The Hillbillies, named after the 1971 Kinks album of the same name, are an 11-piece group that spans three generations. While the adult members aren’t leaving town, the kids, who make up the horn section, have either graduated high school or will be leaving for college soon.
“At that point, it becomes very, very difficult,’’ said Simons.
Still, not everyone’s willing to go along with the band leader’s plan.
“None of us really want it to stop,’’ said Michael Leveille, who plays sax and is a senior at Hopkins Academy, a nearby high school.
The story of the tribute group starts in the late 1970s when Simons, a student at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, fell in love with the Kinks. He felt a particular connection to “Muswell Hillbillies,’’ a not particularly popular record that was named after the section in London in which Kinks leaders Ray and Dave Davies grew up.
“I like it because it’s simply recorded,’’ says Simons. “It’s one of those records where the songs really hold up and yet it feels like it was almost put out as an afterthought. The recording was not fussed over.’’
After college, Simons settled into life in the Pioneer Valley, working as an editor and writer and leading a series of local bands. But he largely gave up playing clubs in the late ’90s. He began to live his musical life through his sons, Jack, who plays bass, and Julian, a drummer. Over time, Simons built a studio in the basement of their home.
Late in 2009, Simons and Jack, then at Hopkins Academy, were driving to the family’s vacation home in Maine. He popped “Muswell Hillbillies’’ into the CD player.
What if we formed a band and played this record, he asked Jack. He knew a neighbor, Bill Howard, 44, was an excellent guitarist. He also knew drummer Dave Sokol, 60, loved the Kinks and had first seen them in 1969 at the now-defunct Boston Tea Party.
Then Simons brought up a problem. Two songs on “Muswell’’ had horns.
