“Sometimes there are no clues it can happen to you out of the blue…”
Kim Simmonds on stage in Las Vegas 
Spanish Guitar, acrylic, 1990’s, 18” x 24” 
“Bluesman”, oil, 2009 18” x 24” 
Poster for a Savoy Brown Show 
Vibrations, acrylic, 1990s, 24” x 30” 
Man With Guitar, oil, 2009, 16” x 20
Many hundreds of thousands, if not millions of a certain age and taste in music, will recall these words: “This is The Boogie — the Savoy Brown Boogie”, emanating from a charismatic singer with a stove pipe hat and shabby fur coat on stages in ballrooms, auditoriums, college campuses, rock festivals and the fabled Filmores coast to coast as well as across in Europe and England, at which point the guitar player would rip out a blazing intro on his Gibson Flying V and the band would be off and running. Kim Simmonds founded and anchored that legendary group in its heyday and still carries the name today, performing concerts around the world, as a solo act and with a leaner version of the Savoy Brown Blues Band. For many years, he let his guitar playing do the talking, but about ten years ago, Simmonds decided to try his hand at the visual arts. “Painting reminds me of my youth,” he said in a recent interview with Fine Art publisher Jamie Ellin Forbes and has unveiled a collection of new paintings (to debut at Artexpo in New York City), one of which graces the cover of his impeccably recorded, extraordinarily played, written and sung new CD, Out of the Blue, “one of the best albums of the year,” according to Blues Revue.
Kim, who has performed before massive audiences and sold millions of records over the years, finds that his interest in painting recaptures some of the energy and excitement of “our glory years.”
“That’s something that I try to do anyway — keep that youthful approach to life. For better and for worse that naivete and idealism never quite left me.”
Kim, who spent years with a collection of different and sometimes difficult lead singers, has taken on the vocal chores himself of late and his love of the blues is evident in his latest music, as is his love of the hues and subtleties of color and image in these new paintings.
“Looking back nothing was pointing to me doing something artistically except my own drive,” relates Simmonds. “I didn’t have much encouragement in that direction so I had to find my way. I would go to museums in the summer every day – the history and art museums with my mates. I went to the library and read books.” Simmonds adds, “I started with watercolor. That was a lot of fun, but it seemed that to be an artist, you have to go with painting. So I started with acrylics and then went finally to oils. I’m now painting with water mixable oils and am finding them to be a lot of fun. I’m also drawing all the time with pen, pencil, crayon and charcoal.”
Following is an interview conducted with Kim by Fine Art Magazine publisher Jamie Ellin Forbes in January of 2009.
JEF: There’s a rhythm to the work that is precise. You are mixing sound, light and color. Do you know how difficult that is?
Seems like you pretty much summed it up. All I am trying to do is get some emotion into what I am doing, that’s always been my main playing card as a musician. When I was quite young, to be a musician you had to be able to swing, to have tone, to be experimental, to put color in your playing. My main thing was I could get my emotions out through the guitar and express myself and communicate with people.
In the more solitary world of painting, I don’t come into contact with people while I am doing the work, yet I take the same approach to painting — that is to get that emotion into it. The mystery to me is that one could actually get emotions out through art. It is very exciting to be able to express yourself in anything.
And it has done you well…
Yes, I have always been able to express the emotional side of me. As for the technical side — whether you could swing, or do any of the other things — I don’t know if any of us have the 100% ball of wax. I make mistakes usually because I go down the same road everybody goes down which leads to a dead end. I am fortunate to have the personality that says “do your own thing.” While sometimes it is more comfortable to be something that you’re not, for me it all goes back to being idealistic. I always tended to say ‘this is who I am’, and ran with the ball.
JEF: Having seen you play in the 60s, you seemed to be in touch with a much purer creative streak than the crowd was allowing for. Your paintings of today are infused with that great energy. The guitars have a sense of color vibrational resonance, they look as if they do sound like music.
KS: Now I am at that certain age where I can look back at who I am and what I tried to do and have done. Thank you, that’s a nice way of saying it.
JEF: I found it quite inspiring and your music to be very visual. Your paintings have that same clear element and structure; the same cleanliness. The abstracts have depth, definition and color balance.
KS: Again, being a guitar soloist, I can get into that head space. Guitars, abstracts — usually they are painted and they’re done and any other mark on them wouldn’t do it. The initial emotional has me lost in that moment.
JEF: Painting an abstract is like composing a sonata that works.
KS: When I come home from doing shows, I have taken in a lot of visual things while traveling. If they’re working and come across, it is based on my absolutely emotional approach to things. It’s what I read about in the books and it’s very exciting if that’s what is coming across.
In the abstracts, one element, one stroke goes on and it is perfect, or at least it looks perfect to me.
I will start on one in a vertical position, then turn it upside down, look at it in the mirror, horizontal and eventually get back to square one. It’s exciting for me that that could be happening. Some of my other stuff just goes on forever. The landscapes and still lifes I paint for my own pleasure. Usually with abstracts and guitars I have be in sort of a nervous state…I’ll come back from doing some shows, having different sleep patterns and my whole nervous system is a little jangled…on that high, full of ideas. I have done this in the studio with music and now in a different kind of studio with paintings. There is a surge going through me. One of my favorite abstracts came on one of those mornings — like a guitar solo where I am trying to achieve a moment of beauty in the instrument. I keep things as simple as possible and exist on a very emotional level, always seeking to elevate beauty in my work. I am absolutely non-technical. I didn’t know what a scale was until I was 33 years old. If people are coming to me for a lesson they are coming to the wrong person. I have always had very high hopes and wishes. I found a home for those deep feelings with painting. With the music business, it tends to exist on a different level than how I just spoke about the instrument. Art is very solitary and it allows me to find a home for some of these deeper feelings. I suppose you find art in everything. Having always wanted to make high art out of playing the guitar, with the actual visual art I take the same approach. It’s a wonderful solitary thing and I enjoy it very much.
“Bluesman”, oil, 2009 18” x 24” Spanish Guitar, acrylic, 1990’s, 18” x 24”
“John Lee Hooker, Muddy Waters, Louisiana Red, BB King never let me down.”
JEF: In the paintings it seems that you were able to unite these feelings. Do you think the colors can go out in the way the sound does?
KS: I think that you are correct. I see what you are doing in this conversation, trying to bring out in me the connection between me as a musician and as a painter, intertwined. I am absolutely amazed at the correlation between one and the other. And yes, the colors are expressing the same things as I do musically, if that’s what is coming across, that is no surprise to me.
JEF: When you connect with this and do these works, are you expressing yourself to communicate this to someone else?
KS: To communicate, sure, yeah, definitely. I don’t know where the balance is, I don’t put this piece of red here because someone is going to like it. You have to be emotionally committed, in the right mood, something saying to you ‘You have to do it now.’ You want to have something that is going to look finished, professional, that is pleasing to yourself — that works. And that then it communicates to other people. Until I spoke with you, I didn’t realize it was working.
JEF: A lot of drives and motivations, universal rhythms, standing on the outskirts of the horizon of the universe…
KS: I wish I could intellectualize this a lot more, and I do have a religious streak within me, always have, and I feel in touch. I have had a blessed life. I do think drive is very important. You have to have that drive to want to get something accomplished. I don’t know much about myself, to tell you the truth. I glean things from what people say about me, knowing there is all sorts of emotional stuff that goes on I haven’t come to grips with at this point. Painting has made me a much better person. I am feeling my neurosis disappear, into the air, into the canvas, perhaps. Really cleansing me.
JEF: I see a window of soul, a vision of Heaven in your music and painting. Art opens an opportunity to enter into this visual thing yousee and share it.
KS: You’ve expressed all my feelings nicely for me.
JEF: The Godliness of what the Creator intended art to be makes a better society.
KS: I am absolutely realizing that. For me, it’s rather amazing that everything you said is true. As a musician growing up in the 60s, a lot of the people that were of the same generation fell by the wayside. Drugs — some died — when I lost those people I did lose my bearings; even when some of the biggest stars died, I found that I lost my way a little bit. If they go by the wayside, you’re left on your own. I always felt a little let down when people around you who have inspired you are not there.
JEF: You talk about the old blues artists…
KS: At 13-14 years old, I’d be buying records by these people and finding myself at 55 still buying records by these people. They never let me down. John Lee Hooker, Muddy Waters, Louisiana Red, BB King never let me down. That’s the make of a great artist, that’s always been the source of my inspiration; that is what I hold on to.