Guitarist Selwyn Birchwood, nominated for 4 Blues Music Awards, heading to Pittsburgh

Guitarist Selwyn Birchwood said he felt like calling his music blues wasn’t specific enough, so he invented the description of “electric swamp funkin’ blues” instead.

“I think if you just say blues it doesn’t quite cover it,” Birchwood said earlier this month from St. Augustine, Florida. “But we do a little bit of a unique and more eclectic kind of a thing with it and I’m confident now more than ever in saying that this is our sound, and I think you’d be stretched to find a band that sounds exactly like us.”

The award-winning Florida bluesman’s distinctive sound will be on display Feb. 28, when his packed tour — his band has one night off in a stretch of two weeks — visits the Hard Rock Cafe in Pittsburgh. He’ll be joined by The Waterview Band and the Ragged Co.

Birchwood is touring in support of his latest album, 2023’s “Exorcist,” which has racked up four nominations for the 2024 Blues Music Awards. He and his band have been nominated for band of the year, top contemporary blues male artist, top contemporary blues album and song of the year (“Horns Below Her Halo”).

And as for the inspiration for “Horns Below Her Halo,” a tale of love gone wrong?

“Just life,” he said with a laugh. “I write the stuff about what I’ve been going through, but I like when people share some kind of vulnerability that people relate to it on that higher level. And it turns out I’m not the only one that dated that person.”

“Exorcist,” his fourth album with Chicago-based Alligator Records, is the product of years of work and touring, with stops in 19 countries over the past 10 years.

“This is my sixth album of all original music. And my idea is that if I keep trying to sound like myself, eventually I will,” he said. “I’m confident in this newest album, saying that I found my sound. And I’m glad that people are jumping on and enjoying, accepting it so enthusiastically because it’s different when you’re writing your own stuff rather than just kind of playing all the greatest hits — except the none of them are yours sort of thing.”

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Rolling Stone described him a “powerhouse young guitarist and soulful vocalist,” while Guitar World said he “puts his own fresh spin on the blues.” With that in mind, Birchwood said the idea of paying tribute to the past while staying modern doesn’t intentionally cross his mind while writing.

“It’s not something I think about as much as that that’s what kind of seems to happen because I enjoy the old sounds and the old style blues so much,” he said. “And it’s grown, you know, learned from playing that sort of style, but I don’t have it in me to just get on stage and kind of just mimic and copycat what other musicians did coming up on a hundred years ago.

“I’d rather get up and tell my story and try to put my personality into the music rather than just doing a paint-by-numbers which I feel like is missing these days.”

One of those stories is close to home for the Tampa native, with “Florida Man,” an ode to the state which seems to attract the strange and oddballs. As the lyrics say, “down where rebel flags meet Mickey Mouse, down where the wild west meets the dirty south.”

“I grew up down here, and I realize kind of now that I’m kind of numb to crazy,” he said. “It sort of is normal to me until I talk to friends and I’m like, ‘What, you didn’t grow up like that?’ And they’re like, ‘No, that’s crazy.’”

Birchwood may have earned his MBA from the University of Tampa, but he doesn’t really want to think about what he’d be doing if he couldn’t play music any longer.

“I’d be unhappy, whatever it is, man,” he said. “Music’s what I love to do, and I’m blessed that I’m able to do it at the level that I’m doing it at, and that people have been gravitating to the sounds that we’re putting out so much. And I’m just happy about that.”