The Thacker Mountain Radio Hour will perform in The Grove, Sunday, June 27 at 6 pm in the show’s first Oxford appearance with an audience since the COVID pandemic began last year. Admission is free and lawn chairs and picnics are welcome.
The show is part of the Summer Sunset Series and is sponsored by the Ford Center, Mississippi Arts Commission, and the Yoknapatawpha Arts Council.
Guests will include author Melissa Ginsburg and her literary thriller, The House Uptown, with musical guests, vocal group Damein Wash & The Venture Fourths and R&B singer Effie Burt.
Hosts of the show are Jim Dees and Thacker house band, The Yalobushwhackers. In the event of rain, the show will move to the Gertrude C. Ford Center located at 351 University Ave.
There will be no live broadcast. This show will be recorded for air later this summer. The Thacker Mountain Radio Hour can be heard locally every Thursday at 6 pm on WUMS 92.1 FM (or online) and every Saturday at 7 pm on Mississippi Public Broadcasting, on air at 90.3 FM in Oxford, or online.
Thacker producer Alice Pierotti says the show’s crew looks forward to seeing familiar faces after a year and a half.
“We’re grateful we were able to keep the show going through in-studio shows,” she noted, “but there’s no substitute for an audience. We’re really looking forward to Sunday’s show.”
Since March 2020 the show has relied on phone interviews with authors and pre-recorded musical performances. The Thacker crew expects to resume live shows this fall at Off Square Books and the Lyric Theatre, even if seating is limited.
The show has performed live only twice this year, both on the road, in Clarksdale and Meridian. Host Dees says that while those shows came off without any problems, he and the crew are ready to return home.
“It really is like riding a bicycle,” he says. “You think maybe you’ve forgotten how until you jump back on and take off. Our band is so tight they haven’t missed a beat—literally.”
The show’s summer schedule includes performances in August at the Mississippi Book Festival in Jackson and at the Walter Anderson Museum in Ocean Springs, Mississippi.
The show opens its fall season on Thursday, September 2 at Off Square Books in Oxford.
More information is available at the show’s website: https://thackermountain.com/.
