Blue Dirt Daredevils to rep Wichita at Blues Challenge in Memphis

To get to the International Blues Challenge in Memphis, Lynn Avants could have bought a plane ticket or a couple tankfuls of gas.

Instead, he decided to put together a blues band. And it worked.

The group he started, the Blue Dirt Daredevils, won the Wichita Blues Challenge in August, which means they’ll represent the Wichita Blues Society in Memphis later this month. On Saturday, they’ll open for Nashville-based guitarist Stacy Mitchhart at the society’s annual Blues Ball at the Cotillion. They’ll also perform at The Rack on Jan. 24.

“It’s just a great bunch of guys that I enjoy playing with,” Avants said. “Three out of four of us have toured at one time or another. It’s just a bunch of old pros that enjoy playing together.”

In Memphis, considered by many to be the cradle of much American music, they’ll go up against hundreds of blues bands from around the nation and world.

Avants is the group’s lead guitar player and songwriter. Born and raised in Wichita, he made his living playing music in Texas during the 1990s before moving back for an electrician’s job with the city of Wichita. Joining him in the Daredevils are Sloan Tash on guitar and vocals, Aaron Underwood on bass and Larry Sanders on drums.

All members of other bands in Wichita as well, they started playing together at area blues jams.

“All four of us have been friends for I’d say six months to several years,” Avants said. “We were sitting around, each of us kind of wanted to go to Memphis this year.”

Winning the local challenge gave the band some money for travel expenses, plus the gig at the Cotillion and another one this fall headlining the fall blues crawl in Old Town.

The Blues Challenge in Memphis also allows Avants to get his original songs played. He says he’s copyrighted about 80 tunes and has had several recorded by other musicians. Although original songs aren’t required in the competition, bands are judged on originality, so Avants hopes that performing only his songs will help the Daredevils in that regard. “You Still Got Love,” “A Long Way From Texas,” “I’ve Got Things To Do” and “Love Gone Bad” are some of the songs the band will perform. Musicianship, stage presence and “blues content” are other judging criteria.

“We really built our set around songs that you would definitely say ‘This is blues.’ ” Avants said. “This is not ‘kind of blues.’ ”

“That can mean different things to different people,” Tash added. “So we’re doing our best to do well in that category.”

The competition is held in clubs on and around Memphis’ famed Beale Street. In the first round, bands, duos and solo performers get two 25-minute sets to impress two different sets of judges.

Two Daredevils have been to the competition in previous years with other bands – Underwood with the Terry Quiett Band and Kentucky Gentlemen, and Sanders with Cool Cat Daddy and Me & The Boyz.

“I compare it a lot to the South by Southwest of the blues,” Underwood said, referring to Austin’s well-known music festival. “The whole industry’s basically down there for that week. One year we went down, there were 300 some bands and 100 or so solo and duo acts.”

Sanders said Me & The Boys made it into the competition’s second round with 40 other bands.

“You’re going to hear the best of every blues society in the United States and the world really,” Sanders said. “It’s just fun being around all those musicians.”

Sanders said the scene is swarming with booking agents, music producers, bands looking for members and other potentially valuable contacts.

“I’m not expecting to win the whole thing,” Underwood said. “That’d be great, but it’s kind of a lofty goal. I go down there, I have fun, I try to see some cool bands, brush up with the management (representatives) that I’ve gotten to know over the years.”

“One person can change your life down there,” Sanders said.

And that wouldn’t give the Daredevils the blues one bit.

This story was originally published January 6, 2016 at 2:12 PM with the headline "Blue Dirt Daredevils to rep Wichita at Blues Challenge in Memphis."