If you can’t be at the Thacker Show tonight, there will be two broadcasts available– the usual live one on 92.1 Rebel Radio at 6:00, and then, immediately following at 7:00 PM on statewide Mississippi Public Radio; you can listen on the web here.
You should really try to be there; it will be a great show. If you can’t, you can still donate to the cause. Thacker is a 501c3 organization, which means you can deduct donations. Send checks to Friends of Thacker Mountain Radio, Inc., P.O. Box 2196, Oxford, MS 38655. There’s a PayPal option on the Thacker Mountain website.
It sounded like a great show. MPR stayed with it long enough for me to hear Marty Stuart do Freight Train Boogie, and Uncloudy Day. Just as Connie Smith was coming on MPR listeners got to hear “To the Point”. How was the rest of the show?
“Uncloudy Day” was probably the high point of both the radio show and the concert thereafter for me. Connie Smith was, as always, wonderful. She did one song and then the house band closed out with “Happy Trails To You.” (She also did one song in the second set, “The Storms Are On The Ocean”).
Stuart did a very special show in the second half. It was similar in format to his set in the radio show, with a real emphasis on his years with Johnny Cash, obviously because of how much Robert Khayat is a fan of Cash’s. He had Khayat come out and play guitar and sing (shyly, which was endearing), particularly on “Give My Love to Rose.” The other major highlight of the evening was Rev. Evelyn Hubbard from Commerce Christian Church in Tunica County, playing piano and singing “Shout.” Stuart encountered her on New Years Eve 2000, looking for a church to sing in the millennium. She’s a real find and will be back on the radio show next season. They closed out the show with “Will The Circle Be Unbroken.”
“Once A Day”?
Is that what Connie Smith sang on the radio show? As Hambone reports MPB abruptly ruined the mood.
She did not do “Once A Day.” As I’ve just noted in the Friday open thread, she did in the radio show a Gordon Lightfoot song (I’m blanking as to which one) and in the Stuart concert “The Storms Are On The Ocean.”