Wildsam’s Field Guide lands in Oxford!

Tips and tunes and "true stories of place!"

On air and online: Friday, Feb. 3; Saturday, Feb. 4 and Sunday, Feb. 5– Join The Thacker Mountain Radio Hour for a very special show celebrating the inclusion of our beloved hometown of Oxford, MS in the prestigious (and very cool) Wildsam Field Guides series.

Authors: W. Ralph Eubanks – (A Place Like Mississippi) and Taylor Bruce – (Wildsam Field Guides)

Music: The Great Dying

Experts: Joe Stinchcomb (Mixology) and Bill Griffith and Rachel Hudson (Faulkner’s home, Rowan Oak).

Hosts: Jim Dees and our house band, the Yalobushwhackers

(Originally aired: 9-24-22)

Air times:

Friday, Feb. 3 – 6 am WYXR 91.7 FM Memphis, TN.

Saturday, Feb. 43 pm (ET) University of Tennessee at Chattanooga

7pm (CT) Mississippi Public Broadcasting

9pm (CT) Alabama Public Radio

Sunday, Feb. 5 – 3 pm (ET)  WUOT | 91.9 FM, Knoxville

Listen: Thacker Mountain Radio Hour on Spotify

Featuring

Author

W. Ralph Eubanks

Ralph Eubanks’ latest book A Place Like Mississippi: A Journey Through a Real and Imagined Literary Landscape (Timber Press) From Faulkner and Welty to Wright and Ward.

The book is a literary road trip through Mississippi starting on the Gulf Coast with Jesmyn Ward up through Eubanks’ own Piney Woods with Michael Farris Smith. Willie Morris’ Yazoo Delta and Eudora’s Belhaven lead to Lewis Nordan’s Itta Bena, the poets of Parchman penitentiary and Faulkner’s Oxford among many others.

Eubanks’ previous books include, Ever Is a Long Time and The House at the End of the Road.

Taylor Bruce

Taylor Bruce is the founder and Editor-in-Chief of theWildsam Field Guides, slender, hip travel books for “thoughtful travelers and the endlessly curious.”

He grew up on his family farm on the border of Georgia and Alabama and studied writing at Vanderbilt University.

After writing for Men’s Journal, Oxford American, National Geographic Adventure and Southern Living, among others, he founded Wildsam Field Guides.

Among the 45 cities and states covered thus far are Los Angeles, the Maine Coast, the Colorado Rockies, Austin, Hawaii, Manhattan, Portland, Santa Fe, Memphis and New Orleans.

The Oxford guide includes writers W. Ralph Eubanks, Beth Ann Fennelly and Lisa Howorth, author and photographer Erin Austen Abbott, poet Aimee Nezhukumatathil, chef Vishwesh Bhatt, flower farmer Kris McKee and many more. Topics include Southern authors from William Faulkner to Barry Hannah, the University of Mississippi, the Square, folk art, blues music, Mississippi Hill Country, civil rights, bookstores, double decker buses and more.

 

Music

The Great Dying

Will Griffith, known musically as The Great Dying, is a Mississippi Delta born, country singer-songwriter residing in Oxford, MS. Although Will doesn’t see his dark country musings as directly blues influenced, he notes, “I want people to celebrate sad music because of its beauty. Sad songs help you laugh at your own sadness. They are meant to help you keep going.”

The latest release from The Great Dying, is Bloody Noses & Roses (Dial Back Sound).