♪ >> Out on Grease Gravy Road, just south of Paoli, Stephen and Nancy Dickey are hosting an old-time music jam with Creekside Band.

They do this every week, but generally in the lodge at Spring Mill State Park.

Today, the group came out to Stephen and Nancy's to honor these keepers of the flame for their preservation of old-time music and an old-time way of life.

>> It's not by accident that Stephen has come to carry on the time-honored musical traditions of Orange County.

Around here, he's musical royalty.

♪ Stephen's father, Lotus Dickey, became a prominent figure in the world of old-time music.

Lotus was a blast from the past, even back in the '80s.

His notoriety grew.

They even named a couple of music festivals after him, including Bloomington's Lotus World Music and Arts Festival, because he carried with him something special, something miraculously out of place in the modern world.

>> I think we took note because he was somebody that the younger people were looking for.

There was somebody that represented this tradition.

He was continuing to write music.

He very much was a very distinctive voice, and he had this amazing talent.

I think that's what actually brought him up, was not the fact that he knew all of these old tunes, but the fact that he was this amazing musician and songwriter and fiddler.

♪ ♪ Better end this little song I've told you all about her ♪ >> There is so much amazing knowledge in the state, and Lotus, just for a moment, caused us all to pause and take look and see Indiana as something special.

And I think that that's what he really brought to us.

>> And today, Stephen carries on the values, the traditions, and the music he inherited from his father.

>> He took up the mantle after his father passed away.

And remember, it was all about music at home, music with family, music with friends, and Stephen became the kind of ambassador for that.

>> Stephen started playing music alongside his father as far back as he can remember.

>> Going to hear him play out at Brown County State Park, and this old guy with his guitar and fiddle, and he had this younger guy behind him, and that younger guy was Stephen Dickey.

And now Stephen's about the age that his father was when I first got to hear him as a young college student.

>> While he may have slowed down a bit these days, he and Nancy still play together, learning new songs and new ways to play them.

>> And, of course, nurturing for future generations, an Orange County tradition.

>> There's more jamming happening in little Orange County than almost any place I know in the state of Indiana.

And it's very distinctive in the sense that it's this kind of egalitarian, local, no one is trying to show off too much.

It's more about encouraging and getting together with family and friends and making music and making community through making music.

>> Their hospitality is undeniable, and their love of the music, the tradition, and the community is infectious, and more than just a little worthy of some recognition.

>> And so patterned after the National Endowment for the Arts, I started a program called the Indiana Heritage Fellowships.

And we've had everything from old-time fiddling to ballet folklorico to woodcarving and rag rug weavings.

We've had all different types of traditional arts, but it was kind of special to me when Stephen and Nancy Dickey got it, because Stephen will be the first to say, he's not the best singer in the world.

He's not the best fiddler in the world.

He's just the person the people go to.

He's that cohesive thing that connects them to the present, but also to the past.

And I think that that role, he takes very seriously.

>> Out here on the same patch of rolling hilltop that Lotus Dickey, and his father before him called home, Stephen and Nancy's door is always open.

Come on in, find yourself a chair and spend some time with a musical tradition that's just as moving and enriching as spending an afternoon at the Dickey homestead.

>> Thinking about Stephen and Nancy and the kind of intergenerational qualities.

There are very few young people that come into the jams these days, but Stephen and Nancy do this wonderful thing of -- of making sure that they're being kind of fed and kept.

They just want to encourage.

And that -- I think that's how they see themselves, encouragers.

♪ [ Applause ] >> Thank you so much to the Dickeys for having us.

Thank you, guys.