back in 1984, there was another project, the Lenny Kaye Connection, a quartet which gigged around New York City and environs. They released one album, “I’ve Got A Right,” not on a major label but instead on Giorno Poetry Systems, a record label started by downtown poet John Giorno. The Connection reunited back in 2022 for a show in honor of Kaye’s 75th birthday, but the record’s been out of print for some time. Salon asked Kaye if there were any plans to reissue it, even just on streaming. 

“Well, you never know,” Kaye said. “Right now I’m kind of pointed to the future. I’ve listened to that record recently and I do songs from it. I still do ‘I’ve Got A Right’ and ‘Record Collector,’ which I often play when I appear at record stores, but at this point I’m future-oriented. I mean, it came out 42 years ago. It represents a much younger version of myself, and right now I’m more in tune with who I am today. That doesn’t mean that it might not see a reissue along with some of the bonus tracks that got left by the wayside in those days, but right now I’m really moving into the future.”

He continued, “I have studio time booked and Dennis Dyken from the Smithereens is going to come up and play on a couple of songs that I have under construction, and that to me is where my fascination is. I think the Lenny Kaye Connection has merit. It is kind of my debut solo album, even though it was within a group context. But to be honest, I’m more about the future. I mean, Patti has that great quote, ‘Progress isn’t the future, it’s keeping up with the present,’ and my present is unfolding at actually quite an unexpectedly rapid rate, so today, I’m just gonna ride that pony.”

In 2022, Kaye’s book “Lightning Striking: Ten Transformative Moments in Rock ‘n’ Roll” was published. It wasn’t the long-awaited memoir folks might have hoped for, but it was a sterling example of the kind of careful scholarship Kaye excels at, where he can maintain a 30,000-foot view over music history while diving deep into specifics and individual historical moments. This was Kaye’s fourth book, along with the other considerable inches of print he’s logged over the decades. Salon asked Kaye if there were any plans for more long-form writing.

“I think I mostly got it out of my system for ‘Lightning Striking,’ that seemed to cover all the bases, though I just did a foreword for a Led Zeppelin biography called ‘When Giants Walk The Earth’ by Nick Walls. So I still write. I have some vague ideas, but right now more on the musical side of my personality,” Kaye said. “You know, writing is time-consuming and very solitary and I’m enjoying making music and following that inclination in my personality. I’m not ruling out another piece of writing. But again, you go into any bookstore and there’s millions of volumes, so just like a song, it has to mean something.”

But he’s not saying no. “I would like to assemble a collection of some of my writings. But that means I have to go into the file cabinet and be shocked by some of my early attempts at explicating rock ‘n’ roll . . . when I finish this next solo record, and see the Adrift project (his “goth psych jam band, a power trio”) through to its record, perhaps I’ll feel like I’ve done that and I can return to the one word after another, after another, after another. I do believe that in writing, there is a rhythm and melody within a sentence, just like there’s a narrative arc in a guitar solo.”

Across the last 60 years or so, Kaye has toured the globe, worked with amazing musicians, and witnessed multiple incredible moments. Salon asked if he had one favorite thing that he’d gotten to do because he was Lenny Kaye.

“It’s really hard for me to say ‘favorite things,’” he explained. “My favorite thing is, I like to go and hang out, and see what the serendipity and pinball of the night shows me. I mean, I’ve done incredible things as a musician. The Dalai Lama put a scarf around my neck at Glastonbury, and I’ve also stayed up till four o’clock in the morning with Tom Clark singing songs at the Treehouse at 2A. To me, they’re all kind of a thing. But what my favorite thing to do is see what my inclination is in terms of the next sentence or the next song or the next guitar part. The fact that I can continue to do that is really my favorite thing.”

Kaye’s always had an optimistic, positive attitude, and that has not changed. “Right now I’m a solo artist, which is kind of fun. I’m up there like a folk troubadour, singing the songs, reading from the book, and making some well-timed joke,” he told Salon. “It’s portable and there’s a certain sense of being able to control the song. I do like the power of a band behind me, but I’ll see how that begins to reveal itself. I’m having a good time.”

He continued, “I feel good. I’m a new artist! That’s what cracks me up. I feel whatever I’ve done in the past, this is a new mode of presentation for me. And it feels very much at one with who I am at this moment, drawing on the experience of, at this point, sixty years of playing that guitar, and yet I feel an excitement because I’m entering uncharted territory. And that, to me, is what makes life exciting and revelatory.”

“Goin’ Local” is out now via Yep Roc and Bandcamp; you can keep up with him on YouTube and Instagram.

The post How Patti Smith helped Lenny Kaye find his solo voice appeared first on Salon.com.

Organic chicken costs on average more than twice as much as conventional chicken, and people buy it in part because they believe that the animals are given a much better life. 

If you’re one of those people, maybe you envision a small farm where flocks of healthy birds split their time between green pastures and spacious barns. When a chicken gets sick or injured, you might picture a veterinarian tending to them, and if they can’t be saved, they’re humanely euthanized. While the chickens aren’t pets, you’d assume that they’re at least not abused.

These are reasonable expectations, given how organic farming is marketed. And organic chicken certification does, on paper, legally require better animal welfare than conventional rearing: more space, fresh air, outdoor access, and other improvements.  

But a new undercover investigation reveals that these expectations may often be far from reality.

Earlier this year, an investigator with the nonprofit Mercy for Animals worked at an organic North Carolina farm that raises chickens for Pilgrim’s Pride, a major supplier of conventional and organic chicken. Pilgrim’s Pride then slaughters the chickens and sells them to Costco and other brands. The farm is also certified as humane by the nonprofit American Humane Society. (Disclosure: I worked at Mercy for Animals prior to joining Vox in 2020.) 

During his roughly 2.5-month stint at the farm, the investigator documented unsanitary living conditions, along with severe neglect — like birds with twisted necks and open wounds — and disturbing cases of outright abuse, including the farm manager leaving birds to die slowly in deadpiles, and euthanizing birds by bludgeoning them with PVC pipes and rakes.

“It was every day that the manager would be bludgeoning chickens to death or burying them alive,” the investigator, who goes by the pseudonym Sam due to the covert nature of his work, told me. 

But many of those in the industry don’t seem to want to talk about it. The farm could not be reached for comment. Hiland Global Certifications, a certifier of organic foods that audits the farm, declined an interview request for this story and did not respond to detailed questions. Costco didn’t respond to an interview request and detailed questions. Pilgrim’s Pride declined an interview request and didn’t answer specific questions. 

In a statement, a spokesperson for Pilgrim’s Pride said that it is “deeply disturbed by the conduct” at the farm, that it has dropped it as a supplier, and that it will initiate additional third-party audits at its supplier farms. 

However, when chicken companies — or supermarkets, for that matter — drop farms as suppliers, they shouldn’t expect that whatever farm they supply from instead will be extraordinarily different; such cruelty has been found over and over and over again in the US poultry industry, including numerous past investigations of farms that supply Pilgrim’s Pride.

What’s notable about this new investigation is that it exposes problems within two beloved, and supposedly more ethical, institutions in American life: Costco — with its higher employee wages and stated commitments to progressive causes — and organic farming, which has long been perceived as a more moral sector of the food industry. 

The investigation also reveals the immense shortcomings of governmental oversight, corporate animal welfare guidelines, and third-party inspectors, because at each step of the supply chain — from the farm, to the chicken supplier, to the organic certifiers and American Humane Society auditors, and finally, to Costco and other corporate buyers — severe animal cruelty appeared to slip through the cracks. 

Organic may not mean what you think (for animals)

The USDA launched its organic certification program in the early 2000s, a time when consumers were increasingly hungry for alternatives to America’s highly industrialized food system. 

When it comes to crops, organic farms can’t grow genetically modified plants or spray their crops with synthetic fertilizers and pesticides. Organic livestock operations must give their animals organic feed and are also required to give them outdoor access, more barn space, cleaner air, and other higher welfare standards than conventionally raised animals. Euthanasia must also be humane.

The investigated farm at the center of this latest Mercy for Animals investigation has about 100,000 or so live chickens on its premises at any given time, and it does give the birds more room in their barns than a conventional farm.  

Among the main welfare requirements in the USDA organic program, though, this was the only one it appeared to follow. Mercy for Animals alleges that it uncovered numerous organic standard violations at the farm, including:

• Outdoor access: While the farm did have outdoor space for the birds, Sam said he never saw them have access to it. (He said the manager told him Pilgrim’s Pride had a temporary exemption on this rule for farms in the area due to inclement weather that winter and spring, though “there were no major weather events during my employment,” Sam told me.) 
• Safe ammonia levels: Chicken waste emits a lot of ammonia, which at high enough levels can cause respiratory issues and even blindness for the birds. Levels must remain below 25 parts per million, but Sam recorded it reaching up to at least 100 ppm in one barn, which was the highest his reader went.
• Darkness: Organically raised chickens must be given a minimum of eight hours of continuous darkness per day so they can sleep. However, the manager said she only gives them three to four hours (she also told Sam she planned to increase it to eight hours on the day an employee from Pilgrim’s Pride was scheduled to arrive). Chicken producers restrict darkness in order to increase profits, as more light makes the birds eat more and grow faster.

Sam said he documented more than 70 incidences of improper euthanasia, with the farm manager regularly euthanizing sick and injured chickens by bludgeoning them with PVC pipes and rakes. In one instance, the farm manager crushed a bird with a bucket, and in another, slammed a chicken against a wall.

Sam also recorded instances of chickens kicked and thrown. Many birds suffered from severe injuries, like torticollis (twisted neck), leg deformities, and lesions on their bodies and feet, while others were too weak and sick to even stand and walk. 

The investigation illustrates that organic and even basic welfare standards are only as good as their enforcement. The USDA requires organic farms to be inspected yearly, which means that for the vast majority of a given year, farms that flout the rules likely won’t have any meaningful repercussions.  

A spokesperson with the USDA said it is unable to comment on investigations. “Upholding organic integrity and protecting organic producers and consumers is a core mission of NOP [the National Organic Program],” a spokesperson wrote in a statement to Vox. “Part of that mission includes providing due process under the law and allowing certified organic farms to come into compliance when problems occur.” 

Investigations into other organic-certified animal farms have also found organic standard violations and animal neglect and abuse.

The farm is also certified as humane by the nonprofit American Humane Society, which is known to have relatively low standards that are similar to the industry’s own general guidelines. The American Humane Society declined an interview request for this story and didn’t respond to detailed questions. “We have zero tolerance for animal cruelty and abuse,” a spokesperson wrote in a statement to Vox. “We are aware of the video and have launched an independent investigation.”

How to make organic chicken better

Mercy for Animals alleges that the farm in question violated several USDA organic standards. But it’s also important to look at what organic standards don’t include in the first place, like more humane slaughter methods and better breeding. 

Breeding may sound dull and unimportant, but it’s by far the most pressing welfare issue in chicken farming, including on organic farms. The modern chicken has been bred to have abnormally large breasts, which consumers most prize. That makes it hard for their tiny legs to support their top-heavy bodies, and as a result, many have trouble walking and standing, as Sam documented. 

They also grow incredibly fast, which causes some chickens to die prematurely on the farm from painful lung and heart conditions; some die from dehydration or starvation because they can’t stand and walk to reach food and water. Even the president of the World’s Poultry Science Association has acknowledged that chickens’ “existence is painful.”

So many chickens die prematurely on farms that collecting and disposing of them is a primary responsibility for chicken farmhands. “My main job duty was mostly collecting the dead,” Sam told me.

In the wake of these investigations, it’s not uncommon for companies to condemn the cruelty and drop the farm as a supplier. Similarly, many consumers vow to boycott the companies affiliated with an investigated farm.

These instincts are understandable, but they ultimately won’t result in much change for animals. That’s because 80 percent of all chickens in the US are factory-farmed by just 10 companies, they all generally use the same fast-growing chicken breeds and management practices, and most have been investigated only to find cruel treatment and abysmal living conditions. 

To reinforce that point, Sam said that what he witnessed wasn’t exclusive to this one farm or meat company but is rather emblematic of the overall industry’s culture: “Every time we go into a [farm], we find the same things; it’s always animal abuse, animal cruelty.”

In a formal complaint, supported by an affidavit with photo and video evidence, Mercy for Animals is demanding the sheriff’s department in Lee County, North Carolina, to investigate and pursue criminal charges against the farm’s manager for animal cruelty and false advertising based on the many documented organic violations. But the organization’s bigger goal is to push large companies like Costco and its competitors to adopt higher animal welfare standards — and make sure they stick to them.

“This isn’t really about one investigation. … It’s about whether companies with enormous influence are willing to take responsibility for the systems that they create,” Arash Yomtobian, president and CEO of Mercy for Animals, told me. “Costco has the power to reduce suffering for more than [an estimated] 250 million chickens annually through proven reforms, like slower-growing breeds and improved living conditions, yet the company continues to choose profit over accountability.” 

In 2021, Mercy for Animals released an investigation into Costco’s conventional chicken line that found many of the same welfare problems as the latest investigation. Months later, Costco said it gives its birds a little more space than the industry standard and that it was experimenting in giving birds environmental enrichment. The company didn’t follow the group’s urging to use slower-growing breeds that have less painful existences by way of fewer leg deformities and fractures, and lower rates of metabolic disorders. 

Several European countries are moving away from fast-growing chicken breeds, though the US poultry and grocery sectors have largely resisted activist pressure.

Costco says animal welfare is a “moral and ethical obligation.” Pilgrim’s Pride says providing safe and high-quality chicken housing is a priority. The American Humane Society says its standards ensure humane treatment. The USDA says its organic standards strive to align with consumer expectations on animal welfare. These are the nice things companies that sell meat, and the institutions that certify the meat, say. But Sam’s investigation — and more than 200 other ones — prove that reality rarely matches corporate platitudes. 

The most foolproof solution to this systemic cruelty is for consumers to simply eat fewer animal products. But animal advocates and organic food proponents have also proposed a number of solutions to reduce animal suffering on farms, which include:

• Setting higher organic animal welfare standards.
• Passing basic federal welfare laws for conventionally raised livestock (currently there are none for animals on farms and ranches).
• Unannounced, frequent, and thorough organic farm audits; stricter penalties for violators; and making audits free (currently, farms pay certifier companies, which could incentivize certifiers to minimize violations and penalties in order to maintain their clientele).
• Installing CCTV cameras on farms and inside slaughterhouses.

Some groups even want to see the federal government create a dedicated animal welfare agency.  

There is no shortage of ideas on the table to reduce animal suffering on farms and bring more integrity to the many “humane” claims on meat, milk, and egg packages. The question is whether lawmakers and regulators have the courage to implement them.