The Thacker Mountain Radio Hour reaches back into the vault for this classic show from March 3, 2018.
Our author is the Memphis music and cultural writer, Robert Gordon, who has chronicled rock and roll and blues in the Bluff City for 30 years. He collects many of his previously unpublished pieces in his latest collection, Memphis Rent Party.
Our musical guests are two acts who fully cover the roots music spectrum: a young North Mississippi musician, Cam Kimbrough, part of Mississippi’s famous family of the blues, plus the late David Olney, a veteran songwriter and Americana performer who died on stage in Florida in the middle of a performance on January 18th of this year. (Bios below).
Hosts: Jim Dees and our house band, the Yalobushwhackers
Air dates:
Saturday, May 16 – 7 pm (CT) – Mississippi Public Broadcasting
9 pm (CT) – Alabama Public Radio
Stay safe, everybody. Thanks for listening!
Robert Gordon is the author of Memphis Rent Party (Bloomsbury) a collection of essays from his thirty years of writing about Memphis music and history. Subjects include Jim Dickinson, Tav Falco, Jeff Buckley, Cat Power, and Jerry Lee Lewis among others.
His previous books include It Came from Memphis, Can’t Be Satisfied, The King on the Road, The Elvis Treasures, and Respect Yourself. He won a Grammy in 2011 for his liner notes to the Big Star box set Keep an Eye on the Sky.
His film work includes the PBS documentary Respect Yourself: The Stax Records Story and the critically acclaimed, Best of Enemies. Gordon lives in Memphis.
Cameron Kimbrough is an accomplished drummer and slide guitarist. His latest release is the 5-song EP, The Merge. Other releases include the EPs Breakfast for Dinner (2013) and Head for the Hills (2016). Kimbrough is the grandson of North Mississippi Hill Country blues legend Junior Kimbrough and the son of blues drummer, Kent Kimbrough.
Robert Gordon includes a previously unpublished essay on Junior Kimbrough in Memphis Rent Party.
Acclaimed singer/songwriter and globe-trotting performer, David Olney, released more than 20 albums over a four decade career, including six live recordings. His latest CDs include This Side Or the Other and Don’t Try to Fight It (Red Parlor Records). Olney was the host of the You Never Know streamcast in which he played and sang a song and shared the story behind it. (See DavidOlney.com and his YouTube channel).
“Known as a masterful wordsmith, Olney has a knack for creating the ideal atmosphere for his gothic noir tunes.” – Acoustic Guitar Magazine
The music world was shocked and saddened to hear of Olney’s untimely passing while onstage, in mid-performance, in Seaside, Florida on January 18, 2020.
