Debbie Lyons Simmonds says sharing her late husband Kim Simmonds’ story through his autobiography felt less like a project and more like a responsibility to honor what mattered most to him. “It was so important because it was so important to him,” she said. “He wrote it over the course of a few years. He just wanted to tell his story, and he was a wonderful storyteller.” She added that completing the book after his passing in 2022 was deeply personal. “It was very important to have him heard, which of course makes it so important to me. And I’m so grateful that I was able to do this for him.”

Their own story began, fittingly, with music. Debbie recalls meeting Kim at a small local show, long before she fully understood his legacy as the founder and guitarist of Savoy Brown. “We met at a show, of course. He was performing, and I was in the audience,” she said. “I didn’t really know who he was or his background, which is pretty funny. We just connected at the show. That was the beginning.” She explained that she simply loved live music and had gone out with a friend to hear Kim perform with a group of local musicians. “We just kept connecting and meeting up and found that we had a lot in common,” she said.

Kim began seriously working on his autobiography just a few years before his death, though the idea had been with him for decades. “He had written some things years and years ago and put them aside,” Debbie said. “Probably two or three years before he passed, he decided he was going to do this. Once my husband put his mind to something, that was it.” Balancing touring, painting, and writing, Kim took his time shaping the book. “He was truly a creative artist in every sense of the word,” she said, emphasizing that while friends helped with editing punctuation, “the words that everyone will read were 100 percent Kim’s words.”

Preserving Kim’s voice exactly as he wrote it was non-negotiable for Debbie. “It was so important to me because it was his book,” she said. “I didn’t want someone to go in and change the story or the way he was telling the stories.” Fellow music historian Robert Schaffner, who helped bring the book to publication, echoed that sentiment. “The publisher didn’t edit or change anything except for punctuation,” he said, adding that such restraint is rare. “Kim was not only a musician and a painter, he was a writer. What was submitted wasn’t changed, and that’s kind of unusual.”

Going through Kim’s writing after his passing was an emotional experience for Debbie, one she says she’s still processing. “It was hard to go through the book because I could hear his voice,” she said. “His voice is so present in the book. It’s like having him in your living room telling the story about his life.” Schaffner, who first met Kim in England in the early 1970s, described the experience as deeply affirming. “Kim was too nice for the music business,” he said. “He was a consummate gentleman.” Schaffner believes the book helps solidify Kim Simmonds’ place in music history. “Savoy Brown and Kim Simmonds really do not get enough credit for being one of the pioneers of British blues,” he said.