Host Post: From the Gulf with love

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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Thacker Mountain Radio Hour picked up by Alabama Public Radio

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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Host Post: Ghosts of Neshoba

  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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Host Post: Lobby Love at Graduate Oxford

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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Host Post: Friday Night Live!

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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Host Post: Magazine on the Radio

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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Host Post: Mississippi rocks ‘Memphis Rent Party’

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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Host Post: Marching into Spring

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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Host Post: To Thine Own Weird Be True

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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Host Post: What Happened to Rolling Stone Magazine?

By Jim Dees – To answer that question, we have an enthralling new book, Sticky Fingers: The Life and Times of Jann Wenner and Rolling Stone Magazine (Knopf) by Joe Hagan. The book spans 50 years in the life of the magazine from its founding in 1967 by editor Jann Wenner and his wife Jane,…
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