On air and online: Thursday, Dec. 28 – Sunday, Dec. 31: The Thacker Mountain Radio Hour rings in the new year with an encore presentation of our show from the historic Neshoba County Fair, outside of Philadelphia, MS, under the tin roof and on the sawdust floor of the Founder’s Square Pavilion. (Recorded 7-22-23).
Guests: Grammy-winning musician Alvin Youngblood Hart, Harry Dean Stanton biographer Joe Atkins and American Idol AND The Voice contestant, Peyton Aldridge.
Hosts are Jim Dees and our house band, the Yalobushwhackers.
For information on the Neshoba County Fair: http://www.neshobacountyfair.org/.
The Thacker Mountain Radio Hour is heard in Neshoba County every Saturday at 7 pm on WMAW 88.1 FM Meridian
Hear this show:
Air times:
Thursday, Dec. 28 – 6:00 pm (CT) WUMS – University of Mississippi
Friday, Dec. 29– 6 am WYXR 91.7 FM Memphis, TN.
Saturday, Dec. 30 –3 pm (ET) University of Tennessee at Chattanooga
7pm (CT) Mississippi Public Broadcasting
9pm (CT) Alabama Public Radio
Sunday, Dec. 31 – 3 pm (ET) WUOT | 91.9 FM, Knoxville
2 pm (MT) KNCE 93.5 | Taos, New Mexico
Special thanks to Visit Oxford and The Golden Moon Hotel and Casino in Philadelphia, MS for their support of our Neshoba County Fair show.
After two decades on the road, Alvin Youngblood Hart continues to delight audiences worldwide, whether as a solo performer or with the eternally rockin’ Alvin Youngblood Hart’s Muscle Theory. His albums include Big Mama’s Door, Territory, Start with the Soul, Down in the Alley and Motivational Speaker.
Hart received a Grammy nomination for Best Traditional Blues Album for his album, Down in The Alley.
He shared a Grammy win for Best Traditional Folk Album in 2005 with artists who contributed performances to Beautiful Dreamer – The Songs of Stephen Foster.
Hart recently wrapped a run of dates with Mike Campbell of Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers before he heads to Europe this summer for a string of solo dates.
Harry Dean Stanton (1926–2017) got his start in Hollywood in TV productions such as Zane Grey Theater and Gunsmoke. After a series of minor parts in forgettable westerns, he gradually began to get film roles that showcased his laid-back acting style, appearing in Cool Hand Luke (1967), Kelly’s Heroes (1970), The Godfather: Part II (1974), and Alien (1979).
He became a headliner in the 1980s — starring in Wim Wenders’s Paris, Texas (1984) and Alex Cox’s Repo Man (1984).
Author Joseph B. Atkins unwinds Stanton’s enigmatic persona in this first biography, Harry Dean Stanton, Hollywood’s Zen Rebel (University Press of Kentucky).
Vanity Fair memorialized Stanton as “the philosopher poet of character acting.”
Atkins covers Stanton’s colorful friendships with Jack Nicholson, Bob Dylan, and director John Huston among many others.
He also sheds light on Stanton’s early life in West Irvine, Kentucky, exploring his difficult relationship with his alcoholic mother, his dramatic service in the Navy dodging Japenese suicide planes, and the events that inspired him to drop out and invent himself as one of the true “characters” of character acting.
Peyton Aldridge is a country singer and songwriter who grew up alongside soybeans and cotton in the Mississippi Delta; born in Marks and raised in Cleveland. In 2020, Aldridge competed on the eighteenth season of American Idol.
In 2022, Peyton returned to network television as a performer on NBC’s The Voice. He had superstar musician John Legend as his coach.
Aldridge’s singles include Hometown Girl, Another Country Song and It’s All For You.
