Gold Dusted Woman: A Conversation with Stevie Dicks

The queer community has long admired drag performers and are only recently (with the arrival of shows like RuPaul’s Drag Race or POSE) coming to widespread appreciation. Although the audience’s appetite for drag has grown, it remains a niche art form, often looked as being too flamboyant to be a serious art form. Covering amateur and professional shows raises awareness of these artists whose art form encompasses costuming, choreographing, writing, staging, and performing. It is this all-encompassing reality of drag performers that we wish to focus on in a special series on Queer Kentucky’s storytelling platform, supported by the Snowy Owl Foundation. Queer Kentucky is committed to supporting drag as an art form in Louisville by raising the visibility of performances and performers.

Photos by Milkman Photography for Queer Kentucky

Much is often said about one, Stevie Dicks. Among the many monikers she’s held over the years – club kid, graver, harlot – her most noteworthy and impressive is being crowned “The Mother of Alt Drag” in Louisville – a role that has given many young queer artists the guidance they need to create some of the boldest, craziest, and off-beat art we’ve seen here. Stevie’s a crafty and creative creature and has become one to watch! Some of her accolades include: her 7-year residency as a co-star on Sundays at Play; as a judge during Jade Jolie’s “Drag Me to Hell” competition series; a deacon of debauchery at Gilda Wabbit’s “CHURCH;” and as a regular at Queerdo and Slay Me Sundays. She was picked from the audience at a competition by Leah Halston to judge the upcoming week’s competition, and no one ever told her to leave, so she kept showing up and became a staple. 

Stevie is also a favorite at Le Moo Drag Brunch, where her creativity and ability to make something truly immaculate from nothing was tested. She’s gone viral for her Scar performance during Le Moo’s Disney Brunch, and for her quirky and somehow horny performance as The Grinch, delighting (and mildly traumatizing) brunch audiences each holiday season. 

Stevie’s lived many lives, and as many as she’s lived, she’s nearly lost. I asked (well, told) her to sit down with me and discuss her passions, art, and life with me as part of the ongoing series of drag highlights from across the Bluegrass.

When I arrive to do a quick interview, she’s seated behind the desk of the tattoo shop where she works. Between clients, she is rhinestoning the word “OFF” on a pair of custom-painted boots. She’s trying to tell the audience something, and that something is “FUCK OFF” in red and white letters on a Jackson Pollock-y painted leather dress and matching leather jacket, all of which she’s hand-painted immaculately.

We sit down, light up a cigarette, and gab.

SH: Stevie, how did you get started in the drag scene?

SD: Drag came a lot later for me. I started originally as a club kid, then doing burlesque. It was probably 2015/16 before I started doing drag. I performed with other local drag entertainers in the United as ONE Trans-awareness show. It was the first time I’d worked in an environment that wasn’t predominately cis, straight people.

SH: How did the ravey punk and burlesque scenes influence how you do drag?

SD: My drag is… a body snatcher. Stevie’s a chameleon. She takes on any form, she’s a parasite. I started dressing punk the summer after 5th grade and started going to punk shows and that was where I found my individuality. Those were the first times I started to really be myself and not like every shit-kicking redneck around me.

SH: Right, you’re from Carroll County. Things there are so different from here.

SD: Mmhmm. Yeah, they’re getting better. There’s a girl named Amy Jean that’s always trying to make change in that town. It’s very stuck in the 1950s. They’d never seen anybody like me, full face make up, platforms, pink hair and long stiletto nails.

SH: How’d people respond to that?

SD: It wasn’t really until high school that it got rough. I was expelled on the last day of my 8th grade year. So I was suspended the first two weeks of my high school year. There was this buzz already about this ‘weird and crazy thing’ that was coming to high school. Everyone had already planned to jump me. So I came in thinking everyone was gonna like my outfits, when in reality, they were ready to kick my ass. I started two weeks late, so they’d already had all this excitement built up to, get a piece, I guess. 

SH: Did they get one, a piece?

SD: Oh they got a piece. Plenty of pieces. Missing pieces, too.

Looking at Stevie Dicks, you’d know she’s not one to mess with. She’s some 6 feet tall, 7 in the right heel. Stevie looks like something between a biker and a rockstar. Her life doesn’t differ much from a rockstar, either. She’s been one of the most influential stars in Louisville’s art scenes, and she’s crossed more boundaries and barriers than probably anybody else in Louisville. Stevie’s background in the rave scene as a crafty neon creature of the night taught her much about bold pattern choices and wig making, and burlesque taught her more about performing, while presenting more varied creative challenges when it came to costuming.

Stevie credits these multiple lives for how she got here, but she never forgets to give credit to the people who helped her learn the techniques she still uses today. As a burlesque performer, she was always taught that no costume is ever truly complete. Stevie takes an old black dress and jacket and paints it to make it new. Every year, her holiday brunch costume staples, such as The Grinch, grow and evolve. This year she introduced a Borat-esque sling bikini to The Grinch’s furry thighs and ass. Unsurprisingly, it was a serve.

As she changes her looks, breathes new life into old wigs and costumes, and leather and vinyl pieces to order, I’m seeing she truly is the chameleon of drag. She never settles anywhere; she just keeps evolving.

SH: Tell me your biggest influences from childhood and today that influence your performance style and aesthetic.

SD: My grandmother was a very big influence on style and fashion. She was the only other one in my family that was very flamboyant and had a distinct style and wasn’t afraid to be gaudy. A lot of my drag is stuff I have of hers. I have scarves and all kinds of things that I use in my looks.

SH: That’s so cute.

SD: Yeah, others are Elizabeth Taylor, Bette Davis – she was mean as a snake and an unconventional beauty – Stevie Nicks (her witchy name-sake,) Pam Anderson, Leigh Bowery. I stumbled across Divine in ‘Pink Flamingos’ when I was probably 13, someone put in a VHS tape and I was ENTHRALLED by this big drag queen eating shit. Before Divine, I’d seen Coco Peru in the movie ‘TRICK’ when she gets … a certain body fluid in her eye.

SH: Following Pink Flamingos, you developed a lifelong love of John Water’s films. How has he influenced you?

SD: Well, it’s a perfect mix of camp and disgusting- which is what my character really goes on, a little bit sexy, funny, and a little to a lotta bit gross.

SH: It’s very on brand. I’d describe you as sexy, funny, and gross. Brings to mind your pimple-popping look and number. 

SD: Oh, God.

Years ago, I met Stevie at a John Waters-themed show she and Ethel Loveless had put on at the now-defunct Purrswaytions club. If I remember correctly, Stevie was in a diaper and Ethel was smashing eggs on her head for dollars. Bizarre stuff, but it certainly held my attention and opened my eyes to the absolute madness drag could be. We didn’t get to know each other for many years, but as she always does, Stevie left a BIG first impression.

When I met her then, she hadn’t even really gotten fully in the drag scene. She was still considered a freak, but she was sowing the seeds of the alt-drag scene she’d one day cultivate. Young queers saw her shows as a revolution. These punk kids, the goth kids, the outcasts, and the ones who needed community found her and she adopted them as her own. One thing that is very important to her is giving a home for those ‘kids,’ whether it’s a punk night or judging and helping develop the drag competitions that would help challenge them and give them a chance to really thrive and be seen. In doing so, she’s created a network of drag artists and audience members alike that stretch all the way from Los Angeles to Virginia, Chicago to Nashville, and feel at home in their art and in their skin largely in part to her influence and the power she has to make you believe in yourself. 

Today, Stevie’s life looks very different from the early days of her drag career. She’s not producing shows, and in this economy, is just doing what she has to to survive. She bleeds for her art but even still, she supports her friends and community in ways I live in awe of. When she’s facing the lights getting shut off, she’s still there to help her friends through challenges in life and to help them with their looks for this weekends brunch, finding ways to make it work. No one knows better than Stevie how one brunch or one show can be the difference from eviction or staying afloat. 

SH: I met you long, long, long ago at Purrswaytions and later saw you at Play when you joined Jade and Leah on the panel of Drag Me to Fame. Now you’re a staple LeMoo Drag Brunch. How did you get your start there?

SD: I’d done a LeMoo brunch around the time they got started, then I hadn’t done one for a long while. I got a message that they needed a Billy Butcherson (a character in Hocus Pocus) and I whipped up this look and the audience went up for it. I don’t think a lot of those people had seen prosthetics or any kind of drag like that. Then I was asked to do a Disney Villains theme. I had a Scar number, but it wasn’t very brunch-friendly. You know, because I ripped off Simba’s head and he bled all over me and I ate him.

SH: As one does.

SD: Right! I kinda took that one look and made it more friendly to an all-ages brunch. I didn’t want to traumatize those kids. The world will do enough of that on it’s own.

SH: What are future aspirations you have beyond LeMoo? You’ve kind of hit the glass ceiling here. What do you want for the future?

SD: I definitely want to keep on growing and push it to the next level. I’d love to audition for Dragula. I want to do it at the level I know I’m capable of. I know I can make something out of nothing and throw something together. I don’t want that on the show, though. I want to be able to execute the ideas in my head to the caliber I know I can accomplish [if I have the resources] so it’s a double-edged sword. I want it, but I have to worry if I can even afford to put a package together. I have to eat and keep a roof over my head and I can’t even… think about doing all of that. I don’t want to be the first girl going home because I wasn’t cooked enough or not prepared.

SH: You underestimate yourself a lot.

SD: It’s part of my charm.

SH: Yes, it is. Also, you have a lot of community, family, friends, and sisters, who would come together to help you get there and send you off with a package we’d all collectively be proud of. 

We spoke a bit about what she’d want to bring, which I won’t divulge here because ideally, we’ll one day see it for ourselves in the floor show of the Boulet Brothers Dragula. Stevie is one of this city’s best: Best queens, best monsters, best artists, best people. I may be a little biased, but I know a lot of people would agree and want to see her ascend into the stratosphere and show the world who she is. 

She spoke on her pride in the Louisville drag scene, calling it “one of the most diverse scenes in the nation,” because you can see punk drag, camp drag, high glamor, pageantry, live vocals, aerialists, sideshow, endless varieties of drag. When she stepped on the scene, it was sterile, cold, and unwelcoming to those who didn’t fit the mold, but she couldn’t be prouder of what it’s become today. Whether she will really admit it or not, she came and changed the entire city. She’s much too humble to brag, but that’s why I’m writing this article. She’s worthy of praise, and gratitude, and love, and support for her otherworldly contributions to us.

Before we split off so she could get back to work, I asked her to tell me what she would say to a fledgling drag artist who’s just putting their lashes on for the first time. “It’s not worth it,” she said with a laugh. “When you start out, do what you want to do. Its trial and error. Do the songs you want to do, not just what people will know. It’s not your job; you’re new and just doing it for fun. So have fun. Don’t be afraid to be stupid. Don’t be afraid to be silly. If it gets to the next level of it no longer just being a passion or a hobby, it’s a job, you take it there to that next level. That’s what happened to me. I started out having fun and being me and now it’s how I live and how I survive. You can still find ways to make it fun. If you’re not having fun you lose yourself.”

Her closing quote for us was succinct and powerful, wise and poetic. She says, putting out her cigarette, and reflecting on her well-earned legacy, “You can rest when you’re dead, sweetie.”