Forever Blue

When Amanda Rey travels to Memphis, Tenn., next week for the annual International Blues Challenge, she hopes to makes some contacts and network. She went last year as a spectator, rooting for Eureka Springs-based band Brick Fields and the Chosen Ones as they competed. It's an important event for blues musicians, she says, and she hopes she might get a few gigs out of the trip.

When Jimmy Wayne Garrett travels to Memphis next week for the challenge, he wants to win.

OK, Rey would not mind a victory, either.

Together, as half of the West Street Blues Band, they'll have the chance. The group earned the right to compete after winning the Ozark Blues Challenge in September. They will represent the Ozark Blues Society -- and Northwest Arkansas -- in the band category of the 31st annual competition. Buddy Shute, a solo performer, will represent the area in that capacity at the event, which begins Tuesday. Both Shute and the West Street Blues Band will put on a preview during a Saturday night fundraiser at 21c Museum Hotel in Bentonville. Money raised during the event will go toward travel expenses for the two acts.

Rey has been dreaming of this opportunity for several years. She has always sung the blues and formed the West Street Blues Band in 2011 with Bruce Bennett on bass and Mark Vanderhoof on drums. The group was inspired by a common request Rey received. She kept hearing she needed to put together a blues band for events such as Bikes, Blues & BBQ. So she did. There were several guitarists along the way, including some of the area's most respected tunesmiths. But when Garrett joined the fold, something clicked, Rey says.

The duo has already started to collaborate as a songwriting team. Rey's heart is in the Delta blues. Garrett cites more rock-oriented guitarists such as John Mayer, Stevie Ray Vaughan and Jimmy Page as his main influences. A sum of many of those parts, but one leaning toward traditional blues, developed. The group will this weekend release a four-song EP to those at the concert. Many of the songs were written by Rey before Garrett joined the band, but his influence is already clear. She included one of his originals, "Confessional Blues," on the new recording, called "Black & Blue."

"When he was playing it in practice, I was just amazed by it," Rey says.

"Black & Blue," Rey says, borrows its name from the color of bruises. Rey says the songs captured there tell a story of getting better.

The songs "go through life's ups and downs," she says. "A bruise can also represent healing. It's a way to create."

That's something Ray, Garrett and the rest of the crew will continue doing, no matter the outcome at the blues challenge.

"I've made the decision to follow music," Garrett says. "And where it takes me is where I go."

Later in 2015, that will find the band performing at the upcoming Blues in the Natural State Festival in Fayetteville. Garrett and Rey also perform as an acoustic duo and will continue doing so this year.