Regional IBC, November 2009: Part 1
Facts
- This page is documented as "Part 1" of a multi-part writeup for SCBS's November 2009 regional IBC qualifying event, continuing into a "Part 2" page.
- The event functioned as Southern California's local preliminary competition for sending an act to the following year's International Blues Challenge in Memphis, consistent with how Blues Foundation affiliate societies are structured to participate.
This page archives "Part 1" of the Southern California Blues Society's November 2009 regional International Blues Challenge (IBC) qualifying event, the year-later continuation of the series documented on our Regional IBC, November 2008 page. The Southern California Blues Journal is an independent guide rebuilding this domain's record of local blues events after the original site lapsed.
As explained in more detail on our 2008 entry, the IBC is a real annual competition run by The Blues Foundation in Memphis, and participation is only possible through a Blues Foundation affiliated blues society that sponsors a local act after running its own preliminary contest. SCBS's "Regional IBC" events, including this November 2009 installment, were almost certainly that local qualifying round for Southern California, deciding which act the society would send on to compete in Memphis the following year. The "Part 1" designation here suggests the original page, like several of this site's other multi-part event pages, was structured as the first half of a longer photo gallery or writeup covering the full evening.
We confirmed via an Internet Archive Wayback Machine snapshot that this exact URL existed on the original scbsevents.org site before it went offline.
Winning a regional qualifier like this one carried real stakes beyond bragging rights. A Blues Foundation affiliate's IBC winner typically earns, at minimum, the trip to Memphis and a guaranteed slot in the competition's early rounds on Beale Street, performance exposure in front of talent buyers and other industry figures who attend the event, and the kind of regional-champion billing a working band can use in its own promotion for years afterward. SCBS's own IBC history includes a genuine national payoff: its sponsored act Zac Harmon and the Mid-South Blues Revue won the "Best Unsigned Band" title at the 2004 IBC, a result Harmon later credited with transforming his career.
For the second half of this same November 2009 evening's documentation, continue to Regional IBC, November 2009: Part 2, and for the prior year's qualifying round in this series, see Regional IBC, November 2008. Our photo archive is the best place to look for any images we have been able to source and credit properly from this period of SCBS's programming.
