Patti Smith Announces Collaborative Nico Tribute Album & Will Open For Bon Iver

Acclaimed author and musician Patti Smith has announced the upcoming release of a new collaborative album Killer Road recorded with Soundwalk Collective and her daughter Jesse Paris Smith. The album is “a tribute to the life and death of legendary German singer and Velvet Underground member Nico” and will be released by Sacred Bones on September 2.

Born Christa Päffgen but better known as Nico, she was introduced to The Velvet Underground by their then manager Andy Warhol. Her talk/sung delivery on such songs as “Femme Fatale” and “I’ll Be Your Mirror” were influential on Smith’s style. In 1978, Smith purchased Nico’s harmonium from a pawn shop and returned it to the influential artist. A decade later Nico suffered a heart attack while riding her bike in Ibiza and laid on the ground “by the sound of the road, to a backdrop of crickets,” later passing away at a hospital. Those final movements of her life helped inform the album with Stephan Crasneanscki, Simone Merli and Kamran Sadeghi of Soundwalk Collective creating textured aural landscapes.

“That captivated me,” said Smith, “the idea of merging her language with what was perhaps the last sound she might have heard, besides her own breathing.”

Orinally conceived in 2014 as a live audio-visual experience as part of 2014’s Crossing the Line festival at the French Institute Alliance Francaise in New York, this marks the first recorded release of the material. One of Nico’s previously unreleased poems formed the lyrics for the album’s title track which was premiered today by Pitchfork, stream it here:

Smith will open for Bon Iver on October 23 at the legendary Hollywood Bowl in Los Angeles. Hiss Golden Messenger is also on the bill. Tickets to the show go on sale tomorrow at 10 a.m. PT via this link.

Killer Road Tracklist

1. Killer Road
2. My Heart Is Empty
3. Evening Of Light
4. Saeta
5. Secret Side
6. Fearfully In Danger
7. I Will Be Seven
8. The Sphinx
9. My Only Child