Cover photo © 2023 Reed R. Radcliff

In September, blues fans gathered in Peoria, IL for the 2023 Blues Blast Music Awards weekend. The two night affair featured a “who’s who” line-up of nominated musicians. There were plenty of memorable performances. One artist who definitely made an indelible impression both evenings was pedal steel guitarist DaShawn Hickman, who was nominated in the New Artist Debut Album category for his Drums Roots & Steel album, as well as for Slide Guitarist of the Year. Judging by sales at the CD table, Hickman made a lot of new fans for his inventive take on sacred steel music.

“What a great experience that was, beyond what I thought it was going to be. First, it was it was an honor to have been nominated in the two categories I was in being the new kid on the block. And then to be around so many of the great blues players of our times. Hey, that’s the goal. If you can get people on board with you, and they dig what you’re doing, then the assignment was accomplished.

“The interesting thing about being a steel guitar player, a lot of people have never heard it in the form that I grew up playing it in. Most people hear it in country and swing music, stuff like that, but they’ve never heard it in the sacred steel form. For those people, the first time hearing it, it’s kind of a shocking experience. And that’s a lot of what the conversations were like – I heard about you, but I had no idea that you could make that thing sound like that. I’ve been a fan of steel guitar all my life, but now I’m definitely a fan after hearing you play.”

Growing up, Hickman’s mother was learning to play the lap steel guitar. When he was about five years old, she asked him if he wanted to learn the instrument. She ended up giving it to him, and he has been playing ever since that day.

“My Mom got to be really good, and she encouraged me. If it’s something that you want to do, you do it. She could play, up until she passed in 2009. The lap steel guitar is mainly a six string, but you can get them in eight string, I’ve seen them go as high as ten strings. You will see some that have legs, but for the most part they sit in your lap. They’re usually tuned to an open G, or open A, kind of like the dobro.

“The movements are all over the place, versus with a pedal steel, which you can get configured to 10, 12, 14, strings, then you have double 10s that actually have 20 strings, but they’re two separate necks, or double 12s, two separate necks with 24 strings. So like a guitar player bending his strings, I have the ability to press a pedal and get the same effect. And I can do it on the fly versus having to physically bend my strings. And I’m able to get more chords, more single note runs. It’s a lot of moving parts with the pedal steel, everything on that guitar moves except for the wood.

Hickman uses a Carter pedal steel. It’s a single 12 string instrument with 7 and 5 string arrays, 7 pedals, and 5 knee levers. But Hickman only plays it as nine string, taking three strings off of it, unless he is playing on a recording session, when he will add the three strings, which allows him to get more chordal tones. As a matter of comfort, the nine string arrangement works best for him.

“Growing up I played more six string and eight string lap steel than I did pedal steel. I didn’t get into pedal steel until I was around 14 or 15. I just found that those same strings that I was using on my eight string lap steel, I could do the same with the pedal steel and still get everything that any other steel player gets. People say, man, you’re missing the G sharp. And I was like, well, no, I’m not missing it. I can just go up here and do the exact same thing that you’re doing.”

The guitarist still lives in his hometown of Mount Airy, North Carolina, where he was born on December 17th, 1981. “I’ve moved away a couple of times, but I always find myself coming back home. I just love Mount Airy, it’s a beautiful place to live.”

The switch from lap steel to pedal steel came as a result of an encounter with another player at a regional church convention.

“I had heard pedal steel in the church because we have our national convention up in Nashville, so I would hear guys like Chuck Campbell, Glenn Lee, those guys playing pedal steel. But you know, it really didn’t capture my interest. But this particular summer, a guy by the name of Denard Elliott was here from Florida, playing a double neck Emmons pedal steel. That was the first time I had seen one up that close and personal, you know, to see how it worked.

“ It really caught my attention, the way he was playing it. And I wanted to dive into that because it seemed like it was a whole lot easier to play some of the things that I was doing on the lap steel that cause me to have to move so much. He was just in one position doing those things. My mom and I had stopped by the Emmons shop, which was in Burlington, North Carolina at the time. And she bought me my first one out of that shop.”

For Hickman, music-making was for church, or playing with other family members. His instrumental prowess was a well-kept secret.

“Growing up, nobody really knew that I played pedal steel guitar, only the people that I went to church with. Me and my cousins, we didn’t play out or anything like that. It was solely for church services. In church, the majority of the musicians learned how to play multiple instruments. So I played the bass, I played the steel, and I played drums.

“People that knew me thought I was a drummer, because things at school or somebody’s house, I was always playing the drums. So nobody even knew that I played pedal steel. And most of them still, even on Facebook now, are just finding out that I play steel guitar. So it definitely wasn’t a “girls dig the guitar player” thing with us, cause nobody knew unless you came to the church and you saw it. Our friends in the neighborhood just knew the guys on the hill played music.”

Hickman grew up in the Church of the Living God, Keith Dominion, which makes the steel guitar a major focus of the worship service. The Jewell Dominion is another branch that utilizes the guitar. That may be the sole difference that separates those entities from other Penecostal Dominions of the faith.

“ I was about 18 years old my first time playing outside of the church. It was a family band with drums, bass, and two steel guitars. My cousin was also playing steel guitar at the time. We went to a steel guitar convention in Florida and a fellow by the name of Malcolm Carroll, who was from Durham, North Carolina, was there. He didn’t know that the sacred steel thing was going on in North Carolina. Our first outside gig was at a place called Bully’s Basement and it was a party Malcolm had every year in celebration of his recovery from cancer. He’d been in love with this music for a long time but just didn’t know it was this close by.

“At that time we were using my grandmother’s name as the band name. Her name was Mabel Allen. So we went by Mabel’s Boys. Later on we changed the name to the Allen Boys. Looking back, I kind of think Mabel’s Boys probably would have stuck better. It would have been more catchy.

“We were fortunate enough to do some really good things, mainly playing in the North Carolina area. We did a lot of the festivals in this region. We were well on our way. And then life just happened. You know, you have some that go off to college and things like that. And it kind of just fizzled out. But we were very fortunate too. In a short period of time, the band like it went from doing like maybe two festivals a year, then the last two years of us being able to play together, 2006 and 2007, I think we hit all but ten of the festivals that they have here in North Carolina.”

Once the Allen Boys came to the end, Hickman kept playing, doing his best to answer any calls or requests for his services, a free-lance pedal steel player for hire.

“I have a theory. I usually don’t say no to gigs, because they may very well lead somewhere. That was the first time I had started doing my own thing, putting together another band. It was the typical process, you go out on your own, it takes time to build it back up, because people know you for what they knew you for. But I was still able to get some really good gigs, and make some really good contacts. But, as time went on, that kind of fizzled out, too.”

Like so many musicians, Hickman ended up getting a “day” job while playing some shows on the side when he could. There was one more attempt to get the family band back together in 2018, but there wasn’t enough to keep it going. Musically things were looking bleak until a chance meeting offered some signs of hope.

“In 2021, I had a show in Greensboro, North Carolina, at a place called the Flat Iron club. Guitarist Charlie Hunter actually was there. I had met Charlie earlier at the North Carolina Folk Festival. He was the moderator of a forum that I was part of with myself, a slack key guitar player named Ledward Kaapana from Hawaii and Redd Volkaert, who played guitar in Merle Haggard’s band. We were doing demonstrations on how you could do the same things with three different instruments, three different styles of music.

“Fast forward to that night Charlie was at the Flat Iron show. After the show was over, we were standing outside. He said, hey man, take my number down because I’d like to record with you, but I want to do it a different way. And I said, okay. I hear stuff like that all the time, but it seemed like Charlie really wanted to do something.

“Time goes by, I didn’t hear anything back from him. And then just one day out of the blue, he called me and we got to talking about it. He said, what would you want to do? My response was I want to go back and pick up on some of the stuff that I grew up hearing. However, I just want to do it the way I hear it. And he was like, that’s interesting. He said, I’ve not ever heard anybody say, I want to do it the way I hear it. It goes back to what my my mom always said, you play it the way you feel it.

A bit later, Hunter invited Hickman to his house so they could begin working on the tunes that Hickman had picked out. The pedal steel player was surprised by some of the ideas that Hunter proposed.

“To know Charlie is to know that this guy’s brain is just wired different than most musicians. He hears things that most musicians typically don’t even pay attention to. Even though he’s not a pedal steel player, he was telling me things about my instrument that I didn’t even know was there, sounds that I never even thought to come across. One idea he had was to take away the drum set. Another was to not have another guitar. He envisioned me with Charlie on bass, and two percussionists. I wasn’t sure how this is going to sound because I’m so used to having drums in the background. Charlie said his favorite words, man, don’t worry about it. It’s going to be great.

Hunter sent some recordings to Brevan Hampden, an Afro-Cuban drum percussionist, and Atiba Rorie, who is a West African drummer. Soon they were both invited to be part of the new album.

“Two totally different styles, right? I’ve never met these guys, didn’t even know they lived in North Carolina. Charlie offered to set up a show at the Flat Iron so we could start building something. I had one gig with Charlie where he played his hybrid guitar, which is what he’s known for. But that night was the first time playing with him on bass, and man, it was such a magical night. I’d never heard anything like that in my entire life. For that matter, I didn’t even know that the next day we were going to the studio to lay down a record.

“That’s how quick it happened. But the response that Thursday night was… there were people in tears, and I think everybody was just blown away by what that combination sounded like. Atiba said it best, that’s just African roots right there. I mean, to experience it, there’s no way to describe it.

“Friday comes, we get into the studio, and we laid down four songs that day. Went back in Saturday and laid down everything else. And you’re talking grown men, five of us grown men sitting in the engineer room with tears in our eyes listening to some of this stuff. It was magic. For the purpose of that record, I wanted people to hear more of what I was saying than actually the feeling. I grew up learning songs and learning how to finesse around the guitar. I wanted everything to be heard clearly. We wanted the steel guitar to be the focal point. Can a typical guitar player make it sing the way I make the steel sing? That’s the foundation of what we were taught growing up. Make it sing.”

With the recording finished, Hunter started the process of trying to find an interested record label. Months went by with out a word, then Hunter would call to assure Hickman that he was still shopping the album.

“ Finally, Charlie called back and said, Hey, I sent this to this guy named Jim Pugh. He’s a record label owner, Little Village Foundation out in Berkeley, California. At first, Jim wasn’t interested. That was our first conversation and I think it was just because of the fact that it wasn’t what he was used to hearing of sacred steel. You know, the Campbell Brothers put up a high mark on what sacred steel is. And then you have players like Robert Randolph who came out initially doing it before he crossed over and was doing everything else. Jim asked about adding a drummer. I was not open to doing that, because at that point it becomes a normal Sacred steel recording.

“During that conversation with Jim , he asked if I actually grew up in the church? And I said I was born and raised in this thing. He replied, but you don’t play it like Robert Randolph or the Campbell Brothers, the people that I’ve heard do it. I responded, that’s because I’m not them. I understand what you were expecting, but this is my interpretation. You know, I just speak in my voice.

“Jim said, I don’t know what I could do with this album. I told him, listen, do me a favor. I don’t know if anybody’s ever asked you to do this. Please, just take a few days, sit down and actually listen to it. I said, I’m not saying that you haven’t listened to it, but just really listen to it. And then let’s talk. And he said, I’ll do that. When Jim called me back, the first thing he said when I answered the phone was, I want to release it. And I all I could say was, thank you! He said, I went back and I listened to it again, and dude, you’re a player!”

As the release date for the album approached, Hickman refrained from promoting it on social media, basically not telling anyone about the project despite encouragement from his wife. He preferred to trust in God’s care, while taking a great deal of pride in the finished project.

“My wife Wendy sings on the CD and on the road, she’s right there with me. She’s not missed a show in the past year and a half that we’ve been doing this. It’s good that we can do it together. It makes it more enjoyable, she’s my comfort zone because I get nervous when I’m going to new places, being around people that I’ve not played around before. You know, a lot of times people comment that I hold my head down a lot. I’m trying to pay attention to what I’m doing. But that’s also just my nerves. I don’t want to look up because I don’t want see people staring at me like, oh my God, what is he doing? So if I look up, I’m looking at her when I need a calming moment.

“I’m getting over that. But also playing pedal steel, you’ve got to focus on what you’re doing , because that instrument will tell on you in a minute. When everything moves but the wood, you have to pay attention. But it has been a great experience having Wendy able to be there. She’s the counselor. When the sound man has missed his cues or something, I get to lay it all out to her and then we just talk about it, and we let it go.”

Besides the Blues Blast Award show weekend, Hickman recently played two shows for the Harvest Festival at Dollywood, and has some local shows scheduled before the end of the year. After that, he hopes to get started on another album.

“We will be working with Charlie again, and I think this next record is going to be more expressive. We’re going to go with the same setup instrumentally, but we’re going to add some pieces. Sonically, I’d like to go for a big sound for this one. We’re gonna expand it. I believe in the inspiration of the gospel, that’s just my foundation. But we’re gonna open it up a little bit more, get a little gritty.

“ I’ve always liked the sound of organs, so we’re gonna throw an organ in the mix. We’ll have a tamed live drummer, because I want to give space for Brevan and Atiba to really express what they do as well, what West African drumming and Afro-Cuban drumming really sounds like, and let people understand what it is. Pretty much the whole thing will be original. I’m going to go back and pick up some other things that I wanted to do for the first one and throw them on there.

“We’ll mix it up. It won’t be arrangements like the original recordings. When people do covers of songs, they can try to keep it close to the original. But growing up in church, we always took songs and just remixed the music. It sounded nothing like what was on the recording, but people were like, man, I never thought that you could put that with this song. You can change anything you want to change, just sit down, learn it, and play it like you feel it, make it sing!