Midwest’s Dylan Salfer Band Wins Big at International Blues Challenge in Memphis
The local guitar prodigy and his band brought home two prestigious prizes from the annual contest.
Dylan Salfer Band receiving their award at the IBC in Memphis, 2025. (Dylan Salfer - Guitar & Vocals, Jordan Headlund - Organ, Matthew Mwangi - Drums, Peter Hennig - Drums, Jose James - Saxophone, Patrick Nelson - Bass.)
Competing at the world’s biggest blues gathering hadn’t crossed Dylan Salfer’s mind. Then a friend from the Minnesota Blues Society asked him to try and find bands to sign up for it. “I didn’t think of it until he sent me that,” says the musician, who divides his time between Minnesota and Wisconsin. “I messaged friends for about a week before I was like, well maybe I’ll do it.”
The International Blues Challenge (IBC) held in mid-January by the Memphis-based Blues Foundation took place on Beale Street, with more than 20 clubs hosting 200-plus bands, duos and solo acts. For over 35 years, the gathering has given blues artists a chance to showcase their talents to new fans and industry professionals as well as compete for prizes.
Salfer, whose guitar career began before he was in his teens, had attended twice before, appearing in the event’s youth showcase at age 13 and 14, but hadn’t been back since. But the timing ended up being perfect for the guitarist, now in his 20s. “I was a side guitar player for many years with different touring acts, but about two years ago I quit all that and started my own group, which is terrifying but rewarding at the same time. So things are going in a good direction.”
Leaning hard into blues for the competition was a bit of a balancing act for the multifaceted artist. “I grew up playing with a lot of blues artists [including legends like Buddy Guy and BB King] but also rock, funk, R&B, country, reggae … I’ve toured with so many different kinds of people. I’m like a toolbox, and if I say yes to a project, I’ll dive in. I go deep, like every artist the person’s been influenced by; I want to be able to sound the part. Music is important and sacred to me. If I’m going to do something, I’ve got to do it right.”
As a result, he says, “There’s so many styles embedded within me now, and it’s not traditional, but I was like, if we’re gonna do this, I want to try to win the competition.”
Dylan Salfer performing at Bunker’s in Minneapolis, 2024. Photo credit: Mark Toth.
The contest was an intense and grueling experience, Salfer recounts. “There’s about five pages of rules and very specific (but also subjective) scoring criteria. The biggest problem was the time constraints.” The first two rounds are 25-minute sets, the semifinals go up to 30 minutes, and the finals require a 20-minute set. “You’re docked a point for every 10 seconds you go over, and 10 points if you go 3 minutes or more under. So we spent a lot of time curating a set to fit in this box, putting a perfect 25-minute set together, then a 30-minute one. And then in the finals you have to cut it all down. It was really diabolical.”
Added to that were the late nights and early mornings that left little time for rest. “Every night you find out at like 1 a.m. if you advance to the next round. Then we’d go to bed and wake up three hours later and be like, OK, how are we gonna change it today to fit the time perfectly? Jordan, the organ player, would time it on his phone and make sure we didn’t have any moments where we veered off, and the drummers had a click by them so every song went right into the next and they would switch the BPM like 10 seconds before while playing. It worked every time and we were on the dot, but it was brutal.”
But the band emerged from the ordeal triumphant, taking home the No. 3 ranking in the full-band division. Salfer himself also garnered the title of Best Guitarist. “It ended up being better than I could have hoped. We’ve been getting a lot of work just in the past couple weeks from that, being booked all over the world.”
Dylan Salfer accepting the Best Guitarist award at IBC in Memphis, 2025.
What’s next for the newly minted winners? “We’ve got some shows happening, but the main focus is getting a record out, or at least a single,” Salfer says. “We’ve tracked 11 tunes at the Daydream studio in Arden Hills with my friend Steve McCormick, a really accomplished songwriter who’s also produced records for a bunch of people. He’s based in Los Angeles but was originally from Wisconsin and in the Twin Cities music scene. He’s been flying here for the full band sessions and I’ve been flying out to LA to do the vocal and extra production stuff at his studio.”
Salfer hands a lot of credit to his band for both the IBC wins and the smooth recording process on the new album. “Everybody has toured enough with different people and we’ve all been sidemen for enough different personalities that we work really well together. There’s so little drama and everybody believes in the project, so it’s very collaborative. It’s honestly like a dream.”
Watch the Dylan Salfer Band in their IBC finals set!
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Carol Roth. Photo credit: Dan Lee.
Adventures in Americana co-founder Carol Roth is a novelist who publishes both under her name and the pseudonym T.A. Berkeley in a range of genres, from horror to thriller to YA. She loves to play guitar and sing and occasionally write songs. Her wide-ranging passions also include vegan cooking, personal finance, watching queer romance TV/movies and learning to speak Thai. By day she’s a marketing writer/brand strategist.
