Bluesman Birchwood comes back to Bradenton to rock Ace’s

The end of Bradenton Blues Weekend doesn’t mean the end of great live blues in Bradenton.

Proof comes this weekend at Ace’s, where lanky young blues star Selwyn Birchwood and his band return.

Birchwood is based in Tampa, so he plays around here a lot. But he’s known around the world, especially since he won the Blues Foundation’s International Blues Challenge in 2013 and a Blues Music Award for Best New Artist Album in 2015. He’s drawn praise from publications as diverse as Rolling Stone and the Washington Post, the latter calling him “an indelibly modern and original next-generation bluesman” and saying that “his tough vocals, guitar and lap steel touch on classic Chicago blues, Southern soul and boogie.”

His latest Alligator album, “Pick Your Poison,” came out this year and drew raves from blues publications. Blues Blast said it “needs to be heard by anyone remotely interested in blues for the modern age.”

He has performed at the Bradenton Blues Festival’s Blues Appetizer concert, and he’s a fixture at such clubs as Ace’s in Bradenton and Blue Rooster in Sarasota, as well as clubs and festivals in the surrounding areas. So you’ve had a plenty of chances to see him. But he seems destined for even greater things, so if you’ve missed his past local shows you might want to catch this one. He may soon be the kind of artist who plays here once every five years instead five times every year.

Details: 8 p.m. Dec. 30, Ace’s Live, 4343 Palma Sola Blvd., Bradenton. $12 advance, $15 at the door: 941-795-3886, aceslivemusic.com.

This story was originally published December 27, 2017 at 3:51 PM with the headline "Bluesman Birchwood comes back to Bradenton to rock Ace’s."