Cover photo © 2023 Nate Kieser

On a Tuesday evening in late February, I established a secure internet connection and instantly felt like an H.G. Wells time traveler when I asked Australian bluesman Frank Sultana, now back home in Kiama, located in New South Wales, how his Wednesday was going?

Sultana laughed and said, “Yeah, this time zone stuff is crazy. When I left for America, we flew out of Sydney on a Tuesday morning and landed in L.A. at almost the same time—on Tuesday morning.”

For Frank Sultana, whose rootsy songs take you back in time, his first trip to America was a memorable one.

Sultana won the Solo/Duo category for this year’s International Blues Challenge (IBC)—held each year on Beale Street in Memphis, Tennessee. Representing the Sydney Blues Society, Sultana was one of 148 acts from 40 states and 12 countries. The challenge portion of IBC took place over three nights in late January with the finalists (groups and sold/duo acts) performing Saturday afternoon on the historic stage of The Orpheum Theatre in downtown Memphis.

IBC finalist judges tabulated their scores and announced the winners early that Saturday evening.

“I didn’t expect to win,” Sultana told me. “I really didn’t.”

Sultana said that, at first, the idea of competing against fellow blues musicians was strange.

“As an artist, you don’t think about competition.” The blues community, Sultana explained, is close and tight-knit—especially in Australia. His fellow musicians are much like a family and certainly not rivals, or competitors.

As IBC Week went on, however, Sultana understood the significance of his performances, and that the Beale Street crowds were digging his dark, gritty style.

“Memphis embraces (blues) music and its past,” Sultana said. And those blues lovers crowding Beale Street clubs to listen were, in Sultana’s words, “genuine and welcoming.”

For Sultana, the opportunity to showcase his talent in the home of the blues was worth the 17-plus hours of flying.

“The experience of being here (in Memphis) was satisfying enough (and) a great couple of weeks.” Sultana went on to say that to then win (IBC) was “validating.”

Sultana is a self-described “late arrival” as a blues artist. He recorded his first album in 2011 and, before that, played music mostly as a hobby. Over the next seven years, while holding down a “day job,” Sultana wrote and recorded his own songs along with playing local and regional gigs.

“Then in 2018, I quit the 9 to 5, moved a few hours down the coast from Sydney (to Kiama), and I’ve been playing music full time since then.”

Born and raised in Sydney, Sultana grew up listening to 1950s American R&B and eventually started “looking back” in his musical journey to those early Southern bluesmen who set the standard for generations to follow—familiar names like Skip James, Son House, and Blind Willie Johnson.

Those blues pioneers influenced Sultana’s style of dark, dirty guitar tones reminiscent of pre-WW2 Mississippi blues. Add in Sultana’s equally gritty voice and you have a unique sound I’d describe as lonely soulfulness, which grabs both your heart and your gut. Sultana’s songs are steeped in the early blues tradition of storytelling that imagines a solitary figure, guitar strapped over one shoulder, walking down a deserted rural highway.

Sultana’s songs tell of life on the road—perhaps that same deserted highway—and many of his stories were created from that road life.

For Sultana, the last decade or so of recording, playing, and traveling brought him to one of the most sacred spots in Memphis music history.

Our late February conversation over the Internet allowed Sultana to communicate time-zone free, which meant mid-morning in Kiama, a relatively small coastal town, was almost 7:00 pm here in Memphis.

Sultana spent that Wednesday morning editing acoustic tracks he recorded at Sun Studio in Memphis. His Sun recording session was booked for the Monday after his IBC win. During the four-hour session, Sultana re-recorded select songs found on each of his albums from the past 12 years. He described these new tracks as “raw” and was busy preparing them for a soon-to-be-released album—The Ghosts of Sun.

Sultana loved his time at Sun Studio and, a few days before his session, played tourist taking a “proper tour” of the iconic facility. Following the tour and his recording session, Sultana decided to chase some ghosts from the past who once lived a world apart just south of the Tennessee border.

Since this was his first visit to the U.S., Sultana was more than excited to visit the Mississippi Delta, home to those pioneering blues ghosts and to a current crop of musicians keeping blues traditions alive.

“Man, the whole trip was a pilgrimage,” he said.

For Sultana, being in Mississippi was similar to entering another world, or going back in time. Like a “time capsule,” he added.

The duality of the Mississippi Delta made an impact on Sultana and, as a result, he found musical inspiration throughout his time in the area.

Sultana spent almost eleven days in and around Clarksdale, Mississippi, home of the famed crossroads of Robert Johnson and the annual Juke Joint Festival, and birthplace of 20^th Century music innovators like Ike Turner. Sultana said the Clarksdale blues community, like in Memphis, was warm and welcoming, and he played a number of gigs with local musicians, including Mississippi Marshall Hopper.

Sultana again played tourist, visiting famous grave-sites and nearby juke joints, and took the celebrated Delta Bohemian Tour with guide and tour co-founder Chilly Billy Howell. The tour gave Sultana an authentic taste of the Delta with a brief immersion into the culture and the people who, years ago, gave the world blues music that we know today.

During the driving tour, Sultana was able to “touch the Mississippi” at Friars Point, once a busy port town, just northwest of Clarksdale.

Later on, at the Shack Up Inn, a truly unique hotel experience (called a bed & beer by its owners) and located just beyond the crossroads in Clarksdale, Sultana sat on the wood porch of his cabin and wrote music—inspired by the Delta—like so many bluesmen before him.

Sultana’s blues pilgrimage would soon end, but his long journey back home was about to begin.

In mid-February, Sultana sat at his gate at Memphis International Airport, waiting on the first of his connecting flights, which, eventually, would get him back home to Sydney.

I began our phone interview by congratulating Sultana and asked how it felt to win IBC?

He told me “Thanks” and that winning was, obviously, a hugely positive experience, but, even more, to “have what I do (writing and performing) accepted” by so many people and to be so “warmly received” by the IBC crowds was incredible. He added that, as an artist, the recognition boosts both “your outlook and your confidence.”

The competition, or challenge, aspect of IBC really hit home with Sultana during Saturday’s finals inside The Orpheum. Sultana was the last Solo/Duo performer and the second to last finalist to perform. After he played, Sultana felt both a sense of relief but was still wired from the grind of IBC week.

When he was announced as the winner, Sultana was walking around near the back of the theater. He remembered making his way to the stage in a bit of a haze of emotions. “Amazed, thrilled, even (again) a sense of relief” that the challenge was now over.

“Back home (meaning Australia), this is kind of a big thing.” Sultana said. He’s only the third Australian blues musician to win IBC. “And,” he added, “I’m the first Sydney Blues Society winner.”

The IBC win guarantees that Sultana will play in U.S. blues events like the Durango Blues Train in Colorado, scheduled for late August of this year and the Legendary Blues Cruise early in 2024. Sultana has also been invited to play at this year’s Big Blues Bender (September 7-10) in Las Vegas, Nevada.

Already a regular on the Australian blues circuit, Frank Sultana, who currently plays between 100 and 150 shows a year, will be a busy man—a true troubadour—for the foreseeable future, whether he’s on the road or back home creating more stories from his travels.

Sultana’s first trip to America was indeed memorable: the IBC win, Sun Studio recordings, his Mississippi Delta pilgrimage, which provided material for another batch of songs, and so many other memories.

I asked Sultana if there was anything else he enjoyed about visiting America and, in particular, about Memphis and the Mid-South.

“Oh, man, the food…the food is so good!” Sultana exclaimed. “I was as excited about the food as I was about the music.”