Pittsburgh musician Bill Toms on writing a more personal album, playing a new venue

Guitarist Bill Toms has played at dozens of venues throughout the Pittsburgh region over his almost 40 years as a professional musician. But on Saturday, he’ll add a new one to the list with a show at Crafthouse in Whitehall.

Bill Toms & Hard Rain will headline a show which also features VZHM Acoustic Union.

His latest album, “It’s All We’re Fighting For,” came out in May but had been in the works for two years. He had released two singles — “Walking On Water” and “I Fulfilled My Dream” — and had a cover of The Rolling Stones’ “Miss You” for a 2023 WYEP celebration marking the 80th birthday of Mick Jagger.

”I just took it kind of slow with no deadlines at all and just took my time with it,” Toms said. “I’m glad I did because I’m really happy with it.”

With those songs in hand, Toms, who said he’s always writing, felt like the ball was rolling.

“You just start writing things and not realizing that you’re making a record that has any type of cohesion. It’s just songs,” he said. “But then once you start looking at things, and you start realizing exactly what you’re going through in your real life and what things are going on around you, it starts taking its own shape and its own form and its own — I don’t want to say it’s a concept — but there is a direction to it all.”

When all the songs were done, he began to see the album’s theme emerge.

“You can see the threads, you can see all the dots being connected. But it really starts off with just some songs,” he said. “And of course, this album is really basically just taking a look at things in the world as they are, and really being honest with yourself. I’ve always tried to say that people get really down. Everybody’s down and very doom and gloom. But I think that this record has a lot of hope to it. It talks about, yeah, things are bad, but sometimes you have to fight for the goodness. And you might have to get your hands dirty, but it’s worth it.”

The song “Freedom Rider,” for example, started off as a “southern, swampy song” about the Angola prison in Louisiana.

“The more verses I wrote, I realized I was writing a lot more about not just the prison,” he said, “but about America itself and the continuous fight for justice and diversity and all that stuff.”

The album draws on Toms’ diverse musical inspirations, from blues and soul to Latin and reggae, as well as straight-forward rock and even a little bit of singer-songwriter/folk music, like the final song “Here.”

“That wasn’t even supposed to be on the record. It was just a song that I wrote,” Toms said. “A very dear friend of mine – he actually worked as a road crew guy with the Houserockers when I was with the Houserockers years and years ago. We’ve known each other for 40 years — and he has ALS. But he’s just such a positive influence on my life, and we would just sit around in his room. We’d just talk about the old days. We’d talk about our hopes and dreams for the future. This guy’s got ALS, and he’s dying. So I wrote that song for him.”

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The album feels more intimate compared to Toms’ 2021 release “Keep Movin’ On.”

“I think this is a little bit more personal. ‘Keep Movin’ On’ is more get the (butts) moving a little bit,” he said. “It was a testament to the band itself, where this one is more a personal record for me. Actually, the band plays the hell out of it, though.”

Toms got his start with Joe Grushecky and the Houserockers back in 1987, and the experience helped mold him.

“It definitely shaped my journey because we are a product of our past. So I always look at it like I’ve learned things from every experience that I’ve ever had, and you go back — I played 20 years with the band and it’s good. I learned a lot,” Toms said. “I started off with that band when I was 25, and those guys, Art (Nardini), Joe, they were older, they’re 12 years older than I am. So I learned discipline. I think that’s the biggest thing and to be able to treat every room that you play like it’s Madison Square Garden, take advantage of the fact that it is your room and control it and take control of the stage. So I learned a lot about that.”