Barcode: 710347122029
Release Date: September 2015
Tracklist
01 Ain't Got Nobody
02 Bad Weather Brewing
03 Grew Up In The Blues
04 When Love Goes Wrong
05 Oh Rosa
06 The Devil To Pay
07 Stop Throwing Your Love Around
08 Snakin'
09 Got An Awful Feeling
10 I've Been Drinking
11 Watch My Woman
12 Whiskey Headed Baby
13 Evil Eye
Preview of the Album tracks here - https://youtu.be/DdhH-SQgcfU
Real music is hard to find. If you’ve ever felt suffocated in the age of fakery and hype, then Savoy Brown’s latest album The Devil To Pay is a blast furnace. Driven by classic blues and age-old human truths – but dragged into contemporary relevance by stinging musicianship and modern savvy – Kim Simmonds’ new songs have arrived when we need them most. “In many ways,” considers the legendary guitarist, “this is the best album I’ve ever done. It’s fresh and new, and belongs to the twenty-first century.”
Released on Ruf Records in 2015 – and marking Savoy Brown’s 50th year as pack-leaders of the British blues scene – The Devil To Pay was born during a white-knuckle burst of inspiration. “We recorded the album in April 2015 at SubCat Studios in Syracuse, New York,” reflects Kim. “I record very fast, within two or three days, and most of the work is done in a single day.
“All the work is done in the months before going into the studio. The songwriting, getting the focus right, the rehearsals, the practice, playing the material live.” The Devil To Pay represents years of wood shedding in Kim’s White Cottage Studio, usually at o’dark thirty in the morning. Between tours, Simmonds is constantly honing his craft, playing guitar, singing, writing songs, recording. ”Once all that is done, it’s a simple matter of going into the studio and catching the moment. Exactly like I did, for instance, with Street Corner Talking back in 1971.”
The Devil To Pay catches 13 of those moments. While too many of Kim’s peers fall back on creative autopilot in the modern age, this latest album is testament to a questing writer, with endless gas in the tank and a talent for pulling old genres in bold new directions. “Ain’t Got Nobody” opens the set with an aching lament from the bandleader’s lone electric guitar. The barrelling “Bad Weather Brewing” and “Grew Up In The Blues” raise the temperature, while the buoyant bounce of “Oh Rosa” finds Kim’s inimitable fretwork jousting with lusty harp.
Throughout, from the finger-twist instrumental “Snakin’” to the shuffle-powered “Watch My Woman”, Kim’s enduring love-affair with the blues is writ large. “Certainly, the Chicago blues style and the artists I grew up with as a teenager are a primary influence,” he notes. “My heart still jumps when I hear good Chicago blues.”
Kim is one of the few lyric-writers to invest the traditional themes of the blues with modern wit and wisdom. On The Devil To Pay, his pen is every bit as mighty as his plectrum, addressing everything from the bleary repentance of a hangover on “I’ve Been Drinking” to the reprimand issued to a cheating woman on “Stop Throwing Your Love Around”.
“Blues songs are mostly about your feelings,” explains Kim. “Love, loneliness, happiness, despair and so forth. All these emotions are somewhere in the songs on the new album. The song ‘The Devil To Pay’ is about having to pay for doing wrong in the past. ‘Bad Weather Brewing’ is about the feeling that something bad is going to happen in your life. ‘Grew Up In The Blues’ is about someone not having it easy when they were young.” With songs that strong, The Devil To Pay is set to continue the upward march of Savoy Brown’s acclaimed recent releases, 2011’s Voodoo Moon and 2014’s Goin’ To The Delta. “I’d like people to say it's better than the last studio album,” says Kim. “I’m pleased with it. There’s always things you would do different, but that’s just the way creating something goes. I think it’s an album that continues to connect the circle from the band’s beginnings to now.
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| Kim Simmonds & Savoy Brown |
Savoy Brown
Kim Simmonds [gtr]
Pat DeSalvo [bass]
Garnet Grimm [drums]
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