Visionary Blues Star Selwyn Birchwood to Perform Live in Sarasota on New Year’s Eve!
Groundbreaking young blues visionary Selwyn Birchwood will perform live at The Blue Rooster in Sarasota on Friday, December 31, 2021.
Birchwood’s latest release is his highly anticipated third Alligator album, Living In A Burning House . Birchwood calls his original music “electric swamp funkin’ blues,” defined by raw and soulful musicianship played with fire-and-brimstone fervor. His 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.
“A remarkable, contemporary bluesman…a powerhouse young guitarist and soulful vocalist…a major player…highly recommended” –Rolling Stone
“Rising blues star Selwyn Birchwood is the real deal. Birchwood puts his own fresh spin on the blues, taking the tradition and making it into something new.” –Guitar World
Concert information is as follows:
Date: Friday, December 31, 2021
Venue: The Blue Rooster
Address: 1525 4th St.
City: Sarasota, FL
Phone: 941-388-7539
Showtime: 9:00pm
Ticket price: $75
Website
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 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.”
Photos from Alligator Records