The Thacker Mountain Radio Hour, the Oxford, MS-based, music and literature program, returns to the Neshoba County Fair on Saturday, July 27 at 8 pm at the Founder’s Square Pavilion stage.
Guests will include author/photo-journalist Kate Medley, Grammy-nominated bluesman Jimmy “Duck” Holmes and Mississippi-native keyboardist/songwriter, Beth McKee.
The show is hosted by Jim Dees with the Thacker house band, Paul Tate and the Yalobushwhackers.
The Neshoba County Fair is located on Highway 21 South, some ten miles west of Philadelphia, MS.
Ticket information, directions to the Fair and parking info are available at the Fair’s website.
Medley, a Jackson, MS native now living in Durham, NC, spent 10 years working on her very unique book, Thank You Please Come Again: How Gas Stations Feed & Fuel the American South (The Bitter Southerner).
The “photographic road trip” is a 250-page coffee table book with interviews and nearly 200 photos of gas stations, convenience stores and quick stops across 11 Southern states. Readers are treated to a variety of food offerings (bánh mì, anyone?) and learn how such businesses foster community.
The book won the 2024 Mississippi Institute of Arts and Letters Award for Photography and has been featured in The New York Times, The Washington Post, NPR and this excellent piece on CNN.
Mississippi-native essayist, Kiese Laymon, author of the bestselling memoir, Heavy, contributed a powerful opening essay, It Started with Jr. Food Mart.
“I loved that we could get batteries and gizzards. I loved that we could get biscuits and Super Glue. I loved that we could get dishwashing soap, which was also bubble bath, which was also the soap we used to wash Grandmama’s Impala, and the good hot sauce in the same aisle. I was 8 years old. I never knew, or cared, that my favorite restaurant served gas.”
Medley’s photos add an enthralling visual story of how our rural and urban pit stops have evolved into the true “filling stations” of our time.
Medley will sign copies of Thank You Please Come Again at the Pavilion following the show.
In addition to being a Grammy-nominated bluesman for his 2019 album, Cypress Grove (Easy Eye Sound), Jimmy “Duck” Holmes is also proprietor of the longest, continuously operating juke joint in the state of Mississippi, the Blue Front Cafe in Bentonia. The business was opened by Holmes’ parents in 1948 and is still in operation. The establishment serves as the anchor for the annual Bentonia Blues Festival.
Cypress Grove was nominated for Best Traditional Blues Album at the 2020 Grammys and was produced by Dan Auerbach of the rock group, The Black Keys.
Check out Holmes, Auerbach, bassist Eric Deaton and guitarist Marcus King on their rocking version of Catfish Blues.
Keyboardist Beth McKee’s latest release is the EP, Monday After Sunday. Give her funky single a spin: Swamp Sistas Cosmic Drifter (feat. E-Turn).
From her native Jackson, Mississippi, to her immersion in the music scenes of Austin, New Orleans, North Carolina, and Orlando, Florida – McKee’s music encompasses a southern gumbo of sounds. For her Thacker appearance, McKee will be backed up by our own Yalobushwhackers.
The Thacker Mountain Radio Hour will mark its 15th appearance at the Neshoba County Fair, dating back to 2008 with a year off (2020) for Covid.
The show is heard on most major platforms including Spotify, SoundCloud, iHeart Radio and Google Podcast.
It can also be heard on Mississippi statewide radio, every Saturday at 7 pm on Mississippi Public Broadcasting; (WMAW – 88.1 FM, Meridian – in Neshoba County) well as a growing number of Thacker affiliated stations.
The Fair show will not be broadcast live but will air the weekend of August 15-18.
Come see us under the tin roof with a sawdust floor!
