Kate 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 (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 CNN.

Southern essayist, Kiese Laymon, author of the bestselling memoir, Heavy, contributed a powerful opening essay, “My favorite restaurant sells gas.”

Medley’s photos tell an enthralling visual story of how our rural and urban pit stops have evolved into the true “filling stations” of our time.

Copies of Thank You Please Come Again will be available at the Pavilion for sale and signing by the author.

Bluesman Jimmy “Duck” Holmes, of Bentonia, MS was nominated for a Grammy for Best Traditional Blues Album for his 2019 LP, Cypress Grove. The record was produced by Dan Auerbach of the Black Keys.

Cypress Grove is an aural postcard of a typical Saturday night at Holmes’ Blue Front Café, Mississippi’s longest operating juke joint. (Opened by Duck’s parents in 1948, the venue celebrates 76 years with a series of concerts on Sept. 20 and 21st).

“I want to play this music as much as I can,” Holmes says. “I want younger people to see it and get the passion for it and carry it on,” the 74-year-old declares.

“It’s important. It’s blues, so it’s the foundation all American music was built on. And it’s the truth, ’cause country blues got no room for lies.”

In 2017, for the Bicentennial of Mississippi, the U.S. Postal Service issued a special commemorative stamp to celebrate Mississippi’s 200 years of statehood.

The image they chose was a picture by Lou Bopp of a blue musician’s hands on a guitar. That musician: Jimmy “Duck” Holmes.

“They call it the Mississippi stamp, but I like to think of it as the ‘Duck Stamp,’” Holmes says with a laugh.

The last time the United States Postal Service honored Mississippi statehood with a stamp was back in 1967 for Bobbie Gentry’s “Ode to Billy Joe.”

That stamp was for a nickel, the then-cost to mail a first-class letter.

Keyboardist Beth McKee’s latest release is the EP, Monday After Sunday. Her funky single, Swamp Sistas Cosmic Drifter, is also available.

Her previous releases include the single Hold On (Italians in the Night) and the albums Dreamwood Acres, Sugarcane Revival and Next to Nowhere.

From her native Mississippi to her immersion in the scenes of Austin, New Orleans, North Carolina, and Orlando, Florida – McKee’s music encompasses a southern gumbo of sounds.

The New York Times perfectly under-stated her talents: “… a perfectly fine roots act…” – (Nov. 6, 2021).