by Jim Dees – In 2012, Beck-Dorey Stein was like so many twenty-somethings: broke, working several jobs and haunting Craigslist. In fact, it was answering one such ad – for a stenographer – that propelled her on a most improbable five-year odyssey in the Obama White House. Her job entailed recording and transcribing every word…
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by Jim Dees – Jack E. Davis’ loving but unsparing history of the Gulf of Mexico, The Gulf – The Making of an American Sea is, like its namesake, teeming with wild life – human and marine. The real-life human characters Davis brings to the page – anglers, artists, writers, roughnecks, and sleazeball tycoons –…
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The Thacker Mountain Radio Hour, a weekly literature and music program based in Oxford, MS, has been picked up for broadcast on Alabama Public Radio (APR) beginning Saturday, Sept. 1. APR will air the show on radio and online Saturday nights at 9 pm. The one-hour broadcast will continue to be heard on Mississippi Public…
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by Jim Dees – The Thacker Mountain Radio Hour returns to The Neshoba County Fair outside Philadelphia, MS this Saturday, July 28 at 8 pm. Our house band, the Yalobushwhackers, and I will tread on an old wooden stage at the Fair pavilion that dates to 1914 and has thus bore witness to a…
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by Jim Dees – The Thacker Mountain Radio Hour will perform in the lobby of the Graduate Hotel today, Thursday May 17, at 6 pm. Admission is free. The show was originally scheduled for the rooftop bar but has been moved to avoid rain. The lobby is bigger, has more seats, a full bar and…
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by Jim Dees – This Friday, The Thacker Mountain Radio Hour looks forward to presenting our usual eclectic line-up to kick off what is shaping up to be a killer Double Decker Festival. (Friday weather looks good and Saturday looks like Destin without the surf). Friday night is a mini-festival that starts at 6 pm…
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by Jim Dees – What could be more old school than a print magazine and a radio-variety hour? And yet, The Oxford American magazine and The Thacker Mountain Radio Hour have celebrated 25 years and 100 issues, and 20 years on the air, respectively. Not bad for formats that seem doddering in an on-demand world….
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by Jim Dees – If space aliens came down and asked about Mississippi and Memphis and you handed them Robert Gordon’s down-home gonzo collection of music essays, Memphis Rent Party – The Blues, Rock & Soul in Music’s Hometown (Bloomsbury), they would assume this whole area is pretty nuts. Gordon, who has chronicled Memphis musicians…
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by Jim Dees – I’ve been watching pre-season baseball on TV just to see some green grass. We don’t really have winter in Mississippi. It’s more like the heavens wring out two months’ worth of dishwater. Glancing over the Thacker Mountain Radio schedule breaks the spell and offers hope! It is now March and our…
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by Jim Dees – Few rock and roll musicians have stayed truer to their weirdness than Gustavo Antonio Nelson, known on stages, galleries, shacks and lofts around the world as Tav Falco. Born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, he grew up in Arkansas before moving to Memphis in 1973. His first singing performance in public came in…
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