Thacker host Jim Dees makes a guest appearance on the show! Hear him read from his book The Statue and the Fury Saturday, June 30, at 7 p.m. on your MPB radio station or online.
Your hosts: Jim Dees and house band the Yalobushwhackers.
The guests: Thacker host Jim Dees; author Geoff Dyer (White Sands); Memphis roots-rockers Southern Avenue; roots bluesman Watermelon Slim.
Click here for more information about Thacker Mountain Radio Hour—celebrating the music and stories of the emerging South.
LITERATURE
Jim Dees
Jim Dees is the author of The Statue and the Fury: A Year of Art, Race, Music and Cocktails (Nautilus Publishing), a humorous and heartfelt chronicle of the controversial year 1997 in Oxford, Mississippi.
The book covers the furor over creation of the William Faulkner statue, protests over tree cuttings and development in town, and the University of MIssissippi's discontinued use of the Confederate flag and other Old South symbols. It includes interviews with Shelby Foote, Willie Morris and Willie Nelson, among others.
Dees has been the host of the Thacker Mountain Radio Hour since 2000.
Geoff Dyer
Geoff Dyer is a novelist, essayist, critic and author. His latest book, White Sands: Experiences From the Outside World (Pantheon), is about his pilgrimages across the world—from Norway to Tahiti.
One chapter is a meditation on massive outdoor art installations in New Mexico and Utah. In another, he writes lovingly about jazz. And in a surprisingly humorous chapter, he details how his life changed after a stroke.
Dyer is the author of four novels; two collections of essays; and a number of genre-defying titles, including White Sands and But Beautiful, a book about jazz. His books have been translated into twenty-four languages. His 2011 collection of essays, Otherwise Known as the Human Condition, won the National Book Critics Circle Award for Criticism.
Dyer is writer-in-residence at the University of Southern California. He lives in Los Angeles and London.
MUSIC
Southern Avenue
Southern Avenue is a Memphis-based, high-energy, soul-roots band that is deeply rooted in the blues. Their infectious rhythms, soulful guitar sounds and masterful musicianship caused the Memphis Flyer to write, “Southern Avenue is simply the best band in Memphis right now. … [S]ome of the coolest music to come out of Memphis in years.”
The band’s debut album was released by legendary Stax Records in 2017.
Watermelon Slim
Bill “Watermelon Slim” Homans has built an international following with his raw, impassioned intensity. Harp magazine wrote, “From sizzling slide guitar … to nitty-gritty harp blowing … to a gruff, resonating Okie twang, Slim delivers acutely personal workingman blues with both hands on the wheel of life, a bottle of hooch in his pocket, and the Bible on the passenger seat.”
The award-winning Homans lives in Clarksdale, Mississippi.
