Boys will rock the blues at Memphis challenge

Young Austin and No Difference send-off concert, “Hitchin’ Down to Memphis”

Where: McCabe’s Tavern, 520 S. Tejon St., 633-3300

When: 8 p.m. to midnight Saturday

More info: www.youngaustinband.com

Tim Young came home from work one day and heard complicated guitar licks pouring out of his basement. He quickly found the source: his 12-year-old son Austin, the same kid he had handed a guitar a week before.

“I taught him for maybe a total of two hours; when I came home and heard him playing these licks,” Young said. “I didn’t teach him any more.”

Now 14, Austin Young is headed for his biggest stage yet next week. The band Young Austin and No Difference will play in the International Blues Challenge in Memphis Jan. 20 to 24, as representatives of the Pikes Peak Blues Community.

Their send-off concert is Saturday night at McCabe’s Tavern.

Austin plays guitar and friend Noah Mast, also 14 and a freshman at Air Academy High School, is on bass. The old man of the band, Tim Young, watches it all from behind the drums.

Noah and Austin took a rock band ensemble class together in junior high and hit it off. Blessed with the audacity of youth, they learned a few songs and instantly started hitting blues jams around the city.

“For me, the blues is really the kind of music that clicked,” Austin said. “I’ve listened to a lot of different kinds of music, but the blues has really stayed with me and I like to play it.”

The trio started to play gigs at bars around town and even at blues festivals throughout the region. They won a battle of the bands with 22 bands, beating out some of the guys who taught them the basics at blues jams.

Austin sounds — and even looks — a bit like a young Stevie Ray Vaughan. But the boys are trying to incorporate other musicians, from Jimi Hendrix to Muddy Waters, into a sound they call “Texandrix Blues.” And Noah and Austin write songs together as well as they jam together; a large chunk of their set is now originals.

“I can attest to the fact that I’ve found Austin at 3 o’clock in the morning, jamming on his guitar and writing down lyrics,” said mom Krisanne Young. “He said, ‘Mom, I just couldn’t get it out of my head and I had to write it down.’”

She respects his passion, but set the rule that if he gets any grade lower than a B, the band goes on hiatus.

“It has made us more mature, because in the bars and stuff we have to carry ourselves like we’re more mature,” Noah said.

So, now they’re headed to Beale Street to gulp down a big dose of the blues, past and present. The boys will compete against 111 bands from around the world, as well as playing in the youth showcase with Noah’s older brother, Sam Mast, 20, on drums.

The competition is cool, but the boys are even more excited about the experience of being surrounded by hundreds of great blues musicians in a place that helped birth the genre.