Selwyn Birchwood Launches New Alligator Album And Interview Today

 
"Selwyn Birchwood heralds a fresh, exciting new direction in the blues. Toe-tapping, hip-shaking, joyful and inviting... always original. [This is] The Selwyn Birchwood Band at their very best…a new level of excellence and artistic achievement." —Blues Music Magazine
 
"No one in blues compares to young Florida-based blues guitarist Selwyn Birchwood. Fresh, powerful blues [that] pulses and stings. Birchwood balances clever concepts with authoritative playing and stinging solos. Living In A Burning House is his finest release. It’s the mark of a true iconoclast that the album's 13 songs pay tribute to his influences without sounding like any of them." —American Songwriter
 
Today, Friday, January 29, groundbreaking young blues visionary Selwyn Birchwood releases his highly-anticipated third Alligator album, Living In A Burning House. To accompany the release, Alligator Records is premiering a new video interview with Birchwood, album producer Tom Hambridge (Buddy Guy, Christone “Kingfish” Ingram, Susan Tedeschi) and label president Bruce Iglauer. During the far-reaching conversation, Birchwood talks about the album, his songwriting process and his already highlight-packed career.

Click the image below to watch Part 1:
 

Click the image below to watch Part 2:


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. The Wall Street Journal says Birchwood is "a skilled, energetic and original artist...his songwriting is observant, clever and pointed. His guitar fluency generates new licks and rhythmic surprises. Expectations have been high for Mr. Birchwood—and he lives up to them."
 
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.
 
Wanting to capture the power of the now larger band, Birchwood wrote and arranged 13 new songs, and brought in famed Grammy Award-winning musician Tom Hambridge 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, Living In A Burning House 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.
 
“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 Living In A Burning House. 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.”