It is obvious when Hard Rain plays anywhere that Toms and the musicians love playing together for audiences. Catch them earlier in the night for a sound check at a venue or close to closing when Toms and Brontz leave the stage with cordless guitar and saxophone to play to the tables in the back and the excitement remains all over their faces, contagious throughout the joint.
Toms' frequent exclamation of, "I love my job," only confirms what fans already know anytime this band performs.
"The West End Kid" takes that same live, high-level rock energy, as well as those pretty slower songs that Toms writes beautifully a little further along with band maturity.
Listen to "The West End Kid" and hear each band member distinctly stand out with such skill and style that fans here and in the band's second home in New Jersey can easily identify even with one blown speaker.
Hard Rain and the Houserockers share the city's best bass player, Art Nardini, and best rock drummer, Joffo Simmons. Remove a track of Toms' vocals that sometimes can be his own or sometimes a cross between Grushecky and shades of Tom Waits, and fans still can identify the individual musicians. Joe Pelesky on keyboards, Bernie Herr on percussion, guitarist Breiding and Brontz on saxopone comprise Hard Rain.
Additionally, the CD shows just how good a singer the band's unofficial member, Jill Simmons, is. Unlike crowded bar shows that sometimes drown out her vocals by the strong band behind her, the CD allows her to shine.
Toms wrote all of the songs on "The West End Kid" with the exception of "In The Paradise," which he co-wrote with Breiding.
"I met Tom Breiding through his music seven years ago. We share the same vision and appreciation for songs," Toms said of Breiding, who is known around Pittsburgh for his acoustic shows.
"These guys are my best friends," Toms said of his band members. "They have the ability to play my songs in the way that can best be described as emotionally filled."
Toms described the band members as "very selfless players, very dynamic."
As a songwriter, Toms said that a great lyric usually comes to him at the same time as he feels and writes the right music to go along with it. He said the writing process seems to work well that way.
"I am always or try to be very focused on the project at hand," Tom said. "Some tend to spiral out of control at times. In other words, what you thought you had really wasn't there, and then you try to piece it back together. So far this CD has been consistent in its emotional projection."
Release of "The West End Kid" just increased the likelihood that one day music historians will marvel over the high quality of music distributed over the years by tiny Pittsburgh labels Moondog Records and Bone Yard Records that most Pittsburgh area commercial radio sadly kick to the curb rather than support and play.
This isn't a CD that should sit on the stations' shelves accumulating dust until the next time Toms and his bands back Bruce Springsteen.
"The West End Kid" is the kind of CD Pittsburgh fans send to far away friends with pride, and to rub it in that this type of excellence in a band is just around the corner at a local venue in Pittsburgh and not in their towns.
Whether it's about Toms, Petrone, the 1950s boxer, the long-time married who get a divorce or the transplant patient who gets a donor organ in the nick of time, "The West End Kid" rings true for all.
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