Hannah Dasher’s music is just like her food — it’s made to stick to your ribs.
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For years now, she’s been satisfying country fans hungry for a little old-school flavor, mixing unapologetic twang with the bold, spitfire attitude of a Southern diva. You might call her music “greasy” comfort country, and she’d take it as a compliment. … That is how she describes her new single, “Waffle House.”
Earlier this year, she set the table for a new era with the Scattered, Smothered, & Covered EP. But the main course was her debut cookbook, Stand By Your Pan: 100 Easy and Affordable Comfort Food Recipes So Good They’ll Hurt People’s Feelin’s. Brimming with savory succulence and side-splitting humor — plus some classic family wisdom — it’s not just a celebration of hearty home cooking. It’s a spunky send-up made to feed body and soul.
Currently balancing life “between a Fender and a frying pan,” Dasher spoke with Nashville Lifestyles following a book event in Tucson, Arizona, where she helped hapless professional chefs learn the secret art of Nana’s biscuits.
With a personality (and hairdo) to match her Golden Age country vocal, the frequent Grand Ole Opry guest owes her sound to stars like Loretta Lynn and Dolly Parton — and Stand By Your Pan follows suit. She calls it a labor of love, born from a boisterous childhood of triedand-true shared meals.
“I come from a family of great cooks, and we’re all ‘opinionated,’” Dasher says with a laugh. “But I took for granted that everybody grew up having meals together as a family at the table every night. I didn’t realize how many girls my age don’t know how to cook. How many of us millennials can’t hold our own in the kitchen. And I’m like, ‘Dang!’”
Hoping to inspire a renaissance of Sunday suppers, Dasher’s recipes match her larger-thanlife attitude step for step. Main dishes feature names like “Naomi Judd’s Possum Pie,” “Getchyo’ Man Beef Roast,” and “Ma, the Meatloaf!” Sides include “Busy Girl Green Beans” and “You Ain’t Nevuh Had These Black-Eyed Peas,” which she calls “the best.” But if any of that sounds sort of generic, just know: “All Southern cuisine wasn’t created equal.”
Dasher says her cookbook is more than a bunch of recipes. She grew up in a special part of the world, and her cooking reflects the unique mix of culture found in a small slice of Georgia and South Carolina.
“Down there in the Low Country, I was raised by Black women and white women, so I kind of got the best of both culinary worlds,” she explains. “When the bold flavors of the Gullah Geechee African descendants meet the European techniques of my Salzburger ancestors, something really cool happens.”
In order to do this food justice, Dasher had to resurrect some of the techniques used. Many were passed through the generations orally and never got written down. Or cooks would leave out critical information they just took for granted. Starting in 2020’s lockdown period, Dasher put some serious effort into bringing it all back, filming the fun in her “time capsule” Nashville home — itself a shrine of old-school country memorabilia. She ended up with a TikTok following of 1.6 million.
“There are secrets these old soul food cooks and little old ladies took with them to their grave,” she says. “So, quarantine was a grace period for me to learn to perfect some of these things and figure these things out.”
The reception so far has been encouraging. After its release in March, Stand By Your Pan hit the top of Amazon’s Celebrity & TV Cookbooks chart (beating out Liza Minnelli, Dasher points out). She also hints at bringing the idea to TV, but she’s careful to point out she’s “so much more than a cook.” Part country singer-songwriter, part homespun comedienne, Dasher aims to be a do-it-all entertainer, inspiring multi-hyphenates in the real world.
“I just really want folks to know that it’s possible to be a rockstar at your job, and to come home and to be domestic — to put a meal on the table,” she notes. “We can still make that happen.”
She takes her own advice with the playful Scattered, Smothered, & Covered EP. Recorded with the loose-fitting feel of a full (bellied) band, classic country covers join the new “Waffle House” in tribute to a Southern institution. On that original track, Dasher puts her own spin on sassy staples like Loretta Lynn’s “Don’t Come Home A-Drinkin’ (With Lovin’ On Your Mind).”
She actually wrote the track with Mark D. Sanders more than 10 years back — and after pulling it out of the freezer, found it still good. Dasher now says it marks the “beginning of a new sound era,” and will be playing on Waffle House jukeboxes everywhere.
“I love Waffle House — it makes your hair shiny!” she says with an infectious chuckle.
The EP also features her versions of Hank Williams Jr.’s “Outlaw Women,” Earl Thomas Conley’s “Holding Her and Loving You,” and, of course, Tammy Wynette’s “Stand By Your Man” — all songs that helped shape her life, just like the home cooking she now feels moved to share. Thinking back to a dining room table filled with laughter and love, Dasher knows mealtime had a huge impact on her. And if we “stand by” those values, she thinks they still work.
“That’s where I learned to engage with adults. That’s where I learned to pray. That’s where I felt valued because we had to put our Game Boys away and have conversations and listen and participate, and ask to be excused,” she explains. “It made me reverent and respectful of the ones that prepared the meal — that were putting that roof over my head. I have carried that gratitude, and I know that I’m better for it.”