SmokeSlam, the new barbecue contest in Tom Lee Park slated for May 16-18, will have 59 teams participating. 

More than 30 of those teams will be participating in all of SmokeSlam’s three categories — whole hog, ribs and pulled pork — and competing for $250,000 in prize money.

“I have been blown away by that number of teams competing in all three,” said Melzie Wilson of SmokeSlam, which is being produced by Mempho Presents. “That’s going to be hard.”

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Mempho Presents is also producing the Riverbeat Music Festival in Tom Lee Park the first weekend in May. Mempho Presents is a division of the independent promotion company Forward Momentum.

“They will present a blind box to the judges. … And then while that’s going on, every 15 minutes, three judges will come back-to-back,” Wilson told The Daily Memphian. “They will talk about their team. They will talk about their sequence, their flavor, how they cook the meats and present it to the judges for sampling. Those teams are going to have to do nine presentations.”

SmokeSlam will also feature a barbecue boot camp for teens ages 14-18. And there will be a World Junior BBQ League competition separate from the boot camp, with another $25,000 in prize money on the line. 

The World Junior BBQ League was founded by Melissa Cookston in 2019. Cookston retired after last year’s Memphis in May World Championship Barbecue Cooking Contest.

Described by fans as the “winningest woman in barbecue,” Cookston won the whole hog division at Memphis in May five times and was grand champion twice.

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She has a Netflix series, a mail order business and a product line as well as The BBQ Allstars store in Southaven and the Memphis Barbecue Co. restaurant in Horn Lake.

“We aim to cultivate a love for cooking and a spirit of hard work into our youth that they can take with them throughout their life and into future careers,” Cookston said in an email statement.

Wilson, who has worked with Cookston in the WJBL, said the youth competition is part of a larger approach of opening the contest up to more people who may not be on teams and mentoring young people on barbecue and life beyond the grill.

Some older adults have requested to be part of the voluntary boot camp, which is limited to the teens.

“These young people compete and take notes and absorb all that is going on,” she said. “I’ve seen such a transformation from the time the cooks’ meeting is held with them on that Friday night before. And then they get up at 5 or 6 a.m. on site to get the grills ready. You see them very engaged in what they are doing.”

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Mempho Presents first announced last year that it would organize the Riverbeat Music Festival in Tom Lee Park after MIM put its Beale Street Music Festival on hold for 2024.

The lineup for the May 3-5 festival was announced earlier this month.

MIM also announced it would move the 2024 barbecue contest to Liberty Park; Mempho Presents then announced it would start a barbecue contest in Tom Lee Park.

As SmokeSlam is underway in Tom Lee Park, the Memphis in May barbecue contest will be underway at Liberty Park from May 15-18.

Memphis in May and SmokeSlam have been competing for teams.

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MIM is touting some international teams and tie-ins with Cattlemen’s BBQ, Frank’s RedHot and Kingsford charcoal as well as continuing the “BBQ Alley” where the public can eat barbecue from five different pitmasters.

The alley as well as chances for festivalgoers to act as judges are part of an effort by both contests to make the barbecue competitions about more than knowing someone in one of the booths in order to participate.

“We are working on some demos, interactive types of presentations. We’ll have pitmasters and influencers in a certain area,” Wilson said. “We’ll have team engagements where they will have a chance to meet people either in a general admission approach or a VIP approach.”

“We want everybody to come in and feel like they are overwhelmed with things to do and feel a part of it rather than walking around looking at a whole lot of teams having a whole lot of fun,” she said.

Still to come is the map for how the teams will be laid out in the park and the live music lineup at SmokeSlam.

Meanwhile, on Thursday, March 14, the Riverbeat festival plans to release the times and days more than 50 acts will play on five stages in Tom Lee Park come May. 

Editor’s note: Kevin McEniry, a member of the board of Memphis Fourth Estate, the nonprofit that owns and operates The Daily Memphian, is founder and master producer of the Mempho Festival and Mempho Presents.