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Selwyn Birchwood + Popa Chubby – 8pm $15/20
February 25, 2022 @ 8:00 pm
$15 – $20
8pm $15/20
Selwyn Birchwood (International award-winning band playing an original brand of roof-rattling-Florida- swamp-funkin-Blues) https://www.selwynbirchwood.com “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
“A skilled, energetic and original artist…His songwriting is observant, clever and pointed. His voice is smooth; his singing on target. His guitar fluency generates new licks and rhythmic surprises. Expectations have been high for Mr. Birchwood—and he lives up to them.” –Wall Street Journal
Groundbreaking young blues visionary Selwyn Birchwood will release his highly anticipated third Alligator album,
Living In A Burning House, on Friday, January 29, 2021. The rising guitar and lap steel player 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.
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 (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, 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.
According to Birchwood, “I tell my stories in my own way, with my own voice. You won’t ever hear me on stage telling someone else’s story. Muddy Waters, B.B. King and John Lee Hooker all told their own stories. That’s what I’m doing.”
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 he 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 unmistakab le 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. They have appeared domestically at festivals including The Chicago Blues Festival, Portland’s Waterfront Blues Festival, The Mississippi Valley Blues Festival, The Tampa Bay Blues Festival, The North Atlantic Blues Festival, The King Biscuit Blues Festival as well as on The Legendary Rhythm & Blues Cruise and Joe Bonamassa’s Keeping The Blues Alive At Sea. Internationally, they have performed at The Great British Rhythm & Blues Festival, Jazz a Vienne in France, the Rawa Blues Festival in Poland, the Moulin Blues Festival in the Netherlands, the Ottawa Blues Festival and the Montreal Jazz Festival in Canada, the Montreux Jazz Festival in Switzerland, as well as playing concerts in Spain, Norway, the Czech Republic, Ireland, Belgium and Mexico.
“I write and sing what I know,” says Birchwood, whose musical innovations are as expansive as his influences are deep. With Living In A Burning House, Selwyn Birchwood is looking forward to winning over thousands of new fans. “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.”
Popa Chubby https://www.popachubby.com/ Popa Chubby, born Ted Horowitz, has been hard rocking the blues in his fierce and soulful way for more than 30 years. Over the course of a career that dates back to 1994, he has been a force of to be reckoned with on the guitar, and his tempestuous, soulful playing has never been more powerful. An imposing figure with a shaven head, tattooed arms, a goatee and a performance style he describes as “the Stooges meets Buddy Guy, Motörhead meets Muddy Waters, and Jimi Hendrix meets Robert Johnson,” Popa Chubby is an endearing character who is one of the genre’s most popular figures.
His career has always been about moving forward and carving a place for himself in the imposing terrain of the music business, overcoming odds to continue growing and maturing as a creative force. He has built a constantly increasing base of fans across the world, where in many territories he is a star. A native New Yorker, Horowitz’s first gigs were in the NYC punk scene as a guitarist for what he reflects was a “crazy Japanese special effects performance artist in a kimono called Screaming Mad George who had a horror-movie inspired show.” Right from the start
he was immersed in rock ‘n’ roll as theater, and learned from George and others playing CBGB’s at the time that included the Ramones, the Cramps, Richard Hell, whose band, the Voidoids he joined that rock ‘n’ roll should be dangerous. He reflects, “Musicians like the Ramones and the Sex Pistols weren’t just bands. They were a threat to society.”
The Blues however was the foundation of his playing style. He recalls, “Since I’d grown up on Hendrix, Cream and Led Zeppelin, when I started playing blues in New York clubs I understood that the blues should be dangerous, too. It wasn’t just from playing in punk bands. Howlin’ Wolf and Muddy Waters were dangerous men. They’d cut or shoot you if they thought it was necessary, and Little Walter packed a gun and wouldn’t hesitate to use it. That danger is a real part of the Blues and I keep it alive in my music.”
Popa Chubby is his own man for better or worse. He reflects, “I’m living in a wild time, and that is where the inspiration is drawn from. There are my issues, but the picture is much bigger than me and my situation. Everything is breaking down in the world. The lines are being redefined. We all need something.”
Terms And Conditions: Important notice re COVID-19: Please note any interaction with the general public poses an elevated risk of being exposed to COVID-19 and we cannot guarantee that you will not be exposed while in attendance at the event. By attending this event you are assuming risk and releasing Skippers Smokehouse from any liability. You must adhere to local social distancing, mask, and all other preventative care guidelines.Please keep in mindthat our hospitals are filling up and our cases in Hillsborough County are SURGING so its important to be extremely cautious. If you choose to attend we suggest you wear a mask for your safety. Whether you’ve been vaccinated or not; if you are not feeling well please stay home. Additional restrictions may be required on a show-to-show basis per the artists request.