Jeremy Short is Ready To Take on International Blues Challenge
Kentucky’s Jeremy Short is one of the top 30 blues guitar players in the world. Don’t take it from me — take it from the judges at Memphis’s International Blues Challenge, where Short semi-finaled in 2016 and 2017. Short is known for his guitar pyrotechnics and commitment to groove — a defining element of 2018’s Lost in a Spin. As of this writing, Short is at the Challenge and preparing for four days of guitar duels. Short took a break from his training regimen to tell me about his process.
This is your third shot at the International Blues Challenge. For those of us who haven’t been, what’s it like?
It can be overwhelming if you aren’t ready for it. It takes place on Beale Street, which is as historic of a street for music as you can possibly get, in a town that already has a deep, rich musical history. There is music pouring out of every club, and you get a real sense of the significance, and legacy of the blues that everyone is there for, trying to find their place in. If blues is your thing, you owe it to yourself to make the pilgrimage to Beale Street during the challenge at least once in your life.
What are you doing to prep for the competition? And how does it work, exactly? What are you planning to do differently this time?
Basically my prep work consists of narrowing down my song choices, then I dig into those tunes. Just play them repeatedly until I’m beyond the point of comfortableness with them, and by the time I’m actually performing in the challenge, hopefully it’s like they’re just hanging out with me in my living room.
The challenge consists of two nights of Quarter-Finals, followed by Semi-Finals, then Finals (all with different set lengths), over the course of 4 days. You also get 3 different judges each night, all of whom have a set of guidelines to follow for scoring your sets, in addition to having extremely varied opinions on the Blues. You’re deducted points for a variety of reasons, some of which include going over or under your allotted set times. Quarter Finals set times are 25 minutes, Semis are 30, and Finals are 20.
This time I’m just trying to ignore any sort of nerves, butterflies, whatever you want to call it, and just go in guns blazin’. Hold nothing back and let all the awful, ugly, truthful parts hang out.
What drew you to the blues initially? Who were some of your mentors or inspiration?
Initially, I think it was that the Columbia House record Club sticker for the first B.B. King album I ever had looked cool. That was in 4th grade. I fell in love with that sense of urgency I felt the first time I heard B.B. play Lucille, and that love has yet to fade. I still get a thrill when I hear a dude on a guitar just gettin after it on a blues song, I don’t think I’ll ever recover from that.
Some of my favorite people/bands were B.B. King, Stevie Ray Vaughan, The Allman Brothers Band, Steely Dan, Miles Davis, I really loved anything I could find where I could hear that connection to the Blues. I was a history nerd in school, and that translated over to music. I was always in search of where the music I loved came from, as in who or what inspired the musicians I admired.
Something I’ve noticed about your most recent album, Lost in the Spin, is that there’s an equal emphasis on your lyrics and groove. When you’re writing songs, which comes first in your writing process?
Sometimes you get the song first, and by the time you’ve written and re-written it, the band learns it, rehearses it 100 times, fleshes out their parts, it’s a completely different animal than the skeleton you started with.
There have been plenty of times I hear a specific groove, though, for sure. Sometimes I write and it will be more complete than other times. I really don’t set out to try to do one way or the other, the songs make that choice for me.
Win or lose, what other plans for 2019 are you excited about?
Mountain Music Fest is always fun, and we’re super excited to be on that lineup again! I’ll tell you what, I’m excited to be making music in 2019, period. This is an amazingly fruitful time to be a music fan, and I’m incredibly blessed and lucky to be doing what I’m doing, at the point in time I’m doing