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Recently, Pittsburgh singer, songwriter and musician Bill Toms returned to playing before audiences with his band Hard Rain, as North America slowly starts to emerge from the COVID-19 pandemic. These were also the first times that he had to perform in a concert setting, songs from his new album Movin’ On, so we asked him how all that felt.

“There was quite a bit of nerves. The fact that we had not played in front of an audience for over a year, and we were playing some songs we’ve never played before made for some uneasiness. But that first show in Columbus (Ohio) was amazing and soothed the soul. It also seemed to do the same for the audience. We are (now) certainly rebooted and ready to go. The new songs are being received well.  It is always nice to have fresh bait in the box.

We started rehearsing in mid-April, and it felt good to start up those engines and to feel that band behind me. It was an unbelievable feeling. You have to remember too, that I started playing in bars in 1980, so for forty years I always had a gig and a calendar with gigs in front of me. For the first time it was all gone. That was quite a shock. Making this record was therapeutic and saved my sanity,” he says.  

Movin’ On is a musical novella, not so much because there is exists a common theme between the songs, but rather, because they are a collection of stories set to music.

Always thoughtfully and reflectively, as Bill Toms shares his views, he says, “I think sometimes storytelling is a lost art. I love to do storytelling types of concerts. I do a lot of shows, with just an acoustic guitar and me and when I can gather up songs that I really like to break down. I talk about the stories that surround the songs and the environment that they are in. I enjoy that and I think it is something that people don’t do too much anymore.”

One of those songs is the song, “I Keep Moving On,” which was inspired by a conversation between Bill Toms and a friend of his who is a lawyer.

“I had dinner or lunch with a friend of mine, a year and one-half or two years ago and he is a lawyer and I’m an artist. He was trying to give me some ideas about financial planning and some business opportunities. I don’t think that way, I am an artist. He is going through all his stuff, and he said tell me about the music business, so I started to explain to him how we get paid, about the gigs and how the bookings are done. After about a half-hour of this he put his pen down and he looked me right in the eye and he said you tell me why you do this. He said, the hours suck, the money stinks and you are sleeping in terrible hotels. To be honest with you, I couldn’t explain it to him. He would never have understood. That was the start of the song, “I Keep Moving One.” No matter what I do I can never explain to somebody who doesn’t understand the creative process what would drive somebody to do what I do. Why do you live this life? It is because this is how I was born,” he says.  

One more thought about this, before we continue, Bill did you choose music or did music choose you?

“Music chose me,” he says without any hesitation.

The fifth song on the album may be called “Ain’t No Walking Back,” but the rhythm, the groove and the melody take us for a ride in a musical time machine back to the 1960s and early seventies. Read More

Maia Sharp - New Album

Maia Sharp’s new album Mercy Rising takes the listener from the highs, of the beautiful, seductive and romantic “You’ll Know Who Knows You,” which may be the ultimate love song of this century, to the reflective and picturesque “Things to Fix,” about a relationship that has ended. The former, burns with passion, mixed with ‘I want you and nobody else,’ and the latter uses the metaphor of fixing broken and worn things in a house for what the individual failed to address in the relationship, that perhaps would have made a difference. The words, “What I should have said / And what I should have done / Ya’ I keep skipping over number one / On my list of things to fix,” will take anybody who has been in that moment back there again.

The person in “Things to Fix,” stands in contrast to “John Q Lonely,” from Maia Sharp’s 2008 album Echo, and he was also dealing with a relationship that had come to an end.

She explains, “It shows that I have been doing it long enough that we can compare the end of a relationship thirteen years ago compared to the end of a relationship now.

“John Q Lonely,” is just a crab and his reaction to being hurt is just takes his football and he is going home. He is not going to play this game anymore. He closes himself off. His reaction is to pout. If love didn’t like me then I’m not going to like love.

“Things to Fix,” is a pretty different mindset. It is open and she is aware enough to see that there is something at the very top of my list that I’m avoiding, but the crux of the song is procrastination. It is when you have something in front of you that you should really be prioritizing. All of a sudden, the screw in the doorknob is the most important thing, because you will do anything to distract yourself from the most important thing you should be working on.

The biggest difference between the songs is “John Q Lonely,” was a title that I had, and I brought it to my co-writer Mark Addison who I had been writing with on and off since my first album. It was from a phrase that we liked, and we created a character. “Things to Fix,” is real. I moved to Nashville at the end of 2019, and I found my place a couple of months later. Anytime you move into a new house there is always something. There are little things that…as cool as the previous owners were, there are always little things.

My marriage of twenty-one years ended in 2018, so I came here as a single person. There were things I said to her that I wish I hadn’t and things that I didn’t say that I wish I had. Since then, I have had the opportunity to write those things. We are really, really close and there is a ton of love there and there always will be. At the time I came here, and I thought well I don’t know how to fix that yet, so I am going to paint this room and I am going to clean the baseboard. I occupied hours of my time on the house things. The song is more literal than you might suspect.

I had the first verse and the concept of the title. A wonderful songwriter, Read More

Camila Rodriguez Bohorguez

It was a journey that began as a child in Bogotá, Colombia, with dreams of utilizing a career path first as a biologist and now as a filmmaker to see the world. In between those two careers, she served as the Head of Production in a company that specialized in new and virtual media marketing for major brands. She is now immersed in several other film projects in both Madrid, Spain, where she now lives and in Colombia, but for the moment she is not at liberty to discuss them.

Each fifty-two minute segment of Atlántico directed by Daniel Landa, who was also the series creator, is filled with culture, adventure, and beauty, as the four person crew filmed in Spain, Portugal and twelve west African countries, which border on the Atlantic Ocean. Other members of the four person team were Tato de la Rosa and Vinsen Modino, the cinematographers.  

“Daniel has devoted his life to being a journalist, director and a writer. He specializes in long expedition series and documentary series.

When Daniel (Landa) came to me he was looking for a way to make his product a little more modern within an internet and digital context. We tried to expand the narrative and we decided on a lot of things for social media. We found our principal sponsor Volvo who gave us two cars for the expedition.

It was very interesting to work with Volvo, because the first thing they told us was we are not a 4 x 4 adventure brand. We are not one of those brands that people use to cross Africa, but we do share the spirit, values, and the principles of the series. That is a whole other

It was very interesting to work with Volvo, because the first thing they told us was we are not a 4 x 4 adventure brand. We are not one of those brands that people use to cross Africa, but we do share the spirit, values, and the principles of the series. That is a whole other conversation.

The film crew began its eight month expedition in northwest Spain in the autonomous region of Galicia and wound its way to the El Rocío pilgrimage in Andalusia, before heading to Portugal.

“For the second chapter we traveled, and we traveled all of Portugal, including the Azores Islands, and the third chapter was the Canary Islands (part of Spain) and then in the fourth chapter we entered Africa and it was the first part of Morocco and we continued Morocco in the next chapter.

The director had the route planned, but we also added content that we found along the way. There were things that we could only do when we were there. We had worked for a very long time on the pre-production of the stories, but also our strategy was to get into the territories and very quickly find the best stories in each of the places that we visited. We had a very specific route, but when we got to those places Read More

                                                 Cozy Rebel