South Side Two-Step

Entertainer Donna Dean-Stevens enlivens the region’s performing arts scene with the Old Dominion Barn Dance in Hopewell and as a major contributor to the forthcoming fine arts center in Chester

by

When driving to meet Donna Dean-Stevens I kept wrestling with the idea of what she would be like. The further from Richmond I went, the thinner and longer the roads stretched, and my mind wandered appropriately. I had heard things like "She’s so charitable," or "I’ve heard she can be difficult to work with." But I had no interest in those kinds of anecdotes. 

The opinions of people who may have only passed by the woman couldn’t possibly encompass her entirety. After all, she is a performer who cut her teeth in the '70s and '80s playing music across the nation. Her songs charted on the Billboard 100 and she released an album in 1988 that earned her an Academy of Country Music award nomination the following year. 

But then she dropped it all — to marry country music legend and sausage mogul Jimmy Dean in 1991. And since Dean's death in 2010, she has found herself back in the spotlight, bringing traditional country music back to metro Richmond with the Old Dominion Barn Dance in Hopewell. She and her current husband, Jayson, have made a major contribution to the south of Richmond arts with a donation to the in-the-works fine arts center in Chester.

I continued to ponder Dean-Stevens as I pulled onto the road to her house. I passed a couple homes on the way and stopped in front of a small gate before a thicket of trees. The road continued past the gate into the woods, and so did I. After a few turns, the stand of trees opened up to reveal a sprawling home on the James River. 

I parked my car next to an ATV and went to meet Lynne Colacone, the entertainer’s personal assistant, who led me to a large, central building. There on the front stoop was Dean-Stevens. She welcomed me inside her home, Colacone took her leave, and Dean-Stevens and I sat down to talk about her story. 

She was born Donna Meade, on June 10, 1953, in Chase City. The family later moved to the "Hopewell-Sandston-Highland Springs area" (she explained that they moved 18 times in her first 21 years). She was the only daughter in her family, with six brothers. Looking back, she remembers some bright spots of being the only girl.

“I liked it when their friends came over,” she says, laughing.

She absorbed all of the music her family loved. She learned church hymns from her mother and R&B and country from her brothers. And whenever her siblings were out, she helped herself to the instruments that littered their living room. Around this time she also began to perform. She “caught the bug” at 12, after singing in front of people and “seeing the joy in their faces.” By the time she was 14, she was playing piano, organ and drums and singing.

Her father noted her ability as a singer and put a band together her freshman year of high school, the Midnight Movers. They began doing gigs that year, and she continued performing throughout high school. Donna graduated from Highland Spring High School in 1971, on her 18th birthday. The next day, she was on a bus headed to Boston for a gig. “I’ve never looked back. I wouldn’t have had it any other way,” she says.

Throughout the 1970s, she toured with her band across the United States, before moving to Nashville in 1981, where she lived and performed for the next nine years. By the late 1980s she was working with producer Buddy Killen, known for his work with artists including Dolly Parton and Joe Tex. Killen helped Dean-Stevens sign with Mercury-Polygram records, where she released her 1988 debut album, “Love’s Last Stand.” The album gained her national recognition and an Academy of Country Music nomination in 1989 for Best New Female Vocalist.

But Dean-Stevens had begun to tire of performing. She “had been there and done that for 20 years, and it was just getting more and more complicated. … I loved the music, but I didn’t love the music business,” she says.

Around the time she released her debut album, she was performing on television shows both nationally and locally in Nashville. While on set for a show, she met her future husband, Jimmy Dean. The two hit it off, and things picked up quickly.

“We met in June of 1989, and we began seeing each other in December of 1989, and then he asked me to marry him in March, and I left Nashville in May,” she says.

She explains that her exhaustion with the music industry made it easy to give up her career for a life with Dean. “My producer, he said, ‘Donna, what are you gonna do? You’ve got this record deal and you’re on your way up, but if you move to Virginia with Jimmy Dean that’s not gonna work out.’ I said, ‘Well, I think I’ll just go sell sausage,’” she says. 

For the next 20 years, the Deans lived in semi-retirement. They ran the Jimmy Dean sausage company, sailed the world on his yacht and performed in charity shows, always gratis. The couple even survived a fire in 2009 that brought down their home.

“I’m not gonna say it was any event. I’m not gonna say it was a place we visited. I can only tell you that the best memories I have was the laughter we shared,” Dean-Stevens says. 

After her husband’s death in 2010, Dean-Stevens was beside herself. Being with Jimmy had been her life, and without him she "lost her identity."

In 2013 she was approached by the Virginia State Fair to perform. “I hadn’t performed in 20 years," she says, "I didn’t know if I would chirp anything out. But I said, ‘I’ll try.’ ” 

She drew the second largest crowd that week — only behind the Charlie Daniels Band — on a Tuesday night. 

“I was floored,” Dean-Stevens says, “but the coolest part was at the meet and greet. I’m sitting at the table, and I look up and I see a sea of people … and they’re coming up to me saying, ‘Donna, please don’t stop. We don’t have anywhere to go to hear this kind of music.’ ” 

From then on, Dean-Stevens knew her purpose: bringing traditional country music shows back to Richmond. That led to the revival of the Old Dominion Barn Dance, which had been a country music showcase broadcast live from the old Lyric Theater in Richmond, from 1946-57. The Barn Dance was hosted by Sunshine Sue and drew national talent including Chet Atkins, Hawkshaw Hawkins, the Carter Family and Andy Griffith.

There were attempts to revive the barn dance after its initial run, in 1973 and again in 1993, but the efforts led nowhere.

A decade went by, and in 2003, Dean-Stevens decided she wanted to bring the dance back. She called a promoter who had the rights to the name, but he refused to sell to her. Reinvigorated by the state fair performance, she again tried to buy the barn dance name in 2013. Instead of a reply she got a notice that the promoter had abandoned the trademark. She swiftly picked it up and spent the next year and a half prepping her show. 

The new Old Dominion Barn Dance debuted in 2015 at the Henrico Theatre in Highland Springs before moving to the Beacon Theatre in Hopewell in 2017. The move was purely economically motivated, says Dean-Stevens, with the Beacon offering full services necessary for a production.

The family-friendly show includes music, comedy and dancing. Local talent is showcased in the first half of each show, followed by a national-level act. 

Dean-Stevens hosts the shows in addition to performing, designing the set and even co-writing the comedy. “Seeing the joy in people’s faces and knowing I’m providing a necessary relief — it’s the most rewarding thing I’ve ever done,” she says. 

The shows are staged five times each year, once each season plus a special show at Christmas. Performers range from 16-year-old fiddlers to old-school country artists in their 80s. 

The Christmas show will be staged on Dec. 9 this year and is billed as a Family and Friends Holiday Show featuring Grand Ole Opry member Bill Anderson. See beacontheatreva.com for information.

Dean-Stevens says there’s a need for this type of entertainment, one that’s hard to fulfill outside of country resort mecca Branson, Missouri, or the Grand Ole Opry in Nashville.

“It’s always a good, wholesome, family show, and it’s filled with lots of music that people miss hearing,” she says. “You don’t hear the old country music on the radio very much anymore, and you don't get to see this kind of show.”

For now, Dean-Stevens is satisfied with the show, but that doesn’t mean she’s not planning for the next step: “I’d like to take it on TV,” she says.

She and her current husband, Jayson Stevens, have made a significant financial gift to enhance the performing arts south of the James. The couple, who married in 2012, donated $350,000 to the Chesterfield Cultural Arts Foundation toward its fine arts center, the Baxter Perkinson Center for the Arts, set for construction in the Village Green in Chester next to the library. The donation was made earlier this year in honor of Jimmy Dean, and the 350-seat arts center  theater will be named in his honor.

Hugh Cline, chairman of the foundation, says he thinks Dean-Stevens saw the donation as a great way to honor Jimmy Dean’s legacy. 

“We think the world of Donna and Jayson, and this donation gives us the opportunity not only to fulfill our purpose, but to serve as a center for performing arts in Richmond,” he says.