Former SNL writer visits Thacker Thursday at the Lyric

The Thacker Mountain Radio Hour will welcome former Saturday Night Live screenwriter David Sheffield this Thursday, March 2 at 6 pm at the The Lyric Oxford. Admission is free and the public is invited.

Other guests include Alabama country singer Jon Byrd and Delta bluesman Sean Bad Apple. Hosts of the show are Jim Dees and house band, the Yalobushwhackers.

The program will be broadcast locally on WUMS 92.1 FM and online: https://onlineradiobox.com/us/wums/.

Thursday’s show will celebrate the 20th Anniversary of the Oxford Film Festival. (NOTE: Film pass is not required for the Thacker show).

A full schedule of films, parties and events connected with the film festival is available at the festival’s website: https://www.ox-film.com/.

Screenwriter David Sheffield is a Biloxi, MS native, who was living in Ocean Springs, MS in 1980 when he was hired (after a series of improbable long-shots) to write for Saturday Night Live.

There, he co-wrote classic sketches for a young Eddie Murphy that led to a 40-year association with Murphy and co-writer Barry Blaustein.

Sheffield’s screen credits include several Murphy vehicles including the 2021 Netflix hit, Coming 2 America as well as the 1988 original, Coming to America and Murphy’s The Nutty Professor and The Nutty Professor II: The Klumps.

Sheffield’s most recent project is a play he wrote and produced, The Heatbreak Henry, based on his hilarious experiences managing the old Henry Hotel in Oxford in 1967 when he was just 19-years-old.

A 25-minute documentary about the making of the play, The Heartbreak Henry: The Show Must Go On, will screen Friday, March 3 at 3:45 pm at Malco Commons during the Oxford Film Festival.

Country twangster Jon Byrd, from Birmingham AL, will also be featured on Thursday’s show. Byrd quickly made a name for himself in Nashville with his 2007 album, Byrd’s Auto Parts. Mojo Magazine proclaimed the album is, “Americana the way it was and the way it should be.”

Bluesman Sean “Bad” Apple has been a longtime mainstay in the Clarksdale, MS blues scene. He recently became a club owner when he converted the old Club 2000 on Issaquena Avenue in Clarksdale into the Bad Apple Blues Club.

The  Thacker Mountain Radio Hour returns to the Powerhouse Arts Center on Thursday, March 9. The show will be off for spring break on Thursday, March 16. (Band gets a tan!) The show resumes on Thursday, March 23 and runs every Thursday through April 27.

A full schedule of shows is available at the show’s website: https://thackermountain.com/.