Dashawn & Wendy Hickman present: Sacred Steel Live at The Floyd Country Store

Wendy and DaShawn Hickman are a married couple of sweetheart musicians, rooted in gospel roots and soulful tradition. They share a home in Mt. Airy, North Carolina.

DaShawn is one of today’s foremost players of Sacred Steel, a blues-gospel tradition started in the Pentecostal-Holiness churches of the 1930s. He grew up hearing the pedal steel in the tiny House of God church his family attended in Mt. Airy, and listening to his mother play lap steel at home. Hickman picked up the instrument at the age of five, and in his teens, formed a group with three of his cousins that found fame as The Allen Boys, North Carolina’s only touring Sacred Steel band. In August 2023 DaShawn was inducted into the Sacred Steel Hall of Fame.

Channeled by artists like Anita Baker and India Arie, Wendy’s voice shines with a splash of Tina Turner’s “raspiness” and reminds DaShawn of his most esteemed musical influence: his mother, Alice Hickman. “I grew up hearing a variety of styles and took from a lot of them and put my spin on it,” he explained. “But my mother is the one single individual that really influenced me. She’s the one that got me started playing Steel Guitar. She played lap steel, and one day she put it in my hands and I’ve been doing it ever since.”