It’s nice to wake up to an email from Patti Smith, even if it’s a mass email from Sony Music.
Click here to preview, purchase, and download the new single “April Fool” on iTunes. The album Banga will be released on June 5th. It sure will be interesting to see how much of the old magic she still has — I’m counting on a lot.
Click here for the “April Fool” lyrics on Smith’s website. An excerpt:
We’ll burn all of our poems
Add to God’s debris
We’ll pray to all of our saints
Icons of mystery
We’ll tramp through the mire
When our souls feel dead
With laughter we’ll inspire
Then back to life again
Here’s the text of Patti’s email to fans this morning:
It’s been a long time since we spoke, and many sweeping events have changed our world. Yet we do our work, we live our lives, and seek adventure where we may.
On April 1, we are releasing a song from our forthcoming album Banga. “April Fool,” co-written with Tony Shanahan, invites you all to come and embark with us and experience the fruits of our quest in the making of Banga. It took Lenny Kaye and me on a voyage on the ill-fated Costa Concordia where we mapped future journeys and wrote the lullaby “Seneca.” It took me to San Juan on the set of The Rum Diary to write “Nine.†It took our band to Moscow to perform and visit the workplaces and graves of Gogol, Bulgakov and the great filmmaker Andrei Tarkovsky. It took us to Arezzo to view the frescoes of Piero della Francesca. It took us to Assisi, the birthplace of Saint Francis. We toured many places and the lyrics and melodies of the songs reflect these journeys.
In the wake of our travels we mourned the untimely death of Amy Winehouse and the passing of the French actress Maria Schneider. We said our prayers for the people of Haiti, for victims of the Tohoku earthquake and for Nature herself.
All of these things are encompassed within Banga. Songs of celebration, concern and lament, co-written with Tony Shanahan, Lenny Kaye and Jay Dee Daugherty, on real and imagined ships. All of you are invited to embark and transform our rich and tempestuous Banga experience as an adventure of your own.
patti smith
UPDATE: Here’s the live webcast from CBS that’s on right now (noon on Sunday). I have no idea what will appear here later on.