Birmingham’s music history has never looked quite like this. This month, Sealegs Press releases A History of Birmingham Rock & Roll, a hardback art book featuring every piece from Craig Legg’s legendary 350-painting exhibition—a project that stunned the city when it debuted at East Village Arts in 2023.

Preserving Birmingham’s Sound

The original show was the kind of once-in-a-generation cultural moment. Legg, a fixture of Birmingham’s arts, music, poetry, and bohemian cultural scenes, spent a year researching and painting the city’s rock & roll story. A self-published poet, self-taught artist, and amateur historian, he lives and works in Birmingham’s East Lake community–and his work blends wit, grit, and archival curiosity as he charts the people, places, and moments that shaped the city’s sound. The resulting series forms a visual timeline of more than 70 years of Birmingham’s music culture, weaving through garage bands and legends, dive bars and historic venues, handbills, haircuts, and local lore.

Now, that sprawling exhibition has been transformed into a coffee table book. Legg says bringing the work into print is more than just a new format—it’s a way of giving the city’s music history a wider audience. “Putting these paintings into book form will take the project to another level, granting access to many more viewers,” he shares. “The history is what is important here, and this helps spread the word. It’s a solid history of which folks from Birmingham can be proud. Great big thanks to those who made it happen—Travis, Mark, Lilla and Benji—and to all who bought the book via the Kickstarter funding campaign.”

From Gallery Wall to Coffee Table

The book’s editors describe the collection as both a celebration and a record—part art, part documentary. As one early reader put it, “This history is, first of all, great fun to look at. But it’s also a work of real documentary value…this is not a book. It is a love letter to Birmingham, and to rock and roll, and to Birmingham rock and roll.”

A History of Birmingham Rock & Roll arrives in mid-November—perfectly timed for the holiday season. It will be available through select local bookstores, specialty retailers, and CraigLegg.com.

To mark the release, a book launch and signing will take place on Saturday, November 15, from 2–5 p.m. at Workplay, inviting music lovers, art fans, and anyone curious about Birmingham’s cultural lineage to celebrate the city’s one-of-a-kind soundtrack.

For a city built on hard work and loud amps, Craig Legg’s new book isn’t just art—it’s an archive, a tribute, and a reminder of why Birmingham’s music scene has always deserved its place in the spotlight.