Ben Dickey

A singer and songwriter of thoughtful alt-country-rock with a bluesy bent, guitarist Ben Dickey started several bands between the mid-'90s and mid-2010s before releasing his first solo album, Sexy Birds & Salt Water Classics, in 2016. In 2018, he launched an acting career when he portrayed singer/songwriter Blaze Foley in the biopic Blaze. He continued to pursue both music and acting as the film led to more work on-screen. Born in Little Rock, Arkansas in 1977, Benjamin Dickey started playing his grandfather's 1935 Gibson L-30 at age ten and sneaking into punk shows as a high schooler. At 16, he formed the post-hardcore band Shake Ray Turbine, which included fellow guitarist Clay Simmons, bassist Dustin Clark, and drummer Chris Wilson. They made one album, 1997's The Sauce of Solution, and opened an Arkansas show for Fugazi in 1998 before relocating to Philadelphia. After Shake Ray Turbine disbanded in 2000, Dickey played in a few short-lived outfits, including Amen Booze Rooster and Blood Feathers. The latter recorded an album in a Nova Scotia home owned by actor/writer/director Ethan Hawke, and Hawke and Dickey became friends. Dickey's first film appearance was a brief, nonspeaking role in Hawke's 2006 film The Hottest State. Dickey remained based in Philadelphia until he accepted an offer of housing on an inherited cotton farm in Louisiana from a former band manager. He moved there in 2014 with his partner and a determination to focus on his music career. The following year, inspired by Dickey's impromptu imitation of Blaze Foley from Live at the Austin Outhouse during a visit, Hawke approached his friend about portraying the singer for a long-brewing biopic. Dickey released the solo album Sexy Birds & Salt Water Classics via Max Recordings in 2016, then immersed himself in Foley's music as well as studying acting with Vincent D'Onofrio. After its Sundance Film Festival premiere in January 2018 (Dickey took home the festival's Special Jury Prize for Dramatic Achievement in Acting), Blaze arrived in theaters that August. Among Dickey's co-stars were Kris Kristofferson and, as Townes Van Zandt, Charlie Sexton. The film's original cast recording followed a month later on Light in the Attic Records, and Dickey quickly prepared the Sexton-produced Glimmer on the Outskirts for release in March 2019. It was the first album issued by SexHawkeBlack Records, an imprint of Dualtone run by Sexton, Hawke, and SXSW co-founder Louis Black. That year, Dickey and Hawke could be seen together in the D'Onofrio-directed western The Kid.
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