Patti Smith tours U.K., readies new album

LONDON, Jan. 22 (UPI) -- American rocker Patti Smith says she'll be doing some improvisational work and play a gig for the homeless during her current swing through Great Britain.

The Rock and Roll Hall of Famer told The Guardian she would do an improv piece at the Aldeburgh Festival based on the W.G. Sebald poem "After Nature" and do a benefit for the down-and-out at St. Giles Church.

The newspaper said Saturday Smith has been working increasingly with her two children. Her son is a guitar player married to Meg White of the White Stripes. Her daughter, a composer, is taking part in a couple of the shows on the current tour.

Her new album, she said, will be wrapped up next month and was inspired in part by St. Francis of Assisi, a visit to poet Dylan Thomas' home and "The Master and Margarita," an acclaimed anti-Soviet novel written in the 1930s by Russian author Mikhail Bulgakov.