originally published: 02/13/2025
photo by Janet Mami Takayama
(TUCKERTON, NJ) -- Award-winning Florida bluesman Selwyn Birchwood will perform live at the Lizzie Rose Music Room in Tuckerton on Wednesday, March 26, 2025. Birchwood's 2023 album, Exorcist, is his fourth Alligator Records release. The young guitarist, lap steel player, songwriter and vocalist sets a course for the future of the blues with his visionary, original music. He calls it "Electric Swamp Funkin’ Blues," an intoxicating mix of deep blues, blistering, psychedelic-tinged rock, booty-shaking funk and sweet Southern soul, played and sung with fire-and-brimstone fervor.
Tastemaker Americana music magazine No Depression says, “Selwyn Birchwood reaches back in the blues tradition to launch something out of this world.”
On Exorcist, he delivers the most far-reaching, musically adventurous album of his career. Recorded in Florida and produced by GRAMMY Award-winner Tom Hambridge, each of the 13 vividly detailed songs was written and arranged by Birchwood. The soul-baring tracks all hit with lasting rhymes and unexpected rhythms. Each twists its own tale, ranging from the love-gone-wrong Horns Below Her Halo to the love-gone-terrifying Exorcist to the autobiographical Underdog. According to Blues Music Magazine, “Selwyn Birchwood heralds a fresh, exciting new direction in the blues. Toe-tapping, hip-shaking, joyful and inviting…expansive and focused, exploratory and time-honored, but always original.”
Tickets are $40 and available for purchase online. The Lizzie Rose Music Room is located at 217 East Main Street in Tuckerton, New Jersey. Free parking is available.
Live, Birchwood is a force of nature. His ability to win over an audience—any audience—is proven night after night on the bandstand. With his warm, magnetic personality, Birchwood is as down-to-earth as his music is thought-provoking and electrifying, with Birchwood's band featuring the pulsating interplay of his blistering guitar with Regi Oliver’s driving baritone sax. When he sits down to play his lap steel, he takes the crowd to a whole other level, with the music exorcising any bad times and troubles.
Birchwood first hit the blues scene in 2011 with the self-released, self-produced FL Boy. After winning the 2013 International Blues Challenge in Memphis (beating 150 other bands), Birchwood found doors swinging open. He took a giant step forward in 2014 with his Alligator Records debut album, Don’t Call No Ambulance. Rave reviews ran in publications from Rolling Stone to The Wall Street Journal , from The Chicago Tribune to The San Francisco Chronicle. The album won both the Living Blues Award and the Blues Music Award (BMA) for Best New Artist Debut. He followed in 2016 with fan-favorite Pick Your Poison and, in 2021, with the groundbreaking Living In A Burning House. He won the coveted BMA Song Of The Year Award for that album’s I’d Climb Mountains.
American Songwriter says “No one in blues compares to young Florida-based guitarist Selwyn Birchwood. With the quality of his material, combined with a vibrant stage persona, there’s no need to borrow tunes from the greats who went before him. Lean yet mean and tough…lyrically and musically intense.”
The Lizzie Rose Music Room is a Non-Profit organization in the State Of New Jersey established in 2014 to bring live music to Tuckerton, surrounding Ocean County and beyond. The Lizzie Rose Music Room is a “Listening Room”, not a bar or restaurant. It presents a variety of music featuring Blues, Jazz, Bluegrass, Country, Rock,Soul, Singer/Songwriters and much more.
COLUMNS
Rock On! This Week's Sound Bites...11/6/25
"That's been a while, at least five or six years," chuckled Candice Night of Blackmore's Night. "With "Winter Carols," we put one out originally and then there are so many amazing Christmas songs that we love that we didn't get a chance to put on so we recorded and put them out again and then a few years later we recorded again and put some more out (Laughs). So, that one has been out a bunch of times and I'm glad you brought that up because of course Winter is coming and so is Christmas time so it's always great to break out "Winter Carols" and listen to that one, especially over the next couple of months, there's lots of Christmas music to delve into. A lot of the songs are very, very old songs which of course is right up our alley so it's great to take some of those songs from the 1200s, 1300s, 1400s and moving all the way up and they fit right into the Blackmore's Night style of sound and our genre, whatever we've created is as far as our genre is but yeah, they fit perfectly at home so we love playing them, it's probably our favorite time of the year."
