BRINKHAVEN — There’s a towering man in Howard. A well-mannered, gentle giant, if you will. For those familiar with the intricacies of a mandolin, the twang of a banjo or the “high lonesome sound,” you may be able to pick him out of a crowd.
We are talking Bluegrass music here, and one man has blazed a trail through the genre unlike any other.
That trailblazing troubadour is 31-year-old Evan Dickerson.
Despite his energetic appearance and demeanor, Dickerson sometimes struggles with communicating his thoughts to others.
Dickerson is autistic, but he doesn’t skip a beat when it comes to being a one-man show for anything the Bluegrass world has ever done, is doing and will ever do.
His knowledge of the genre is so vast and detailed, it left me at a loss for words at times in our interview.
From writing and singing Bluegrass with some of the biggest names in the industry (more on that later) to conducting interviews on his talk show with musicians all across the country, there isn’t much he hasn’t done within the scene.
First impressions and Bluegrass background
I met Dickerson at a local watering hole in Danville, The Hangout. He introduced himself and his father, Wayne, as we sat down just as the dinner special started.
Water for me, water no lemon for Dickerson and a half-water, half-lemonade for his dad.
As we sat around an old wooden table in the house turned bar, it didn’t take long for someone to already know Dickerson.
Our waitress knew him by name as we talked about how he got into Bluegrass, enjoying subs and fries.
“I’m third-generation Bluegrass,” Dickerson said. “I ended up listening to a CD player of my dad’s band at age 8.”
When Dickerson was in high school, he wanted to be a singer, joining the choir at Centerburg High School.
Eventually, he got to East Knox and won a talent show there in 2011 when he sang “No Place To Hide,” written by Bob Lucas for Alison Krauss & Union Station.
A few years later, another Bluegrass band, The Boxcars, got wind of Dickerson’s win and brought him on stage at the Mohican Bluegrass Festival in 2017.
Here’s that performance:
While singing didn’t quite work out the way he wanted it to, Dickerson knew he had to stay in the Bluegrass sphere.
So, he became a songwriter and a journalist in his own right, as he started The Evan Dickerson Bluegrass Talk Show.
Talking and writing with the best of Bluegrass
For nine years, Evan traveled by car, train and plane across the country to different festivals and venues, interviewing Bluegrass personalities of all kinds.
“My dad actually came up with the idea because I couldn’t meet the artists and bands,” he said. “I started my talk show, and my dad got me an interview with Kenny Smith, who my dad is great friends with, and that was my first interview.”
In total, the Bluegrass fanatic conducted 364 interviews, where he often talked about specific song lyrics, instruments, the craftsmen behind said instruments and the artists’ upcoming shows.
Dickerson’s interviews have included Rhonda Vincent, Dan Tyminski of Alison Krauss & Union Station, The SteelDrivers, Ralph Stanley and Rick Faris.
His favorite? His last one, Carson Peters from season 21 of NBC’s The Voice. Dickerson also kindly noted that all his interviews are his favorites.
“I enjoyed the one with The Cleverlys,” Wayne Dickerson said. “There’s a really good one with Rhonda Vincent, too.”
When Evan Dickerson wasn’t talking with star-studded members of the Bluegrass community, he was writing with them.
This was the case with Faris, a two-time Grammy nominee, 2022 IBMA New Artist Of The Year and reigning IBMA Songwriter Of The Year.
“I met him [Rick Faris] at a Bluegrass festival in Wilmington, Ohio, called the Southern Ohio Indoor Music Festival, now it’s called Industrial Strength Bluegrass Festival,” Dickerson said.
The duo met at the festival in November 2018, when Faris was still a member of the band Special Consensus.
Little did Evan know he would co-write “Bridge Of Dreams” for Faris’ fourth solo album, Life’s Parade, and two other songs before that album.
Evan and the Bridge of Dreams
Faris and Dickerson’s song about the Brinkhaven bridge opens with, “Born in 1920 by the Pennsy railroad line.
South of old Brinkhaven, the Mohican River winds. The Alleghenies took the timbers down to build Columbus town.
Just a bridge abandoned when the railroad closed down.”
The second-longest covered bridge in Ohio holds a special place in Dickerson’s heart.
“I was inspired by the Bridge of Dreams when my mom, dad, sister and myself went to the Bridge of Dreams,” Dickerson said. “My mom passed away in 2010.”
“In 2009, a year before she died, the four of us went there for the first time to see it,” Wayne Dickerson said. “So he kind of dedicated it [the song “Bridge Of Dreams”] to his mom.”
Over the course of just two FaceTime sessions in 2021, Faris and Dickerson collaborated and wrote the commemorative tune.
“We did songwriting sessions on FaceTime,” Dickerson said. “We wrote like three verses, and then we had to come back and rewrite the song, feel out the album, and we had another FaceTime, and it was really good.”
This was the first song Dickerson ever co-wrote, but the latest to be released.
“Bridge Of Dreams” is now out on Faris’ newest project from this past July, Life’s Parade.
The other two songs Dickerson co-wrote with Faris are “Topeka Twister” and “Don’t Hold Back,” both on Faris’ 2023 album, Uncommon Sky.
Dickerson has also co-written “Bluegrass Holiday” and “I Thank You Lord” with Grammy nominee, IBMA Songwriter Of The Year nominee and IBMA Mentor Of The Year nominee Rick Lang.
The next project
Despite only doing songwriting part-time now, Dickerson said he is working on a song with 10-time IBMA award winner Becky Buller.
While Dickerson has stopped doing his talk show, he isn’t leaving the Bluegrass community anytime soon.
Just a few weeks before sitting down with me, he started his own booking agency called Dickerson Bluegrass Booking Inc.
Thanks to his talk show, Dickerson developed connections with a lot of the venues and promoters in the Bluegrass scene.
He hopes to use those connections to give up-and-coming artists a shot at performing at bigger festivals.
Back in 2023, Dickerson founded a festival in New Carlisle to raise awareness for autism.
The Bluegrass Musicians for Autism Awareness was hosted at his uncle’s property and featured several Bluegrass acts and food trucks all in one day.
Dickerson and his father hope to do the festival again one day and make it more local for folks to attend.
When we finished our meals, I asked Dickerson one final question: What do you hope people take away from your story and your music?
Immediately and confidently, he said, “Accept me as a person and my abilities, not my disability.”
Knox Community Hospital proudly supports the vibrant pulse of our community by sponsoring the Life & Culture section on Knox Pages, celebrating the stories and experiences that make our region unique.