Jimmy LaFave Songwriting Contest

Welcome to the 9th annual Jimmy LaFave Songwriting Contest! This contest is FREE to enter and open to unsigned and emerging Oklahoma songwriters in all genres. 

Click here to view contest rules and submit your song. 

In 2017, Jimmy LaFave accepted the inaugural Restless Spirit Award at Bob Childers’ Gypsy Cafe in Stillwater. Not long after, he succumbed to a battle with cancer.  The following spring, Red Dirt Relief Fund collaborated with Jimmy’s partner and some  of his longtime friends to create this contest as a catalyst for young and emerging songwriters in Oklahoma. The hope was that Jimmy’s legacy could be, in part, passing on the opportunity he got in Stillwater decades before.

The contest’s first winner, Ken Pomeroy, was 15 years old when she took the stage at Gypsy Cafe to accept the award. In 2025, she performed at the historic Newport Folk Festival where Joan Baez and Peter, Paul and Mary got their starts, and where Bob Dylan famously “went electric” in 1965.

Winners of the Jimmy LaFave Songwriting Contest have come from every genre and musical background–from a student of hip hop to a seasoned country singer. Finalists are selected blindly by a panel of songwriters and industry professionals with prizes including cash, a spot in the Gypsy Cafe lineup and a day of recording at Tulsa’s historic The Church Studio. 

The Jimmy LaFave Songwriting Contest highlights LaFave’s legacy of mentorship and musical discovery that have become hallmarks of the Gypsy Café festival. Previous winners of the contest include Ken Pomeroy’s “Sidewalk Song” (2018), Dallas Parker aka Faux Draco’s “Abilities” (2019), Joe Baxter’s “Romeo’s Girl” (2020), Ahna Jennings’ “Hope & Gasoline” (2021),  Branjae’s “Free Facts” (2022), Brent Giddens’ “Shades of Texas (2023), Eric Hunker’s “When it all Ends” (2024) and Jared Hard’s “Any of Us” (2025).