Kim Simmonds has fronted Savoy Brown, a legitimate blues rock institution, since the heady days of 1965, when he formed the band in Battersea, South London. A band with an ever-revolving line-up (although not ion the past decade), former members have gone on to join the likes of Fleetwood Mac, Blodwyn Pig, Black Sabbath and UFO, with Kim the one constant, guiding the band through forty albums over its life span the most recent of which (2017’s Witchy Feeling and 2019’s City Nights)have garnered considerable acclaim. We caught up with Kim shortly after the release of City Nights to discuss the song-writing process of Savoy Brown…
Hi is that Kim?
Speaking
Hi, this is Phil Stiles, from SonicAbuse
Hi Phil, I was expecting your call.
Well, first of all, thank you very much for agreeing to speak with me…
You’re welcome, I’m happy to talk!
One of the first questions I have is that I was reading some interviews that you did around witchy feeling and you intimated at that time that you’d already put together the foundations for the next album and I was wondering if that was what went on to become city nights and how much development went into the album from there?
Oh, that’s really interesting because I’m doing the same thing now for the next album now, so, obviously it must be the way I work. Let me think back now to witchy feeling and yeah, when I think about it, it was the same feeling. You record an album and, with witchy feeling we felt we had something pretty good and, with some of the songs, you know, sometimes when you write songs or do anything in the arts type of thing, you step back and think “how did I do that?” because the process is not simple. Sometimes, there’s a convoluted path to get to a finished song, so, I think what I did after Witchy Feeling was that I dived straight in. I started writing again because I didn’t want to get to that point where it worked out pretty good and then you have writer’s block or something. So, it’s the same thing I’m doing, I dive straight back into the fire and write as if there’s no new album out and that way, I guess, I don’t get complacent or lose the thread of things… which I’ve done in the past, so maybe it’s a question of being a little scared that I don’t want that kind of thing to happen again where I lose the thread of it.
That’s really interesting to me because I’ve always felt that art begets art and there’s a real feeling that, when you complete an album that, on the one hand you’ve finished this thing you’ve been working on for some time but on the other hand there’s that adrenalin to keep going and you don’t want to climb down from that…
Well, that’s a much better way of saying it!
This new album, looking back at interviews you’ve done, I get the impression that you work hard to sketch out and demo the material before you set foot in a recording studio, is that correct?
Yeah, I do all the recording beforehand and then the guys get together with me and we work in my studio to see what we’ve got. But yeah, I write lots and lots of songs and, you know, I would say dozens. Then, I demo them out… that’s really the way I practice. I don’t sit down to practice, you know, running over scales (I don’t think I know any scales anyway!) I don’t practice like that – practicing for me is that I write songs, so I get out there in my studio and bang away and every morning I write lyrics. I like writing – I’m writing my autobiography right now and I read an enormous amount – and I’ve always liked writing, so I’m channelling that sort of thing into early-morning lyrics. I just pump away at lyrics. It’s fun, it’s an artistic release and once I’ve got a bunch of lyrics then I go into the studio and I practice. I bang out some stuff and I’ll spend an hour playing guitar, knocking around until I get a song together and that’s my way of practicing as opposed to running over scales or licks or something.
In terms of recording the demos – do you just put down the riffs you’re running through or, when you’re writing, do you hear a more complete song in your head and put down bass and, I don’t know, digital drums and so on?
Yeah, exactly – I have a digital drum machine – an old drum machine that I use, a Roland drum machine which sounds fantastic and I start off, I’ve got the lyrics and you’ve just got to figure out what you’re trying to say with the song. A good title is always good. It has to be something that I can sing – I’m limited in my vocal approach and I think that’s a plus at times and, yeah, I put the drum machine very, very simply. I’ll lay down a drum machine loop and the rhythm guitar track and then I will put on the bass, then the vocals and the lead guitar and I’ve got my demo in twenty minutes, really. So, yeah, it’s in my head for sure. I ‘ve got an acoustic guitar in the house, so I’ll run down the idea in my mind, but sometimes it takes a long time to figure out what you’re trying to say with a song. Obviously, in my case it’s not rocket science, it’s straight-forward blues rock. But it’s very difficult because you’re in a genre where you have to say something fresh within the genre that’s pretty much been done and that’s the challenging. You say something that’s fresh in a genre that some people don’t give any credibility to.
One of the things that you’ve said in the past is that a song in and of itself can be anything until it’s got the lyrics in there. And from what you’ve said now, it’s clear that lyrics are very important to you, so how do you go about honing the lyrics?
Well, I think that you’ve got to have a theme – ideally a good title is a good start – you have to have a theme, you have to tell some kind of story. Yeah, sometimes, you know, I’m always looking for ideas from other people too and how they do things. I once read that Mick Jagger said “just write everything down – just write, write, write” so, yeah, I might get a title and then just write, write, write, write and then you re-write and you keep writing. And sometimes, you have a page of stuff and you realise the title you had wasn’t the title at all and that’s it’s somewhere else within the verse. It’s an interesting procedure really – that you can write a song about “moon in June” and you’re putting all your ides down and you realise that, half way down, it’s not about that at all and you’ve got a completely different song and that’s kind of exciting. It’s very interesting, but there’s no formula to it, unfortunately. When you’ve done it and you’ve succeeded, you think “how the hell did that happen?” It happens organically, for me anyway, and that’s true for anything – if you’re writing, painting or making a song – it’s something you throw yourself into and I think even some authors have said they don’t really know where they’re going when they’re writing a book – they start at the beginning and it takes them where they’re going and that’s kind of exciting but, of course, you get to the end and you don’t know how you wrote it because it’s come from the imagination and inspiration and all that kind of thing, so it’s really interesting and frustrating at the same time. But interesting and I’ve got songs going through my head twenty-four hours a day. Sometimes it’s difficult to sleep and certainly, the first thing that happens when I wake up is a song is in my head – maybe somebody else’s song – but it’s been like that since I was sixteen and back in those days it was other people’s songs but, you know, it’s crazy now that I think about it, but that’s a reason to be, I guess. I like playing guitar, I like playing music, but you have to have those songs to play or it doesn’t mean anything.
I think that’s part of the real excitement of what any song-writer does – that ability to follow muse and, obviously when you’re playing in the blues-rock genre, there’s a language that, as you said, is there and established, but if you approach it in that way and follow it in that almost innocent way, then you’ll get that unique take on something that’s otherwise established.
I know, it’s crazy. There was a time in my life when I stopped because I thought it had all been done and I thought “what else can be done in this genre?” It’s amazing, you tweak a lyric here and there and yeah, there is a language, you’re absolutely correct and you can’t go outside of that because then you’re into pop music or heavy metal or something. You have to stay within the language and, at the same time, invent with that and, at one time, I fooled myself into thinking that it was all done, but, of course, it’s infinite and it really excites me, actually, when I can say something and I can come up with a line or a song within the genre because it proves to me that it moves on and it’s very easy to fool yourself and think that you have to be modern or progressive or that it’s All been done, but in actual fact it hasn’t all been done and, you know, I love it when I come up with something fresh. The same old themes you’ve heard before, but it’s fresh. For me, I want to hear the same old guitar licks again, because I don’t get tired of it, but I want to hear a freshness in tone or a different context, but I never tire of the classic guitar licks. It’s the same with the genre I’m in, I don’t think people tire of hearing the stories, but they want to hear it fresh. It’s like the detective novels – you want to hear it morph into something new and maybe it gets a little tougher and a little bit more real. I think every fifteen or twenty years, everything gets a little more real, but it’s the same old same old… you know and a good story is a good story and it hasn’t changed in hundreds and hundreds of years… I’m getting carried away here now!!! It’s the same with the genre I’m in, I’m writing for people who really enjoy this kind of thing and want to hear it sound fresh.
I totally agree and it’s nice to hear that enthusiasm and love for the form and it’s something that comes out in the album, as well, right from the opening track – it’s a really sparkling album and it’s got a great, gritty tone to it and I think that kind of excitement does come through in the music and that’s everything that I want form a band – that sense they love what they’re doing.
That’s fantastic to hear. City nights has its own… it led me, you know. I think three of the songs came up in the last three weeks prior to the sessions, so I had maybe nine decent songs (I thought) and bang! Suddenly I had these extra three (well, four, but one didn’t make it). But yeah, when I went to the studio and plugged in, I had this guitar sound with this aggressive, blues rock sound and all of a sudden, I knew where this album was going and all I did was hold on to the reins because it was going its own way. I could have stopped it and done something else, but I thought “hey – this is something a little bit more energetic in an in-your-face kinda way than witchy felling!” I think it all revolves around the guitar sound and I say that objectively – if I have a guitar sound, it leads the band and it leads me, you know, and that’s what happened. Once we started the first song of the session, suddenly this guitar sound was leading me and leading the band and it led the whole album. I just had to hold on to the reins really and go with it and that’s what I did. I didn’t want to fight it, because that’s where it was going and that’s how it went.
Is it predominantly a Les Paul that you use?
I did on this album, yeah, because I’ve got a very good sounding Les Paul… but I use various things. On Witchy feeling, I used a Deal Zelinsky, primarily, but the Les Paul, it’s a classic sound, so I had practiced quite a bit to the sound that you’re listening to on that album and I woodshedded quite a bit in the studio and it’s a sound that’s very comfortable, it’s kind of what I wanted to play. It’s the sound I wanted and it’s a sound I knew was me – sometimes you don’t want to be “me”, sometimes you’ll play a Hagstrom guitar and do something different – you get those moments. But, this time, it was a Les Paul into a Marshall and that’s me, and I know how to play that and lots of people have copied that sound anyway, and I just wanted to show who I am more rather than trying to be tricky or something and get something else out of myself and that Marshall-Les Paul sound – you know that old sound and energy came back and I was nineteen again… I wish!
It’s such a classic sound really isn’t it, just mic it up and let it roar…
Well, that’s true and I have tried to get away from that. I do like Fender amps as well and I’ve always played Fenders because I can get closer to a more traditional blues sound with that and I like that… but there’s no doubt about it that, for me, when I play a Gibson (and obviously a Les Paul is the obvious thing) into a Marshall, I think it brings out a sound I can do very well and it suits me. But like I say, it’s something that I have done a lot of changing up and I’ve fought it because I don’t want to be too same old same old same old and I don’t think that was the case here because I haven’t used this sound for the last few years and I thought “OK – I can go back in and have fun with my classic sound”.
In terms of recording the album, do you take the opportunity to engage in overdubs?
Well, I think with this one, yeah. On Witchy felling, there were at least two songs where what I do is, I’m in the studio, and I lay down a rhythm track with the guys so that we had a foundation and then I added the solos on top. Usually they’re just one take solos. A couple of times, I did a second or a third run and then we may have edited, so you’ll hear some overlap which wouldn’t have been possible had I done it all live in the studio. On witchy feeling, we recorded and I think I did the solo track at the same time as the guys and I sang at the same time too, just as a guide vocal, and on at least two of the songs we kept the guide vocal, we kept everything from that one take. On this one, we slightly went a different way and I laid the rhythm guitar down first and I think the guitar sound demanded it. So, essentially I’m a one take guy period. I just like to go in, do the track and finish it and it’s great when you can do that and I like that kind of thing. But yeah, you know, you try to stay true to the three-piece thing. I didn’t want to get too far from that and go crazy – but I did try to keep it, but yeah, it’s a record and people are going to give you some leeway – it’s not live – but at the same time I wanted to keep the honesty about the music and the three-piece and bang it out!
I think there’s something nice about being able to do things slightly differently on the record, because then you get the recorded, perfect moment form the studio and you get that slightly different vibe form the live recordings, and that’s a very different energy again, and that’s the advantage of working things up in the studio…
I think so. That’s a very good point and I could have done more of that, I’m just a little bit too far towards the being honest type of guy. But yeah, I think there’s a lot to be said for going into the studio and making a studio recording and then you have the live… and there’s a lot to that. I’m a little bit anal about trying to keep it the same, but if it comes across like a studio recording, then so be it, but I think that, essentially, I like to keep everything as real as possible. I don’t like to get too tricky in the studio. I’ve done it before, of course, many, many times in the past, but then it’s difficult to recreate on stage, and I didn’t want to fall into that trap where we just go in and record the studio album that has nothing to do with a three-piece… that could cause problems with the band and with appearing live and, all of a sudden… I think that I always have the feeling that “hey, I’ve got to play this live!”
Your band now, the line-up that you have, has been established for over a decade now, so you’re in a good place to have that continuity…
Yeah, you’re right! It’s very easy to play. That’s the easiest part of my life right now – being on stage playing. That’s a nice feeling – you’re not fighting, it’s not hard or anything. We play very well together; we have good chemistry as people on stage, off stage and in the studio. It’s an ideal place to be for all of us at this time of our lives. None of us want drama and, you know, there’s plenty of it, whether you want it or not, so it’s a very comfortable situation without being complacent.
My last question is that you toured the UK relatively recently, back in April, but with the new record just out, do you have plans to return?
Yeah, we’re going to come back in January and do the Skegness Blues Festival and I think we’ll do the 100 club as part of the London Blues Festival; so that’s in January, and we’ll put some dates around those two first ones, so we have seven or ten days in the UK in January from maybe the fourteenth on, so it’s pretty exciting. Then, I was thinking really, that the kind of genre that I’m in seems to have more credibility in Europe than in the USA where you’re fighting against all sorts of mainstream music and so forth. So, I’ve definitely seen an uptick in interest in Savoy Brown stuff in Europe and it looks like I’m going to be working there more than before, which is great. So, yeah, January 202 for a UK tour.
Thank you so much for spending this time with me and for the really interesting stuff about song writing in particular. It’s been a pleasure.
Thank you very much for calling.
