SELWYN BIRCHWOOD
JANIVA MAGNESS
IN CONCERT!
Part 111 of the No Stinkin’ Service Charge Blues Series!
Friday March 17, 2023
Tickets on Sale Now!
Selwyn Birchwood
“A remarkable, contemporary bluesman…a powerhouse young guitarist and soulful vocalist. A major player…highly recommended” – Rolling Stone
– Live and Onstage @ World Records Friday March 17, 2023
“I write and sing what I know,” says Birchwood, whose musical innovations are as expansive as his influences are deep.
Selwyn Birchwood’s newest album “Living In A Burning House” (CDs at World Records). 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.
Living in a Burning House
You Can’t Steal My Shine
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.”
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.
Birchwood and his band have crisscrossed the U.S. and Europe repeatedly, delivering unforgettable live performances.
Guilty Pleasures
Revelation
At 19, Selwyn met and connected with blues guitarist Sonny Rhodes, who was instantly impressed by the enthusiastic young guitar slinger. Within one month’s time, Rhodes asked Birchwood to pack his bags and join him on the road. Rhodes took the young man under his wing, teaching him not only guitar and lap steel, but also how to conduct business, how to run a band, and how to reach an audience. “Sonny always said, ‘Play what’s in your heart.’ I’ve never lost sight of that,” says Birchwood.

Selwyn Birchwood and band at World Records in 2018
Janiva Magness
“With raw energy and defiant vocals the singer proclaims her resilience and testifies her hard-as-steel personality that’s been burnished in the fires of her life.” – Living Blues
– Live and Onstage @ World Records Friday March 17, 2023
Singer-songwriter-author Janiva Magness makes a forceful return with the release of Hard to Kill, the Los Angeles-based musician’s first new collection in three years, on her own label Fathead Records.
Janiva Magness, who co-wrote four of the dozen new compositions on “Hard to Kill”, says of her boldly honest and affecting new collection of songs, “I feel like it’s a retrospective — not just of my musical life, but of my life. At this point, with what I’ve been through in my life, top to bottom, you know what, the gloves are off, and the rules are, there really aren’t any rules.”
CDs at World Records
The musician sees a direct link between her new album — which leads off with the autobiographical track “Strong As Steel” — and her book, an unflinching and shattering look back at a life shaken by physical and sexual abuse, the suicides of both her parents, years in foster care, drug addiction and alcoholism, and teenage pregnancy and motherhood. It also details the beginnings of her distinguished musical career, for which she found early inspiration in the work of such blues titans as Otis Rush and Etta James.
Strong As Steel
I Don’t Hurt Anymore
The seven-time Blues Music Awards recipient (and the 2009 B.B. King Entertainer of the Year, the Blues Foundation’s highest honor) and 2016 Grammy Award nominee will simultaneously release the Fathead audio book edition of Weeds Like Us, her frank, profoundly moving 2019 memoir. Los Angeles composer and musician Matt Cartsonis produced.
“I like true stories,” Magness says. “My dad said something to me a long time ago; the meaning of it has changed over time, as things like that do, if we wake up. He said, ‘The truth will set you free.’”
Sitting on the bedrock of blues, soul, and funk, the music on Hard to Kill is so tough and assured that it comes as a surprise when Magness says she was initially uncertain about undertaking the making of a new album.
Don’t You Forget About Me

Janiva Magness at World Records in 2018
Once again, Selwyn Birchwood
and Janiva Magness
come to World Records in 2023
Selwyn Birchwood
Janiva Magness
– Live and Onstage
@ World Records Friday March 17, 2023
Buy your tickets at World Records
during business hours:
Wednesday – Friday 11 AM to 5 PM
Saturday 10 AM to 2 PM
• In Person
2815 ‘F’ Street Bakersfield, CA
• By Phone
661-325-1982
WORLD RECORDS – 2815 ‘F’ Street Bakersfield, CA 93301 – 661-325-1982
Where Music Matters Most since 1982