Memphis Challenge Series: Want to make it to Memphis? Here’s how!
Story by Dennis Atkins
Photo from Nick Charles Instagram account (“nickcharles28”)
Nick Charles should have felt pretty calm and assured when he walked into the Orpheum Theatre on the corner of Beale Street and South Main, in Memphis, Tennessee.
This storied venue is THE place in Memphis — it’s no wonder a memento at the Elvis Museum and Mansion is a 1956 photograph of the King of Rock’n’Roll standing outside the theatre, the same year he recorded his breakthrough song, Heartbreak Hotel. Elvis, though, is one of hundreds — more likely thousands — of blues, rockabilly, country, and rock’n’roll artists who have walked onto the Orpheum stage.
Charles, Melbourne based blues and roots guitar player and singer, knows Memphis and he knows the Orpheum. He’s played venues across the United States for more than two decades. In all, he’s had 13 tours and 350 gigs in just about every imaginable style of venue. He’s also served on the judging panel of an international finger style playing competition in Kansas.
At the beginning of this year he was there on Beale Street playing in a contest that’s as storied as the music in Memphis — the International Blues Challenge (IBC). It was Nick’s second go at the contest and he’d learned valuable lessons from that first experience. Competing in the solo/duo category, Nick made it through two rounds of heats and the semifinals — all played in noisy Beale St dive bars — to make it to the majestic Orpheum Theatre for the finals.
Nick Charles playing at an MBAS event
And he came away from this year’s Blues Challenge with the honour of being named solo/duo Guitarist of the Year, but not with the overall winner’s prize — an outcome that still gives him pause.
Under the IBC’s strict time rules, Nick had to cut his set from 25 minutes in the heats and semifinals to 20 minutes for the final.
“I still don’t know if I cut the right song,” he muses.
Now, with the Blues Association of South East Queensland (BASEQ) planning a local competition to select a blues act to send to next year’s IBC, Nick has some helpful advice to offer.
“My best advice is (to) be well rehearsed,” Nick offers. “That might sound obvious, but blues people don’t normally rehearse like that. You’ve got to practice, including what you are going to say, with a stopwatch.”
Nick, who was sponsored by the Melbourne Blues Appreciation Society, after powering through their local challenge, clearly has blues in his blood and bones. Perhaps this is found nowhere more strongly than a listen to a duo record that’s been around for a dozen years. That 2013 release was recorded with New Jersey born, now Sunshine Coast based and internationally renowned blues harp player, Doc Span.
It’s more than an homage, it’s a genuine tribute. You can feel it when they slide into their version of the great Sonny Terry & Brownie McGhee’s cover of a T-Bone Walker song, Dirty Mistreater. This is real blues. You can tell how proud Nick is of this record when he casually mentions the version he did with Doc Span came out a decade before a similar tribute album by American hall of famers, Taj Mahal and Ry Cooder.
“I reckon ours was better,” said Nick displaying the confidence a musician needs to get to the top in Memphis.
Nick’s experience, and the advice gleaned from it, is invaluable to any blues bands, solo and partner acts from South East Queensland or the Northern Rivers of NSW looking to compete for the right to represent BASEQ in Tennessee next year.
BASEQ is currently inviting expressions of interest from local blues acts — a pool of performers which will be distilled into eight acts, selected to perform in a final event at Lefty’s Music Hall on August 24.
The winning local act will be given substantial support to travel to Memphis, where some 260 bands and solo/duo acts from around the world — including the best from Australia — will be limbering up for those four stressful days in January.
The quarter finals are held in any one of a number of bars and joints along Beale Street on the Wednesday and Thursday nights — contests run to the strictest of schedules — before the semifinals on Friday and the Big Night on Saturday at the Orpheum.
As Nick encountered, the tight time limits are crucially important to consider. His very useful advice for any contestants focuses on the brevity of that time on stage and the intensity of the actual playing.
“It’s intense; very, very time oriented,” he says off the top, adding that everyone has a sound check of only two minutes in a venue they only get to know about on the day of the heats.
“You’ve got to be on your game, know your gear, get switched on and get straight into it.”
Until the day, you just don’t know which of the 20 venues used by the challenge you’ll be assigned for your 25 minutes, which could spell the end or another chance. Nick describes some of those venues as “pretty ordinary”, with sound systems that have seen much better days.
“Beale Street was probably never a high-class venue street even in its glory days and I would say nothing has been renovated for decades. That’s my experience with the solo and duo venues anyway,” Nick recalled.
“If you’re fortunate enough to make the grand final, then, of course you get to play in the fabulous Orpheum Theatre … the sound there is great.”
But for the heats and the semis, Nick suggests competitors prepare for an old fashioned “sticky carpet” bar vibe. Brisbanites who remember the Troubadour in the Valley Mall 25 years ago will know what he means.
Nick also passed on the best advice he was given during his own induction meeting.
“They said don’t worry about what anyone else is doing; you’re playing for the judges,” he says he was told. He also said it was important to keep in mind what might seem like the bleeding obvious but can get lost in a sea of nerves after a 14,000 km journey.
“The competition is heavily weighted to blues and originality,” Nick advised.
“You’ve got to have your set balanced and your patter down, with something to say between each song. I saw many acts that didn’t have that.”
This advice on getting your stories together as well as the performing is very important because the judges will be looking at how you fill your 25 or 20 minutes, which prompts Nick to again wonder just what song he should have dropped in preparation for his finals set. But that’s just another Memphis mystery.
On a final note, Nick has two pieces of advice.
Pack your patience, he says. He was up against 14 solo acts in each heat, meaning you need to get to the venue early, sit through the other acts and then wait until the results which might not come through until 2am.
And also pack for the middle of winter. Nick says that while you are technically in “the South” in Tennessee, the day time temperature in early January sits at about 4.5 celsius and at night drops down much lower. So don’t forget those thermal undies and a big coat.
See the BASEQ article INTERNATIONAL BLUES CHALLENGE 2026 – EXPRESSION OF INTEREST for more information
https://www.baseq.org.au/ibc-2026-expression-of-interest/
