Joe Grushecky and the Houserockers rock the house at Bottlerocket Social Hall anthology release show

Looking back at a lengthy and celebrated career, Pittsburgh icons Joe Grushecky and the Houserockers took the stage Saturday night at Bottlerocket Social Hall to celebrate the release of new double-disc “Houserocker: A Joe Grushecky Anthology.”

And the show certainly sold the anthology to the assembled crowd of fans, who filled Bottlerocket’s theater space to enjoy two hours of no-holds-barred rock.

Saturday night’s two-hour set — much like the anthology — spanned the decades of Grushecky’s music.

The show felt a lot like a big Memorial Day family party. After opening the show with “I Can’t Take It” and “No Strings Attached,” Grushecky implored the crowd to wish his wife a happy birthday — and they obliged by singing a whole verse of “Happy Birthday.” He followed this up with “A Labor of Love,” which he dedicated to his wife.

“Back in 1982 I was at The Decade and the most beautiful girl I’d ever seen walked in, and I can’t believe she wanted to talk to me. We’ve been together ever since,” Grushecky told the crowd.

That sense of nostalgia — and of enjoying the journey — was emblematic of the whole evening. Grushecky talked a lot between songs about the twists and turns his career has taken, and expressed enormous gratitude for the success he’s had and where he is now.

Where he is now is rocking it with The Houserockers, who are a force of nature in their current form. With three guitarists, all of whom can whip up a killer solo, Joe Grushecky and the Houserockers can make any song epic. Many of the live iterations of their classic songs Saturday night started out with evocative lyrics and ended with solos that moved the crowd to pump their fists.

Speaking of evocative, Grushecky’s voice is surprisingly moving. He was able to infuse each note with melancholy, or hope, or wistfulness, depending on the lyrics. Listening to him sing felt like listening to a combination of Tom Petty and Bruce Springsteen (with whom he has collaborated). His vocals blended with the wailing guitar so well.

“We’re so proud of this record. It’s completely remastered, so it just jumps out of the speakers. And the booklet is really something else, it has all the recording information, story about the bands, story about all the songs. If you’re a Houserocker fan, if you’re a Joe Grushecky fan, you gotta have this one,” he said.

Before playing “I’m Not Sleeping,” he told the story of writing the song with Springsteen and the inspiration behind the lyrics. “We wrote this, Bruce Springsteen and I, we wrote this back in ‘96, ‘97. … My dad was a coal miner and in this era of my life, I’d be coming home like three, four, five in the morning and he’d be getting up… he’d fall asleep early every night. And I’d say, ‘Hey Dad, wake up, you’re sleeping’ and he’d say, ‘I’m not sleeping, I’m just resting my eyes.’”

Several of the songs on the anthology come from Joe Grushecky and the Houserockers’ 1995 album “American Babylon,” which he discussed as well. “We were dead in the water, just trying to get by. This record changed everything for us,” Grushecky said.

He said that his wife told him to call up Bruce Springsteen and ask him to play on just one song. Then one night, he was playing at a bar on the South Side. “I was up there thinking about how my dad told me I should’ve been a lawyer, just trying to get through the night.”

Then during a break, he was told to call home right away, so he went to the bar’s kitchen to call his wife on the wall phone. “She says, ‘You better call Bruce Springsteen right away, he just called the house looking for you.’”

So he went to Los Angeles, and The Boss ended up making the whole record with him.

Some of Saturday’s setlist was comprised of songs Grushecky hasn’t played in a very long time, for example “I Should’ve Never Let You Go” off of 1984’s “Cracking Under Pressure.”

“I can’t recall the last time we played this song. Never with this band. … It’s not been played in this particualr century. I think we still had rotary phones,” he said.

During the intro of “Pumping Iron,” Grushecky thanked Iron City Beer, WDVE and the folks at Bottlerocket. The WDVE shoutout was especially timely considering that the song appeared at No. 420 on the radio station’s Memorial Day 500 Countdown on Friday.

But not everything was about nostalgia. The band is looking forward to putting out a new album, “Can’t Outrun A Memory,” on July 12.

The love between the members of the band was palpable, and their love for their music, their audience and their city was, too. These are quintessential Pittsburgh musicians, and the city is lucky to have them.