Selwyn Birchwood Album Release Party
Award-winning visionary bluesman Selwyn Birchwood will release Electric Swamp Funkin’ Blues, his sixth Alligator Records album. Rolling Stone calls Birchwood “a remarkable, contemporary bluesman…a powerhouse young guitarist and soulful vocalist.” Now, this mesmerizing guitarist, lap steel master and cinematic songwriter unleashes the powerful new self-produced album, Electric Swamp Funkin’ Blues, further blazing his own musical trail. The album will be available on CD, translucent yellow vinyl LP, and at all digital service providers. Electric Swamp Funkin’ Blues features 10 wildly imaginative, laser-focused, vibrant original songs, produced by Birchwood and recorded in Florida. From the wide-open honesty of Damaged Goods to the up-to-the-minute observations of All Hail The Algorithm and Talking Heads, Birchwood and his band play with honest, emotional intensity. On Labour Of Love he looks at the pains and joys of parenting, while The Struggle Is Real serves as an anthem for our times. Birchwood’s tough, slide guitar opus, What I’ve Been Accused Of, the slow burning, romantic Soulmate and the blazing Should’ve Never Gotten Out Of Bed, all show Birchwood as one of contemporary blues’ most prolific, significant and innovative artists. Electric Swamp Funkin’ Blues is Birchwood’s own fully realized artistic statement, and the first of his Alligator albums that he has produced by himself. “Producing allowed me to really take the wheel and steer the music to the exact destinations that I wanted to go. It allowed me to present these songs with the full, three-dimensional sound that I have wanted all along. This album is the full realization of the sound I have been cultivating. It tiptoes the tightrope between gritty gutbucket blues and contemporary grooves to create a soundscape that honors the roots but allows listeners to experience the music from a modern vantage point. Sharing songs with this much honesty allows us all to connect to music on a higher level…to feel a little less isolated and a little more ‘seen’ in what can be a hard life at times.” Live, Birchwood is a true force of nature. A favorite among blues fans and jam band fans alike, his ability to win over an audience—any audience—is proven night after night. With his warm, magnetic personality, Birchwood is as down-to-earth as his music is electrifyingly jaw-dropping. With his band feeding off his energy, the 6’3” musician roams the stage barefoot, ripping out memorable guitar licks with ease, his soulful, rocks-and-gravel vocals impossible to ignore. When he sits down to play his signature model Caladesi lap steel, he magically lifts the crowd into a sweat-soaked state of blissful elation. Mega-star Joe Bonamassa raves, “Selwyn Birchwood has become one of my favorite discoveries. He puts on a great show.” Says Birchwood, “You would be hard-pressed to find an album or a band that sounds exactly like mine, and that has been and always will be the goal. I pride myself in writing songs so that when you hear a band like us, you hear a band that sounds just like…US!” According to Guitar World, “Blues star Selwyn Birchwood is the real deal. He puts his own fresh spin on the blues, taking the tradition and making it into something new.” $20 or just $10 for BSO Members! Memberships available at the door.
Paddy’s Rave
AGES 18+ Hear your favorite Paddy’s Day hits, Y2K classics & EDM. Find the greenest clothes you have❗ Bring the PLUR vibes 💚, shamrock-shake that ass and find the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow🌈. U2 will get Lucky! ☘️🤞
Letdown.
DONT USE Paddy’s Rave
AGES 18+ Hear your favorite Paddy’s Day hits, Y2K classics & EDM. Find the greenest clothes you have❗ Bring the PLUR vibes 💚, shamrock-shake that ass and find the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow🌈. U2 will get Lucky! ☘️🤞
Zero 9:36
Adapting to any setting, Zero 9:36 has toured alongside Shinedown, Neck Deep, Hollywood Undead, Three Days Grace, Asking Alexandria, Nothing More, Bullet For My Valentine, Wage War, The Plot In You, and many others. Zero has made festival appearances at Welcome to Rockville, Louder Than Life, Inkcarceration, and many others. His collaborations are an eclectic list including Travis Barker, grandson, Hollywood Undead, Atreyu, The Warning, and Scarlxrd. Zero 9:36 proudly occupies a lane of his own and in the process has amassed over 50 million streams across DSPs.
James McMurtry and the Martial Law Review
James McMurtry released The Black Dog and the Wandering Boy on June 20th via New West Records. The 10-song collection was co-produced by McMurtry & Don Dixon (R.E.M., The Smithereens) and is his first album in four years. It follows his 2021 acclaimed new West debut, The Horses and the Hounds, which UnCut Magazine said “lifts storytelling-in-song to meticulous new levels” and Pitchfork awarded an 8.0, saying “James McMurtry stands out even among the Lone Star State’s finest songwriters…” The Black Dog and the Wandering Boy features appearances by Sarah Jarosz, Charlie Sexton, Bonnie Whitmore, Bukka Allen and more, alongside his trusted backing band, THE MARTIAL LAW REVIEW, Tim Holt on guitar and accordion, Cornbread on bass and Daren Hess on drums. As varied as they are, McMurtry’s new story-songs find inspiration in scraps from his family’s past: a rough pencil sketch by Ken Kesey that serves as the album cover, the hallucinations experienced by his father, the legendary writer Larry McMurtry, an old poem by a family friend. A supremely insightful and inventive storyteller, McMurtry teases vivid worlds out of small details, setting them to arrangements that have elements of Americana but sound too sly and smart for such a general category. Funny and sad often in the same breath, The Black Dog and the Wandering Boy adds a new chapter to a long career that has young songwriters like Sarah Jarosz and Jason Isbell cite him as a formative influence.
Struggle Jennings
Space To Play
When Worlds Collide
Alpha Wolf
In the ever-evolving sonic landscape of Alpha Wolf, their music transforms like a shapeshifting beast, defying expectations and breaking through boundaries with the weight of wrecking-ball dynamics and captivating off-kilter hooks. The Australian quintet—Scottie Simpson [guitar], Sabian Lynch [guitar], Lochie Keogh [lead vocals], John Arnold [bass], and Mitch Fogarty [drums]—maintains their intensity on their third full-length offering, Half Living Things [SHARPTONE]. “We never want to write the same album twice,” explains Scottie. “Half Living Things is still heavy, but we’re venturing into new territory. Lochie sounds like a force of nature on this too. We considered the live show more than ever, creating parts specifically for crowd involvement. These songs are built to ignite the stage.” With a decade of sparking visceral reactions from audiences, Alpha Wolf crashed into the Top 30 of the ARIA Albums Chart with Mono [2017] and followed up with the Fault EP two years later. A Quiet Place To Die [2020] debuted at #6 on the ARIA Albums Chart, earning a nomination for “Best Hard Rock or Heavy Metal Album” at the ARIA Awards. KERRANG! rated it “4-out-of-5 stars,” and Hysteria hailed it as “a mosh-worthy record that puts high hopes on the band’s future.” Distorted Sound called it “one of the great extreme/hardcore records of recent memory.” Their journey included North American tours with Motionless In White and Knocked Loose and a performance at KNOTFEST Australia alongside Slipknot, Parkway Drive, Megadeth, and more. In 2023, they meticulously crafted Half Living Things, self-producing and weaving together a visceral vision after years on the road. The album title perfectly encapsulates their state of being. On the album’s essence Lochie comments, “There can be no inner conflict without the constant tug of war between desire and disdain, the things you want versus the things you need, or the things that make you feel alive against the parts of it that do not. You cannot grow new parts without leaving the dead ones behind. You cannot be settled until you have truly known the opposite. Find out what makes you tick and just keep running around the clock until you’re happy enough to die.” The album kicks off with the neck-snapping chug of the opener and first single, “Bring Back The Noise,” where gnashing harmonics and Lochie’s high-pitched screams punctuate waves of distortion. Scottie grins, “The lyrics fit how we perform live. The more we tour, the more fun we have on stage. ‘Bring Back The Noise’ encapsulates everything we are.” “Sucks 2 Suck” hinges on a head-nodding groove, giving way to a bludgeoning bounce on the bridge. Lochie, the vocalist, adds depth to the track with his perspective, “It’s about biting back at anyone saying you didn’t work hard for the shit you have. If you had the ethic and tenacity, you’d have it too, but you suck so you don’t.” The legendary rapper Ice-T pulls up with a vibrantly venomous verse, and in his instantly recognizable delivery, he warns, “You coming for me? You gotta come better than that!” “It’s the perfect crossover of hip-hop and metalcore,” Scottie goes on. “We decided to shoot for the stars and reach out to Ice-T. We gave him no reference, but he did exactly what we were hoping for! It’s classic. In their own terms, Alpha Wolf continues to progress, and Scottie leaves off with a message: “We hope it connects. We’re incredibly proud of this record. It’s everything we want Alpha Wolf to be. These songs are heavy, but they’re fun. Jam it in your car, show it to your friends, and come out to a show.”