Colin Cutler and Hot Pepper Jam + Dashawn and Wendy Hickman

“…a juke joint energy coursing through it and a humidity that seems to sweat out the sins and the booze that these characters are often soaked in.” ~Paste
“Wickedly funny.” ~Susquehanna Folk Music Society
“Devastating.” ~Americana Highways
“One magnificent tapestry of roots music.” ~No Depression

Colin Cutler and Hot Pepper Jam’s music stretches across the American roots music world, from acoustic oldtime and alt country to electric blues and rock’n’roll, with touches of bluegrass and jam band energy.

The last couple years have seen them playing at Merlefest, Shakori Hills Grassroots Festival, the North Carolina Folk Festival, the Susquehanna Folk Festival, Antlers and Acorns Songwriters Festival, and the Carolina Bible Camp Bluegrass Festival, while touring for shows from Georgia to Canada, Virginia to Texas, and everywhere in between.  

Dashawn Hickman presents Sacred Steel
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, and he recently appeared on America’s Got Talent with Steve Ray Ladson

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.”