Thacker Mountain Radio welcomes Texas legend Kinky Friedman and Oxford’s newest novelist, Julie Cantrell, to Off Square Books Thursday, Feb. 23 at 6 PM. Musical guests will be bluesmen L.C. Ulmer and Jimmy “Duck” Holmes and New Orleans hillbilly band, Michael Hurtt and the Haunted Hearts.

Join us this Thursday at Off Square Books. Admission is free and the show can be heard on Rebel Radio, 92.1 FM.

Kinky Friedman- Kinky Friedman is a singer/songwriter known for his bawdy lyrics and biting social commentary (“They Ain’t Making Jews Like Jesus Anymore.”) He is the author of 30 books, including a successful series of mystery novels and was a candidate for Texas governor in 2006. His most recent book is Heroes of a Texas Childhood with essays on Sam Houston, Davy Crockett, Willie Nelson and Barbara Jordan, among others. He is also the author of Kinky Friedman’s Guide to Texas Etiquette: Or How to Get to Heaven or Hell Without Going Through Dallas-Fort Worth. A former Peace Corps worker in Borneo in the mid-1960s, Friedman lives in the Texas Hill Country, outside Kerrville, where he operates the Utopia Animal Rescue Ranch, in its 15th year as a haven for unwanted dogs and cats. Following his Thacker appearance, Kinky will perform at Proud Larry’s at 9 PM with songwriter, Kacey Jones.

Julie Cantrell- Julie Cantrell is the author of the just released novel, Into the Free (David C. Cook) a Depression-era tale of hardship, faith and redemption. Cantrell has been a freelance writer and children’s author for ten years. She was a contributing editor at MOMsense magazine and the Southern Literary Review. Oxford’s Neil White, author of In the Sanctuary of Outcasts, said, “Julie Cantrell’s Into the Free is a searing tale of heartache, faith, forgiveness, and doubt set amidst gypsies, angels, addicts, asylums, roughnecks and rodeo hands.” Julie and her family live outside Oxford where they operate the Valley House Farm.

Michael Hurtt and the Haunted Hearts- Michael Hurtt and the Haunted Hearts passionately resurrect New Orleans’ once rich, now nearly invisible, hillbilly music heritage. The band blends its original tunes with covers of lost gems by the likes of Jay Chevalier, Red LeBlanc and the original “Mardi Gras Mambo” man, Jody Leavins. The Hearts’ rock-a-bayou hillbilly style is a Southern Gothic collision of the rural and the urban; an electrified string sound with a Cajun back beat. The band’s latest release is the single, Hamtramck Baby.

Jimmy “Duck” Holmes- Jimmy “Duck” Holmes is the proprietor of one of the oldest juke joints in Mississippi, the Blue Front in Bentonia. In the mid-2000s he began performing more actively as a practitioner of the “Bentonia Blues,” a distinctive style of open tuning pioneered by Skip James. His CDs include Gonna Get Old Someday (Fat Possum), Back to Bentonia and Done Got Tired of Tryin’ (both Broke & Hungry) In August of 2007, a Mississippi Blues Trail historic marker was dedicated in Holmes’ honor in front of the Blue Front Café.

L.C. Ulmer- L.C. Ulmer was raised near Stringer, Miss. and left there at age 14. He drove a truck 40 years in and out of Chicago, playing his eccentric blues on the side. Ulmer moved back to his home state of Mississippi in 2004 and, with the help of bassist Justin Showah and Hill Country Records, began recording and touring. His CD, Long Way From Home: Live at Rootsway Festival, Parma, Italy, was released in 2007. In 2009, L.C. Ulmer was named the Blues Artist of the Year by the Mississippi Delta Blues Society of Indianola. 

Join host Jim Dees and our house band, the Yalobushwhackers, this Thursday, Feb. 23 at 6 PM at Off Square Books. You can hear the show locally Thursday on Rebel Radio (92.1 FM). Tune in to Mississippi Public Broadcasting every Saturday night at 7 PM for Thacker Mountain Radio immediately following A Prairie Home Companion, or listen Saturday online: (http://www.etv.state.ms.us/radio/index.html).  

Thanks for checking us out online. Come back for weekly updates, and stop by our highlights tab at the top and our facebook page for a complete gallery of pictures and clips from the show.

Thacker Mountain Radio returns live! Thursday, Feb. 2 at 6pm at Off Square Books.

Free admission or tune in live to 92.1

Tom Franklin-  Tom Franklin is the author of the acclaimed story collection, Poachers, as well as the novels, Hell at the Breech, Smonk and his latest, Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter. That book won England’s prestigious Golden Dagger award for crime fiction. Previous winners of the Dagger, awarded annually since 1960, have included John LeCarre, James Lee Burke, Patricia Cornwell and Dick Francis. Paste magazine said, “Reading and immersing yourself in Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter feels the same way a long afternoon and evening listening to a great blues singer in a juke joint feels—like you have tapped into an elemental and profound part of your soul you hadn’t really understood before.”

Beth Ann Fennelly- Beth Ann Fennelly is the author of the poetry collections, Unmentionables, Tender Hooks and Open House and the essay collection, Great with Child: Letters to a Young Mother. Fennelly teaches poetry and writing at Ole Miss where she was named the 2011 Humanities Teacher of the Year. In 2009, she won a Fulbright grant to Brazil and spent six months there with her husband, Tom Franklin, and their three small children. The family makes their home in Oxford. 

The Bill Perry Trio- The Bill Perry Trio is Bill Perry on piano, Keith Fondren, on bass and Fred Dunlap III on drums. The group’s funky jazz sound includes shades of hip hop, reggae and electronica. Their latest release, available on i-Tunes, is Beyond the Darkness. The group will perform at Proud Larry’s on Feb. 11.

Star & Micey-  Star & Micey’s self-titled 2009 debut album on Ardent Records was a homegrown Memphis affair with guests Luther Dickinson of the North Mississippi Allstars,  Jody Stephens of Big Star and Rick Steff of Lucero. Their newest CD is Emerge Memphis Sessions and showcases the band’s strong melodies and soul-driven folk music, what they affectionately call, “Pofolk.” Star and Micey perform as a trio led by songwriter Joshua Cosby on guitar, banjo and vocals, with brother Geoff Smith on bass, and Nick Redmond on guitar, banjo and vocals. They are often joined by Jeremy Standfill on drums, Adam Woodard on accordion and Jessie Munson on violin.

Join host Jim Dees and our house band, the Yalobushwhackers, at Off Square Books or tune in to Rebel Radio, 92.1 FM. Also on Mississippi Public Broadcasting  (90.3 FM) every Saturday night at 7 PM immediately following A Prairie Home Companion, or listen Saturday online: (http://www.etv.state.ms.us/radio/index.html). 

Thanks for checking us out online. Come back for weekly updates, and stop by our highlights tab at the top and our facebook page for a complete gallery of pictures and clips from the show.

Author: Martha Foose – A Southerly Course

In the highly anticipated follow-up to her James Beard Award-winning, Screen Doors and Sweet Tea, chef/author Martha Foose has just released, A Southerly Course, Recipes and Stories From Closer to Home (Clarkson Potter). Readers will find recipes for tried-and-true classics, like Skillet Fried Corn and Chocolate Chiffon Pie, as well as dishes that are surprising and new, like Peanut Chicken and Sweet Pickle Braised Pork Shoulder. No matter the inspiration, all of the recipes have one thing in common: each comes with a story.

Martha Foose was born and raised in the Mississippi Delta and attended the famed pastry school École Lenôtre in France. She returned to Mississippi and opened Bottletree Bakery in Oxford and the Mockingbird Bakery in Greenwood.

Music: Homemade Jamz – The Game

   The Homemade Jamz Blues Band of Tupelo has the distinction of being one of the youngest – and hottest – blues bands performing today. The band tours the US, Canada and Europe and consists of siblings, guitarist Kyle Perry, 19, bassist Ron, 16, and drummer Taya, 12. The group was voted “Band of the Year” at the 2010 Blues Awards.  Their newest CD is The Game.

Music : Shannon McNally – Western Ballad 

  Shannon McNally resides in Holly Springs and has just released her newest CD, Western Ballad (Sacred Sumac). In its review, The New York Times said, “She has the voice: bruised, smoky and ornery, right at home where country and soul meet. She has the melodies and the timing… she’s irresistible.” Shannon’s Canton appearance is part of national tour that will take her through Texas to New Mexico, Colorado and California.

7:30 – Mississippi Symphony in Concert

Lawn chairs and picnic baskets are encouraged.  For more information, call 601-859-1307.

Guitarist George McConnell will join host Jim Dees and our house band, the
Yalobushwhackers for the Canton show which will be recorded for broadcast at a later date on Mississippi Pubic Broadcasting.

You can hear Thacker Mountain Radio every Saturday night throughout the spring and summer at 7PM on MPB immediately following A Prairie Home Companion, or listen Saturdays online: http://www.etv.state.ms.us/radio/index.htm.

 7:30 – Mississippi Symphony in Concert

Free. Lawn chairs and picnic baskets encouraged.

In case of rain, the two events will be moved to the Mississippi National Guard Armory in Canton, located at 2924 Highway 51 South. Please join us for an evening Mississippi grooves, food and stories.

Listen online Saturday at 7pm on MPB.

Philip Stevens is the author of a collection of poems, The Determined Days, which have appeared in many publications such as the The North American Review, The Oxford American, as well as in the anthologies American Poetry: The Next Generation and Phoenix Rising: The Next Generation of Expansive Poetry. Stephens was a finalist for the PEN Center USA West Award, and his chapbook, The Signalmen, made him the recipient of the Hanks Chapbook Award from the St. Louis Poetry Center. He lives in Kansas City, Missouri, with his wife and two sons. His latest book is entitled Miss Me When I’m Gone.

“Stephens has written a novel that illuminates the slow decline and degradation of Middle America, a topic he clearly feels passionately about. . . . I recommend Miss Me When I’m Gone to anyone who is unafraid of facing an honest story that takes you deep into the world of struggling musicians, desperate mothers, meth addicts, sinful preachers, and an array of successes and failures that make up the realistic characters Stephens has created.” —Michael Carey, Neworld Review

Musical Guest: Ben Glover

Ben Glover has been a songwriter since his teenage years, when he was inspired by Bob Dylan. It’s writers whose work contains lyrical richness and who take a poetic approach in exploring the human condition that attract Ben. He is from the County Antrim (North Ireland) village of Glenarm. He graduated in law at Queens University Belfast, before he decided to put his legal ambitions on hold to pursue a career in music. His debut album was The Week The Clocks Changed which was released in 2008. Spending 2009 writing and performing in the U.S., Glover returned home in early 2010 with his new album Through the Noise, Through the Night.

“Ben Glover has been quietly charming the under-crackers off of everyone from Belfast to Nashville and everywhere in between for the past few years and his debut album,The Week The Clocks Change is one of the most accomplished records you’ll hear all year.” —Fate Magazine

Musical Guest: John-Alex Mason

John-Alex Mason is a one-man band of kick drums, electric guitars, and vocals from Southern Colorado. Mason added his unique sound to the project, Jook Joint Thunderclap, a world boogie collaboration of master players from Chicagoland, Holly Springs, Guinea and Colorado. Mason often joins other players on his club shows including master drummer Fara Tolno on Djembe, IBC-winner Lionel Young on Fiddle, and YouTube sensation Ronnie Shellist on Harmonica. He also creates electic jams with Cedric and Cody Burnside whenever he and the Burnside Exploration (Intrepid Artists) are on the same bill.

“John-Alex Mason’s voice sounds like comes from another time and place; its mature, smoky curl jumps from the speakers with a density many singers spend years trying to achieve.  Mason’s songs take his listeners on a journey through long, back-breaking days and hot juke-joint nights.  One listen and you’ll hear pure Delta blues truth reincarnated in this young soul.” —Art Tipaldi, Blues Revue

** Show starts at 6 pm at Off-Square Books **

Jack Pendarvis is the author of two novels, Shut Up Ugly and Awesome! and two collections of short stories, The Mysterious Secret of the Valuable Treasure and Your Body is Changing. He is a columnist for The Oxford American, and The Believer. His work has appeared in many other publications, including McSweeney’s and The New York Times. You can follow his hilarious blog at jackpendarvis.blogspot.com.

Author: Jesmyn Ward

Jesmyn Ward grew up in Delisle, Mississippi near New Orleans. Her debut novel, Where the Line Bleeds (Agate), is set in a rural town on the Mississippi Gulf Coast. The book tells the story of the twins Joshua and Christophe who graduate from high school and into bleak job prospects. Tension mounts as Christophe begins selling drugs and are heightened further with the arrival of the twins’ long-absent drug addict father who sparks a violent confrontation.

Publisher’s Weekly praised the novel, “A fresh new voice in American literature, Ward unflinchingly describes a world full of despair but not devoid of hope.” Ward’s second novel, Salvage the Bone, will be published late next year. In May 2011, she will wind up her year long appointment as the John and Renee Grisham Writer-in-Residence at the University of Mississippi. Prior to her current position in Oxford, Ward was a Stegner Fellow at Stanford University in California.

Musical Guest: Sam Mosley Blues Band

New Albany-based blues musician Sam Mosley has logged over 40 years of performing throughout the world, mostly with fellow blues great Bob Johnson until Johnson’s death in 1998. The pair recorded three albums for Malaco Records including 1972′s Mississippi Mud. Mosley and Johnson became widely known in the 1980s releasing several albums of blues and southern soul. They continued writing songs for artists such as Johnnie Taylor, Bobby “Blue” Bland, Little Milton and others. The band’s fame spread internationally in 1989 when they performed at the Montreux Jazz Festival. Their final CD is Juke Joint. In 2008 Mosley and Johnson were honored with a Mississippi BluesTrail marker which was unveiled in Union County. myspace.com/sammosleyblues

Musical Guests: The Hot Seats

The Hot Seats, from Richmond, VA, play string band music with simple intentions: to keep the role of traditional musician as entertainer and commentator alive and kicking. The band’s most recent full length CD release, Retreat To Camp Candy Temptation Island highlights the band’s flexibility, moving between bluegrass, ragtime, old time, jug band, and Klezmer with ease, injecting humor and sharp witted commentary along the way. Following their Thacker appearance, the band will perform on Music in the Hall, and then a late set at the Blind Pig. www.thehotseats.net

Dubbed the “godfather behind creative nonfiction” by Vanity Fair, Lee Gutkind takes the rich material of his own life to define, defend, and further expand the genre he has done so much to shape. The result is a hilarious memoir of Gutkind’s colorful life as a motorcyclist, a medical insider, a sailor, a college professor, an overaged insecure father, and a literary whipping boy. In Forever Fat Gutkind battles his weight, his ex-wives, his father, his rabbi, his psychiatrist, and his critics in a lifelong cross-country, cross-cultural search for stability and identity. The reader benefits from Gutkind’s battles, being treated to a story of the awakening of a man and his mission.

Author: Ian Frazier

Frazier, author of Great Plains, On the Rez, and other widely appreciated non-fiction books and many New Yorker pieces (one of my favorites was the study of plastic bags caught in Manhattan trees) has written a wonderful travelogue chronicling two treks through one of the world’s most infamous,  gargantuan, and weird terrains, and we can go with, even while sitting in our comfortably climate controlled living rooms.  We won’t be taking the comfy Trans-Siberian railroad, though, but instead, a hooptie van, and we’ll be camping out in the vast taiga, home to tigers, wolves, and the unhappy ghosts of millions of people unfortunate enough to be exiled there, or slaughtered by Genghis Khan or Stalin. Our guides are Sergei and Volodya, who screw things up nearly as often as they facilitate them. Frazier is a brilliant observer of the landscape, the people, the system, and a well-informed interpreter of the history of  Siberia, whether he’s pondering the discarded blister pack at his feet, the Decembrists, the glass beach at Vladivostok, sable fur, or ice roads where traffic proceeds for miles on frozen rivers. In his casual and personal style, Frazier rambles on, eventually pulling all his anecdotes and factoids and literary asides together to complete a fascinating, dynamic tableau of the evolution of Siberia from a wilderness crossed only by nomadic hordes to a kingdom of exile to a land of decrepit industry with enormously rich natural resources, to what? The world is going to need to know more about Siberia, and this is an excellent place to start. A truly amazing, great book, with meaty endnotes, nice little pen drawings by the author, and a beautiful bibliography.

Musical Guest: Bill Perry Trio

The Bill Perry Trio, based in Oxford, consists of Bill Perry on keyboards, Fred Dunlap III on drums and Keith Fondren on bass. The group slides easily between blues, jazz, funk, hip-hop and even country music. The trio cites as influences Herbie Hancock, Miles Davis, John Coltrane, and Return to Forever. The trio hopes to begin recording a CD by the end of the year. Currently, Bill Perry has a solo piano CD available at all live shows, Language Of The Cosmos. The CD features five originals & two covers. http://www.myspace.com/billmysteryo

Musical Guest: Taylor Hildebrand

Taylor Hildebrand has been a mainstay of the Jackson, MS music scene over the past decade with his bands Passenger Jones and more recently Horse Trailer, as well as his solo performances. His latest solo disc, released this summer, is the six-song EP, Nena. The CD features an array of back-up musicians including Tommy Bryan Ledford and Valley Magee. A video of the song “After the Fall,” from Nena recently won the 2010 Music Video Showcase at the Crossroads Film Festival. myspace.com/taylorhildebrandmusic

Country songwriter Marshall Chapman had three acclaimed albums out in 1995 when she released It’s About Time… recorded live at the Tennessee State Prison for Women (Margaritaville/Island) which drew rave reviews. After its release, Marshall and her band, The Love Slaves, toured for several years with Jimmy Buffett, playing for over a million people. Chapman’s career has been roaring since. In 1998 she contributed songs to Good Ol’ Girls, an Off Broadway musical based on the stories of Lee Smith and Jill McCorkle.

In September 2003, Chapman branched out further, publishing her first book, Goodbye, Little Rock and Roller (St. Martin’s Press). The book is a memoir of her Nashville exploits using her some of her songs as backdrops. It was a finalist for the Southern Book Critics Circle Award.

Most recently, Marshall has published a new book They Came to Nashville (Vanderbilt University Press). It features a series of interviews with the likes of Emmylou Harris, Miranda Lambert and Willie Nelson, among others, who describe the circumstances (some hilarious, some tragic) surrounding their arrival in Music City. Chapman also has a new music CD out, Big Lonesome (Tall Girl). The CD is a collection of songs written as duets with the late Tim Krekel who passed away in June 2009, three months before recording was to begin. Chapman finished the album with help from Buffett keyboardist Mike Utley and guitar stalwart, Will Kimbrough. Chapman also acted in her first movie (Country Strong), where she plays Gwyneth Paltrow’s road manager. It should be released this fall.

Musical Guest: Mayhem 88

Mayhem 88 is a blend of the Oxford bands, Rocket 88 and Mayhem String Band. Rocket 88 is Rosamond Posey (lead guitar/vocals/harmonica), Jamie Posey (rhythm guitar/vocals), Nathan Robbins (bass) and Ryan Rogers (drums). They will be joined by members of the Mayhem String Band: Chris Steiner (guitar), Kevin Larkin (mandolin), Ben Johnson (bass) and Jamison Hollister on fiddle. Rocket 88’s most recent CD is Full Circle. Mayhem String Band’s most recent release is Land Pirates.

In 1962 the Cubans have their Russian missiles pointed right at the sugarcane plantations of Red Church, Louisiana, but nine-year-old Charlie Boone and his gravel-eating younger brother, Jute, are fixed on velvet ants and the declining health of a horse named Lunch Time. Their father has been sent upriver after a botched convenience store holdup and a walloping with a can of Crisco. Their mother, too, has vanishedMemaw and Pawpaw insist she disappeared in a hurricane. Buckle up for a big dose of Cajun comedy as Charlie takes charge.

“Dischler’s raised the bar when it comes to the term ‘romp.’ What a great, great addition to the comic southern novel.” -George Singleton

“My Only Sunshine is a rollicking fun read. Just when you think it couldn’t possibly get more outrageous or hilarious, Dischler will turn yet another corner you never saw coming!” -Jill McCorkle

Author: Sandra Beasley

“These poems are fresh, crisp, and muscular. They are decisive and fearless. Every object, icon, or historical moment has a soul with a voice. In these poems these soulful ones elbow their way to the surface of the page, smartly into the contemporary now.”-Joy Harjo, prize citation from “The Piano Speaks” For an hour I forgot my fat self, my neurotic innards, my addiction to alignment. For an hour I forgot my fear of rain. For an hour I was a salamander shimmying through the kelp in search of shore, and under his fingers the notes slid loose from my belly in a long jellyrope of eggs that took root in the mud.

Author: Robert St. John

Robert St.John is native of Hattiesburg, MS. For the last 20 years has served as executive chef, president, and CEO of the Purple Parrot Café, the Crescent City Grill, and the Mahogany Bar in Hattiesburg and Meridian.

St.John is a nationally-known restaurateur, chef, food writer, author, and a true original. St.John, one of the nations’s only food/humor columnists, began self-syndicating his weekly newspaper column six years ago and quickly amassed a loyal and fanatical readership. The Lexington Herald-Leader called him a “Jeff Foxworthy-style chef with an opinion on all things culinary.”

Everyone from Time magazine— “St. John explores the roots of Southern hospitality with witty essays and quietly sophisticated recipes” to National Public Radio— “The Mississippi restaurateur, food columnist, and chef treats his subjects with humor and a lot of down-home conversation.” has chimed in on St.John.

Musical Guest: Casey Lipe and The Scavengers

After graduation from South Panola High, then Ole Miss, in the 1970’s, saxophonist Casey Lipe, embarked on a musical journey that has taken him from the Gulf Coast, to New York City, to Texas, and across the river to the Delta. In 1990, an accident cut off all the fingers on his left hand, which were successfully (if not miraculously) re-implanted. Since then, Lipe has fully recovered and maintains a vigorous performing schedule. Members of the Scavengers include local musicians Bill Perry Jr. and Jesse Lipe.