Join us for this REMOTE performance of the Thacker Mountain Radio Hour at the Mary C. O’Keefe Cultural Center (Ocean Springs, MS). This show will not be broadcast live. This performance requires tickets. We will rebroadcast the recording on Mississippi Public Broadcasting Saturday, August 29, 2015. The show is hosted by Jim Dees and our house band, The Yalobushwhackers fronted by the amazing John Paul Keith.
Jesmyn Ward is a native of DeLisle, Mississippi in Harrison County. She won the 2011 National Book Award for her novel Salvage the Bones which dealt with one poverty-stricken family’s efforts to deal with Hurricane Katrina. Her latest book is the memoir, Men We Reaped (Bloomsbury) which chronicles the deaths of five young men, family members and close friends, who all died over a four year period of various causes, from drug overdose to accident to suicide. It was named one of the Best Books of 2013 by The New York Times, NPR and Time magazine. Ward is an Associate Professor of English at Tulane University.
Cynthia Joyce is the editor of Please Forward: How Blogging Reconnected New Orleans After Katrina (UNO Press). The book is a collection of harrowing blog posts that bears witness to the horrific aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. Joyce has been a writer, editor, and web producer for more than 15 years and has contributed to several regional and national publications, including The Washington Post, Newsday, NPR.org, Entertainment Weekly, and Salon.
Jesse Robinson has been playing blues and jazz for over four decades. Born in Benton and raised in Mileston, Mississippi, Robinson first picked up the guitar at six, and was soon backing his father at church. He worked in Chicago with Little Milton and from 1981 to 1986 Jesse was the bandleader for blues singer Bobby Rush. In 1987 he started the late night weekend blues tradition at the Subway Lounge in Jackson. His CDs include Blues Child and his latest, Stray Star.
Blues singer Lisa Mills grew up near Pascagoula listening to gospel and soul music. Her first CD, Blues and Ballads, landed her a three-year tour of Europe as a vocalist where she shared the stage with Delbert McClinton, Dr. John, and Junior Wells. She recently wrapped up a summer solo acoustic tour of the U.K. Her newest CD is a re-working of her 2005 release, I’m Changing, this time with Grammy-winning producer, Trina Shoemaker. Mills’s voice has been described as “full-throated Otis Redding with some Muscle Shoals soul and Nashville country.” She lives in Mobile Bay, Ala.
