Russell Dickerson likes to party in concert.
The 36-year-old Tennessee native will bring his high-energy, larger-than-life show to The Rust Belt (533 12th Ave., East Moline) on Saturday, Feb. 24 at 8 p.m., with openers Maddie & Tae. General admission tickets ($29.50) are available now HERE.
Last November, Dickerson released a deluxe version of his self-titled album, Russell Dickerson: The AfterParty Deluxe. The project features the original 15 tracks from Russell Dickerson, five acoustic versions of songs, four live recordings, and a new track which features Needtobreathe, “Red Dirt Church.”
The deluxe version was meant to encompass Dickerson’s wide array of songs — from his uptempo, party tunes, and more heartfelt, sentimental, chill songs. “I just wanted to take the songs that were exciting and amplify that, with a live version of a Boston crowd, which is always chaos,” he said in a recent interview with Our Quad Cities News.
The slower ones he wanted to strip back more, with intimate acoustic versions. “I wanted to push those boundaries further,” Dickerson said. “They let the lyrics speak through more. There’s no loud electric guitar, drums or anything. It lets that message settle in without distraction.”
He hopes to release a full live record at some point. The Boston recordings were all from the MGM Music Hall on the property of iconic Fenway Park, on Sept. 23, 2023.
“That’s what I love, first and foremost, is the live show,” Dickerson said recently. “I write songs to play them live, so to have that many people show up, I think that was one of our record attendances. We broke our merch record by like double almost. It was one of those nights that was so special, I can’t believe we captured everything. That is what I want people to grasp — we call this the RD party, and that’s what it is. It’s an environment, it’s an experience.”
He loves when fans say they didn’t want the show to end. Dickerson is also thrilled by working in the studio.
“When you’re writing a great song, that’s the foundation of it,” he said. “Writing a great song gives me more excitement, these days, than most live shows. Just knowing like, we got one. It’s like a security blanket.”
Dickerson said when he works, he often throws out bad attempts. “There’s hundreds of songs the world will never hear,” he said. “I know what a good one sounds like, ’cause I know what a bad one sounds like.”
He depends on his wife Kailey to hear his draft songs, and he likes to play them for people outside the business, for an objective opinion.
“Usually one or two of them will stick their head out as a major contender, and that’s kind how I pick ’em,” Dickerson said of his songs. He hopes to get back in the recording studio by the end of the month.
That’s hard to juggle with tour, and his family (based in Nashville, he and his wife have two boys, ages 3 and four months old).
A divine hit single
First shared with the world on Dickerson’s third studio album, his current single, “God Gave Me A Girl,” recently hit No. 1 on the Country Aircheck/Mediabase chart. The heartfelt, mid-tempo track marks Dickerson’s fifth career No. 1. The song tells the story of a narrator reflecting on how God led him to the love of his life after a string of heartbreaks.
“God Gave Me a Girl” is very autobiographical, about when he and his wife Kailey had broken up before they got married in 2013. “While we were broken up, I felt like God was like, ‘If you want the best life, then this is your girl’,” Dickerson said. “Hop to it, buckaroo.”
“It’s been amazing ever since,” he said of his marriage. He grew up in a Southern Baptist church — his dad was the music minister and his mom played piano for the choir.
“I had such a great upbringing; I had such a great youth pastor,” Dickerson recalled. “We would sit at Starbucks and just deconstruct and talk. It was a great guiding time for me. When I met my wife, she loves the Lord too.”
On his latest album, he wanted to write more faith-based songs, since it is such a big part of his life. “It’s an aspect I haven’t really dove totally into,” he said. “It’s more life and love and positivity.”
Dickerson is a big fan of Christian contemporary music. He got to hang out with Post Malone at the Super Bowl in Las Vegas. He also recently saw Luke Combs in concert and is a friend of his.
Following friend Luke Combs
Dickerson is the first artist to release four consecutive career-starting singles that reached No. 1 on the Billboard Country Airplay chart since Luke Combs. He also joins Combs as the second solo artist and fourth act overall to have four or more singles reach No. 1 on the Country Airplay chart since its inception decades ago.
Those back-to-back chart-topping singles include “Yours” (3 times Platinum), “Blue Tacoma” (2x Platinum), “Every Little Thing” (Platinum), “Love You Like I Used To” (Platinum) and, most recently, Dickerson’s current single “She Likes It” (featuring Jake Scott) reached platinum status, clocking 208 million streams worldwide to date.
Of Combs, Dickerson was happy to see the 33-year-old country star’s huge success with “Fast Car,” including the special duet he did with that hit’s writer, Tracy Chapman, at the Grammys on Feb. 4.
“He just loved that song, wanted to record a cover of it and had no idea how huge it was gonna be,” Dickerson said. “Now, there he is with Tracy on the Grammys. That’s what I love about music. You create what you love and other people feel that.”
He said their singles came up around the same time, but they haven’t toured together. “He’s just hit the stratosphere quicker than I did,” Dickerson said of Combs. “But we’re getting there.”
Dickerson’s tour last year included three other acts. The Rust Belt date is one of the first on the new tour.
Dickerson was a fan of the other acts on his last tour, and enjoys switching up the dynamic, and will have Maddie & Tae join him on stage as a finale to the show. including his song, “It’s About Time For a Drink.” “I absolutely love them,” he said.
“When I’ve opened for people, it’s always fun to come back out on stage. You’ve raided their backstage bar already. You come back drinking their tequila on their stage, singing their songs,” Dickerson. “It’s always good to return the favor.”
He expects to play a 90-minute set, at least, with about 18 songs.
Tightest harmonies on Music Row
Award-winning duo Maddie & Tae are drawing praise for their new music “anchored around their stellar vocal pairings and some of the tightest harmonies on Music Row” (Rolling Stone) with a “sound that’s identifiable while still representing a distinct step forward” (Billboard).
Maddie & Tae first broke out in 2013 with their brilliant “Girl In A Country Song,” which took Country radio by storm, skyrocketing to the top of the charts and quickly going platinum. The duo became only the third female duo in 70 years to top the Country Airplay charts, also earning trophies from the Country Music Academy and Radio Disney Music Awards along with multiple ACM, CMA and CMT Award nominations.
Receiving widespread praise from NPR, Billboard, Entertainment Weekly, The Washington Post, Glamour and others, country music’s hottest stars including Carrie Underwood, Dierks Bentley, Lee Brice and Brad Paisley have welcomed Maddie & Tae on the road.
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