It will take you about 143.2 nanoseconds of talking with Sean Dietrich to figure out he’d be a great guy to get a beer with.
Funny thing about that sentence is it is just the kind of thing he would write in one of his frequent online and newspaper columns if he were writing a profile of someone else.
Or you’d learn about his passion for Waffle Houses, a blind dog, a blind goddaughter and veterans. You’d also feel the pain of his father’s suicide, how he was a pudgy kid and how his soul drips with empathy for people who are having a little trouble, here or there.
And just about every time you read one of his occasionally self-deprecating commentaries, you are assured to be left with a deep emotion — sometimes a belly laugh, other times a tear or a sniffle.
Dietrich, a good-ol’ [wit of a 41-year] -old boy who grew up poor on the Florida panhandle, will be at the Charleston Music Hall June 20 to perform for the first time locally, despite periodic visits here through the years. (Including his honeymoon with wife Jamie.)
He’s a humorist and storyteller in the vein of Will Rogers, Mark Twain and Jeff Foxworthy. When here, he’ll play the banjo, guitar, piano and maybe a couple of more instruments as he weaves stories of growing up in an American South that’s disappearing.
And it will be 90 minutes of pure, unadulterated fun.
Performing across the U.S.
Dietrich and his wife travel the country about 200 nights a year performing in venues that can range from about 950 people, like the Charleston Music Hall, or the small social club stuck in the backwoods of rural Georgia. (He also once took the stage at the Grand Ole Opry.)
“We’ve performed in South Carolina a handful of times, and every time we go, people say, ‘Why don’t you ever come to Charleston?’ ” Dietrich said in a recent telephone interview. “We’re like 99% of Americans in that Charleston is special to us. We took our honeymoon in Charleston in 2003.”
Here’s what he wrote about the chilly December honeymoon, which featured a meal at Slightly North of Broad which he recalls he really couldn’t afford at the time:
“To small-town folks, the city can almost seem intimidating. This is especially true if you are like me and the most cultured city you’re familiar with is, for instance, Dothan.
“People kept telling us that Charleston is the second most historic city in the world (Rome, Italy, is the first). They said this wherever we went. Even at the Waffle House where our waitress was a tired woman with the personality of a boiled ham.”
There in just two paragraphs, he sneaked in class, culture, history, Waffle Houses and ham, the staple of a Southern plate. Pretty good for a Florida guy who now lives in Birmingham.
“Charleston has a unique vibe to it,” he said during the interview. “It’s Southern — and yet it’s Southern in a way that is unique to itself. You have people in Alabama wearing Roper boots and Wrangler jeans, and that’s Southern, and then you go to Birmingham, and they’re dressed very Metropolitan Atlanta.
“But in Charleston, it’s the bow ties and the pink checkered shirts for the guys. It has its own look, its own feel, its own dialect. I love it.”
On his last post-pandemic visit, he said the city seemed laden with a few too many visitors. (Of course, he was one of them!)
“I come from northwest Florida. That’s my home. So when it comes to the grief of development, I’m with you. I can’t even go back home now without experiencing this mournful feeling of loss because my hometown is technically still there. And yet it’s buried beneath a cruise ship of crap.”
About feeling a little better
Dietrich says the main point of his shows — like in the columns and books — is to help people feel a little bit better for the hour or two that he’s on stage telling stories and playing music.
“If they walk away feeling any better than they did before they walked in, then I’m glad I’ve accomplished my job. I can’t do much, but perhaps for those 90 minutes, I can make somebody feel good.”
He says many of the stories he tells are about a South that’s disappearing — where today’s Southern kids don’t know about Sunday church dinners on the grounds where tables are laden with the best fried chicken, mac’ and cheese, potato salad, green beans, fresh tomatoes, peas and some kind of intergalactic congealed salad. And, of course, there are desserts that run the gamut from blueberry, chocolate and pecan pies to the high-and-mighty nine-layer caramel cake or coconut cake or a simple pound cake that melts in your mouth.
“These stories are mostly about growing up in this interesting and diverse hotbed we call the South and there are so many shared experiences that we have from growing up in this part of the world,” he said. “And I fear that that way of life that we experienced when we came in — at least my generation — came in on the tail end of that way of life, and it’s falling apart.
“Everybody’s learning how to talk like Midwestern sports announcers. Everybody is learning how to be this global community instead of this rich, strong region that we used to experience.”
He said today’s kids are having a much different experience growing up in the air-conditioned South because of the prevalence of the internet and mobile phones, among other things.
“I feel it’s my turn to take up the torch of reminding people what it used to be like,” he said. “If we get a lot of kids at the shows, I want them to know where they came from.
“It’s all done with a light heart. It’s all been very humorous, but ultimately, I’d like to recall simpler times.”
He emphasized that he was not making any political statement or reference — just yearning for a time when people talked with each other, instead of at each other and when they sat in front yards and waved to neighbors on walks after supper.
“I’m talking about the good things. I mean, it can be small. It doesn’t have to be the large parts of our culture. It can be the way we used to eat at church potlucks. … You go to a church function now at some little tiny church and they’ve got chicken from Chick-fil-A.”
Can’t you just imagine the horror on Dietrich’s face just thinking about that specific poultry sin?
IF YOU WANT TO GO: Humorist and author Sean Dietrich will perform 7 p.m. June 20 at the Charleston Music Hall. Tickets are $25 to $75 and available at charlestonmusichall.com. Doors open at 6 p.m. You can read Dietrich’s columns every month at charlestoncitypaper.com.
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