Joseph Williams shows up on Zoom sounding both caffeinated and conspiratorial, like a guy who’s just remembered where he hid the master tapes. “I’ve been planning this solo album since 2016,” he says, practically rolling his eyes at the assumption that anything he does must be stamped TOTO on the spine. “Whether there was going to be a new Toto album or not, there was going to be this Denizen Tenant record.”
Meanwhile, Steve Lukather sprinted in from the opposite direction with. his solo album. “Luke did his record in basically a week with the band in the room,” Williams explains. “Mine took… many months. Years if you count the writing. I chip away.” The takeaway: two lifers, two workflows, one release day—because of course they’re going to make the internet argue about which one cooks harder.
Lead single “Never Saw You Coming” walks in wearing muddy boots and a knowing grin, the kind of sleek, sideways R&B that sounds like it keeps a Peter Gabriel vinyl shrine somewhere behind the preamps. Williams doesn’t deny it. “I absolutely love Peter Gabriel,” he says. “I’m even covering ‘Don’t Give Up’ on the record—my daughter sings half the lead.” He swears he wasn’t consciously chasing Gabriel on the single—“I can’t tell you I was thinking of him per se”—but then starts listing the usual suspects: “Yes, The Beatles… if you listen top to bottom you’re going to hear a lot of influences.” Translation: the man’s record collection paid rent on this album.
What Williams really wanted was a singer’s playground. “It’s a vocal album,” he says, and then defines that in glorious, nerdy detail. “Great vocal arrangements, harmonies that fly all over the place. I wanted to use my voice in ways that made it sound like different singers—different ranges, different tones—just to make it interesting.” Of course that demands muscle under the hood. “The tracks have to be bombastic to back it up,” he says, and grins like he just turned the drums up another 3 dB.
This is not his first side quest of the era. There’s also CWF—Williams with Bill Champlin and producer Peter Friestedt—whose CWF2 snuck out with a satin groove and a studio tan. “That’s Peter’s baby,” Williams says, happily giving the credit away. “I came in and sang a couple of songs because Toto was eating my schedule alive at the time. But Peter and I will definitely do more stuff down the line.” He pauses, gets candid. “Toto plans stand in the way right now. That’s just the truth.”
Ah yes, Toto—the revolving-door institution that still lands on its feet like a cat in Italian leather boots. A new lineup, a new tour, and a setlist that finally acknowledges the fans who keep DM’ing for the deep cuts. “We’re going to dig,” Williams promises. “Obviously we play the hits, but there’ll be many, many deep cuts from the Toto catalog.” And then the plot twist: personal flexing inside the mothership. “We’ve never done this live: Luke and I are adding a few of our solo tunes,” he says. “Just a tune each, once in a while. Since we’re the only ones left who’ve had multiple solo records, we’ve got the material. It’ll be a really nice addition to the set.” The Dogs of Oz, it seems, bite.
If you’re wondering why all this isn’t simply a Toto album with extra paperwork, he shrugs. “Writing a Toto record from top to bottom is a different beast,” he says. “I was always making this solo album.” He’s almost apologetic for about half a second, then pivots back to the fun stuff, like a guy who knows exactly where his lane is and why he paved it himself. “I wanted arrangements that fly,” he repeats, clearly delighted. “Beds for the vocals. Big tracks. You know—singer stuff.”
It’s easy to forget, amid the ‘Africa’ memes and dad-joke mythology, that the current Toto vocalist grew up in a house where orchestras were normalized. Williams laughs it off—he hates leaning on biography—but the receipts are wild: son of John Williams, voice of adult Simba’s singing in The Lion King. “He’s got a great back story,” he jokes about himself, then immediately swerves to the present. “But a great current story, too.”
The current story is simple: two solo albums on a collision course, a Toto tour that treats the catalog like a treasure map, and a singer who’s spent years plotting a record that does exactly what he says it does. “Very singer-oriented and voice-oriented,” Williams repeats, like a thesis statement he can finally exhale. He sounds relieved, energized, maybe a little dangerous. Deep cuts. Big choruses. New blood. Old pros. Toto as a wide-angle lens. And Joseph Williams putting his voice everywhere it belongs—sometimes even where it shouldn’t fit, until somehow it does.
Listen to the interview above and then check out the tracks below.
