How to go
Who: Savoy Brown with Kim Simmonds
Where: Gilly’s, 132 S. Jefferson St., Dayton
When: 9 p.m. Friday
Cost: $20
More info: (937) 228-8414 or www.gillysjazz.com
Artist info: www.savoybrown.com
You don’t last more than 40 years in the music business like Kim Simmonds without the ability to adapt to changes in the industry while staying true to your creative vision. He formed his blues rock band Savoy Brown in London in the mid-1960s, while The Beatles were captivating the world. He watched the music industry grow and evolve but he kept his focus on the music.
“Everything was still largely unwritten in the early days,” said Simmonds, who brings Savoy Brown to Gilly’s on Friday. “For me, going into the business was fantastic at the time because business wasn’t really in control. Because of The Beatles, the emphasis was on songs, but it was also very experimental, so you grew up in this time where pop music became incredibly important. That infiltrated to musicians like myself in the blues world.”
While musical trends have come and gone, Savoy Brown’s has managed to keep its fanbase engaged.
“Savoy Brown still sells a lot of CDs, which is nice,” Simmonds said. “Other bands don’t. Even the last couple of days, with my inner circle, we were trying to figure out the reasons we are selling records and other people are not. It’s kind of intriguing, because there’s big demand for me in my genre and with my fans, but it’s a small genre and a small amount of fans. It’s not mainstream, but they’re dedicated, so it’s fantastic. It’s mind-blowing the effect the music has had on people.”
Savoy Brown is currently on tour supporting the live CD/DVD set, “Songs From the Road” (Ruf Records), which came out in April. Ruf will release a new Savoy Brown studio album in February.
“The next album is already made and finished, but we’re letting the live DVD and live CD play out through the year,” Simmonds said. “We feel the next record is very, very good, and we don’t want it to get buried. We’re actually biding our time and waiting 10 months to release it in the hopes that when it does come out it will receive the attention we feel it deserves. That’s the strategy, anyway.
“We’re playing the new songs live and people love the material,” Simmonds added. “It doesn’t hurt to hold back on the recording. We’re playing around the country. We’re playing abroad. We did Japan. I had an offer from China, which I turned down. Again, we’re playing the new material so we’re actually laying groundwork for when the album does come out.”
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