Join us as we kick off a brand new year of music and literature! Blues master Watermelon Slim has a new CD out! Plus, Garth Greenwell will read from his new book, What Belongs to You, and Ben Wiley Payton will treat us to some Old Country Blues.
The time: Saturday, February 2, 7 p.m.
Your hosts: Jim Dees and house band the Yalobushwhackers
Click here for more information about Thacker Mountain Radio Hour—celebrating the music and stories of the emerging South.
Featuring
Garth Greenwell
Garth Greenwell is the author of the novel What Belongs to You (Picador), in which an American teacher, working in Bulgaria, enters into a dangerous affair with charismatic young hustler. The relationship turns from lust and tenderness into violence. The teacher struggles to reconcile his longing with the anguish it creates and is forced to grapple with the antigay world of his Southern upbringing and the foreign country he finds himself in.
What Belongs to You, Greenwell’s debut, has recently been released in paperback. Upon its initial release in hardback in 2016, it was longlisted for the National Book Award and was a finalist for six other awards, including the PEN/Faulkner Award, the James Tait Black Memorial Prize, and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize. A New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice, it was named a best book of the year by over 50 publications in nine countries, and is being translated into a dozen languages.
"A virtuosic, tender exploration of loneliness and desire, with sentences so breathtaking you’ll find yourself returning to them over and over again.” – NPR
Greenwell lives in Iowa City, Iowa. He is the John and Renee Grisham Writer-in-Residence at the University of Mississippi.
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 Boston native’s latest album, Church of the Blues, was release January 25, with originals plus tributes to blues masters like Muddy Waters and Fred McDowell. Homans lives in Clarksdale.
Ben Wiley Payton
Ben Wiley Payton is a blues guitarist/vocalist originally from Coila (co-why-la), Mississippi, a small community in Carroll County, east of the Delta. During his years living in Chicago, Payton honed his chops playing with such acts as Bobby Rush, Joe Evans and the Supersonics, Otis Clay, and the late Howling Wolf’s backing band, among many others. His career has since taken him to the stages of the Chicago Blues Festival, the King Biscuit Festival and the Kennedy Center. His latest CD is Diggin' Up Old Country Blues.
