artist spotlights | song of the week
Lizzie Rose Music Room presents young blues visionary Selwyn Birchwood
Photo by Ivy Neville
(TUCKERTON, NJ) -- Groundbreaking young blues visionary Selwyn Birchwood will perform live at The Lizzie Rose Music Room in Tuckerton on Wednesday, April 19, 2023. Birchwood won the highly-competitive 2022 Blues Music Award for Song Of The Year for his original I'd Climb Mountains from his latest release, Living In A Burning House. He calls his music “electric swamp funkin’ blues,” defined by raw and soulful musicianship played with fire-and-brimstone fervor. Showtime is 7:30pm.
Birchwood’s gritty, unvarnished vocals draw his audience deep inside his unforgettable tales of love, passion, pain and pleasure. No other band on the current blues scene is built quite like Birchwood’s. In addition to Selwyn’s electrifying guitar and lap steel playing, the other featured instrument is Regi Oliver’s driving baritone sax. The group is rounded out by bass, drums and, for the first time, keyboards.
For Living In A Burning House, Birchwood wrote and arranged 13 new songs, and brought in famed Grammy Award-winning musician/producer Tom Hambridge (Buddy Guy, Christone “Kingfish” Ingram, Susan Tedeschi) to produce. From the rocking opener "I’d Climb Mountains" to the sweet soul of "She’s A Dime" and "One More Time" to the hair-raising "Revelation," the album features some of the most vividly striking writing on today’s blues scene. Birchwood’s voice and vision are clear, his sound is edgy and compelling, and his stories are memorable and lasting.
Since the 2014 release of his Alligator Records debut, Don’t Call No Ambulance, Birchwood’s meteoric rise from playing small Florida clubs to headlining international festival stages is nothing short of phenomenal. The album received the Blues Music Award and Living Blues Critics’ Award for Best Debut Album Of 2014, and Birchwood won the 2015 Blues Blast Rising Star Award. Rave reviews ran in publications from Rolling Stone to The Wall Street Journal, from The Chicago Tribune to The San Francisco Chronicle. He followed in 2016 with Pick Your Poison. DownBeat said, “There’s a deep-seated power about Birchwood’s singing and six string/lap steel guitar work...and there’s an unmistakable emotion and honesty linking him to forebears like Muddy Waters. Thoughtful, persuasive and rugged.”
Birchwood recently received a Blues Music Award nomination for Contemporary Blues Male Artist Of The Year. The awards ceremony will be held in Memphis, Tennessee on Thursday, May 11. Birchwood is currently working on his next album, due out in 2023.
Advertise with New Jersey Stage for $50-$100 per month, click here for info
Birchwood and his band have crisscrossed the U.S. and Europe repeatedly, delivering unforgettable live performances, and earning new fans everywhere they go. “I write and sing what I know,” says Birchwood, whose musical innovations are as expansive as his influences are deep. “They say everything is better when it’s made with love,” says Birchwood. “That’s how we play our music and that’s how we made the new album. I want my audience to say, ‘I know exactly what that feels like,’ when a song hits them. Because that’s when it stops just being music and starts being medicine. After all, we are all stricken with the condition of being human.”
Tickets are $35 advance / $40 door. Click here to purchase tickets online.
The Lizzie Rose Music Room is located at 217 E. Main Street in Tuckerton, New Jersey. The venue offers free parking and has limited handicap seating.
