[audience cheering] - Welcome once again to the Thacker Mountain Radio Hour.

We're coming to you tonight from the Powerhouse Arts Center in Oxford, Mississippi.

♪When you're feeling way down low♪ ♪You got no place to go♪ ♪Can't call a lover♪ ♪Can't call no friends, can't find a so and so,♪ ♪just put your hand on the radio.♪ ♪Can you feel it?♪ ♪Down on your toes.♪♪ ♪Can you feel it?♪ ♪That's how it goes.♪ ♪Can you feel it?♪ ♪Lord only knows.♪ ♪Can you feel it?♪ ♪Put your hand on the radio.♪ ♪Whoa, I'm down on my knees.♪ ♪I'm begging you, please.♪ ♪Here come Jim Dees.♪ ♪Here come Jim Dees.♪ [applause] Thank you, thank you, thank you.

Welcome once again to the Thacker Mountain Radio Hour.

As I mentioned, we're coming to you tonight from the Powerhouse Arts Center, a stone's throw from the Oxford Square.

Great show for y'all tonight.

We've got the UM World Percussion Ensemble, this great drumming troupe behind us here.

They are really going to bring the rhythm under the direction of Professor Ricky Burkhead, of course.

Our author tonight is Nancy Lemann.

She is born and bred in New Orleans, Louisiana, and has written a trio of books that are all out just this week.

To take it home tonight, we're at the Parchman Prison Blues Band right here on this stage.

The band was formed in the 1930s.

They kept it going.

There was a lull where it did not exist, and they are back, and they are going to be playing tonight.

You're going to love them.

We love this big old band we've assembled.

Y'all bring them to the stage.

It is the Yalobushwhackers.

[APPLAUSE] ♪♪ Fire on the bayou, fire on the bayou.

Down in New Orleans in Lucky's din He wouldn't deal y'all for a 5th of gin What dude wanted, a bottle of wine.

Hit that dude, yeah, for a dollar and a dime Fire on the bayou Fire on the bayou Sing it, y'all.

Fire on the bayou Fire on the bayou Take a little toke on your smoke.

Buy yourself a bottle of wine.

Cool, cool wine, y'all.

Yeah, going down your throat.

Don't try to tell me don't make you feel fine.

Yeah, fire on the bayou Fire on the bayou Fire on the bayou Fire on the bayou ♪♪♪ Fire on the bayou Fire on the bayou I got a nickel now, you got a dime Let's get together, baby, and have a good time, y'all Gonna buy a fifth .

Gonna buy a joint.

When you get to getting down now, you're gonna do things right.

Now, they say, fire on the bayou .

Fire on the bayou, singing, y'all said fire on the bayou, fire on the bayou.

♪♪ [applause] - Yalobushwhackers, y'all, let 'em hear you, please.

Let 'em hear you.

How 'bout this band?

[applause] Ricky Burkhead, Michael Vaughn, Keon Love, Mary Frances Massey on the vocals, and our band leader, Paul Tate up front.

The whole band here at Yalobushwhackers.

Thank you, gentlemen.

We're all a big fan of percussion, of the steel drum, and the World Percussion Ensemble.

They do concerts every spring.

We're always there.

We try to get them on the show every spring.

They're always very busy.

Lucky, lucky, lucky this year.

Y'all are, and so are we.

Please bring them to the stage, the UM World Percussion Ensemble.

[audience cheering] [cymbal crashing] [drumming] [Drumming] ♪♪ [Drumming] ♪♪♪ [Drums, percussion, and xylophone play in syncopated rhythm] ♪♪♪ [Drumming] ♪♪♪ [Drumming] ♪♪♪ [Drumming] [Applause] Our next guest is Nancy Lemann.

She is New Orleans born and raised writer and has pulled off quite the trick this spring.

I was telling her all of her friends hate her because in one week, next week, April 7th, she will see not one, not two, but three published books.

A brand new novel of hers is called "The Oyster Diaries."

Will come out from New York Review of Books.

And she will also see the reissue of her first novel that made quite a noise when it was published 40 years ago, I think, right?

"Lives of the Saints."

And also the non-fiction book about Governor Edwards' racketeering trial, "The Ritz of the Bayou."

Y'all please welcome Nancy Lemann.

[applause] All righty.

New Orleans, born and bred, as we were saying before the show, we all know authors maybe who moved to New Orleans and are New Orleans writers now, but you were born there, went to grammar school.

- Born and raised.

- How was growing up in New Orleans back then?

- It's a thing where you think it's normal.

And then when I left for college, only then when I was in the North, did I suddenly realize, oh my God, that place is the ace in my back pocket.

Talk about material, you know, for a writer.

- Oh man, well, and witness "Lives of the Saints."

You wrote it, I understand, fairly quickly, And then it took a while to finally sell it.

- Because it's so hard to do business and break into the business.

Writers are kind of shy and solitary and you have to go sell yourself and talk to people.

I'm talking to you.

It's working out okay.

But, you know, it's -- - I'm hardly people.

- Yeah.

I can tell.

Right, so then ultimately I had to really just go to New York and identify the different publishers because sending your manuscript out in a huge unsolicited slush pile, I mean it's a miracle I even got the few nice rejections that I did.

- "The Lives of the Saints," I remember when it came out, it was a big hit and everybody, Square Books, it was a big hit for Square Books-- all over the world, I guess.

And I read that you wrote it something in somewhat of a rage.

You were so mad.

- I was in a wave of rage because I was a legal secretary working for two Tulane law professors.

And it enraged me that I didn't have-- that my time wasn't my own, which, welcome to the world.

- So you were able to channel.

- Yeah, I think so.

Yeah.

I mean, it's very helpful to have a job.

I don't always have a job except for the writing.

Right now, I don't have a job.

It's difficult because you feel guilty, but you have to just put that aside.

- What is interesting about all these books that have been reissued and all of your work is it's not like anybody else's.

It doesn't sound like anybody else.

Is the Ritz, "The Ritz of the Bayou."

You were sent by Vanity Fair.

The great Tina Brown commissioned you to go down to your beloved New Orleans and cover this crazy trial of Edwin Edwards.

And you went down and dutifully did your work.

But when you turned in your copy and your copy is wonderfully It's a wonderful book.

It's beautifully descriptive and atmospheric.

It may not necessarily have a lot of facts of the case in it.

What did Ms.

Brown think?

- Well, it was very brilliant of her to assign it to me, but apparently she wanted facts.

So when she read the manuscript, she just sort of said, huh, what?

And, but I was interested in the vibes and the characters and the atmosphere and the deeper meaning of it all.

Now, "The Oyster Diaries" is a wonderful title.

Oysters figure so much in all of your work, particularly "The Ritz of the Bayou," you had one of the court observers who would break the oysters that he ate.

And there was even a notebook at the oyster bar, this April 7th, not so good, oh, May 2nd, one of the, and it went back to the 1950s, right?

- Yep.

- And you named your new novel, "The Oyster Diaries."

What was based on that incident?

- The pearl is buried in the middle of the book, and there's a reason why he does that.

And so you have to get that.

Not everyone will get that far.

I don't.

- Oh, no, no, no.

No, no.

- He did that for, it's very poignant.

It's tied to the narrator's experiences also, and it's really, I can't talk about it or I'll just break down.

- Oh, wow.

- Yeah.

- I don't want that.

We don't want that.

We would like to hear you read some.

- Okay.

So, all right.

"The Oyster Diaries."

Among my father's effects is a very curious item.

It's an oyster diary where he grades the oysters at The Pearl, a restaurant downtown across the street from his office.

He had lunch there every day.

It starts in January 1954 and is plainly an attempt to come to grips with what he said was the hardest year of his life.

Each entry is preceded by the date, a grade, and then a terse description in a minuscule scrawl.

It is the work of a madman.

And then it's just, I'm not going to read the dates because that would just be way too tedious, but just to any, Just pretend like I'm reading you the dates before each entry.

Okay, awful, still awful, terrible, no good, wonderful, miserable, exceptional, very poor, passable, fabulous, utterly tasteless, beautiful to look at but no salt, Not so hot, lousy, unusually fine.

Not yet, not ever yet, not ready yet.

October 7th, at last.

October 8th, even better.

October 9th, still magnificent.

October 10th, superb.

October 11th, declined slightly.

October 19th, still flat.

October 14th, beautiful but tasteless.

October 15th, marvelous.

October 16th, unbelievable.

October 17th, warned away.

It goes on like that for 20 years.

[audience cheering] - All right, the Parchman Band, y'all.

This is gonna be a treat.

This is gonna be wonderful, absolutely.

[applause] Please welcome the Parchman Band.

[Applause] ♪I was out there running around them streets of Memphis♪ ♪Selling my soul with dope in a bag of lies,♪ ♪chasing money, sin, and women.♪ ♪Yeah, that's how I was living,♪ ♪but all that ever got me was some time.♪ ♪Oh, but now I'm set on back, I've had some time to reflect,♪ ♪and I just thank God that I didn't lose my mind.♪ ♪I couldn't wake up in the morning, 'cause I'd♪ ♪never been to sleep.♪ ♪I was out there running around, staying up all week.♪ ♪I never had nowhere to be, but I was always on the go.♪ ♪And the cops were on my trail, but I didn't know.♪ ♪Well, it didn't take too long till I was♪ ♪way too far past gone.♪ ♪And that's why I'm in here singing with all a y'all.♪ ♪I was out there running around in the streets of Memphis,♪ ♪Selling my soul with dope and a bag of lies,♪ ♪Chasing money, sin, and women, yeah, that's how I was lit.♪ ♪But all that ever got me was some time.♪ ♪Oh, but now I've sat on back, I've had some time to reflect,♪ ♪And I just thank God that I didn't lose my mind.♪ ♪Yeah, I was out there in the darkness,♪ ♪my mind always in a haze.♪ ♪I was watching my whole life go up in flames.♪ ♪Living only for myself, taking all that I could get.♪ ♪I was out there racking up all my regrets.♪ ♪Well it didn't take too long till I was♪ ♪way too far past gone.♪ ♪And that's why I'm in here singing with all of y'all.♪ ♪Cause I was out there running around the streets of Memphis.♪ ♪Selling my soul with dope and a bag of lies.♪ ♪Chasing money, sin, and women, yeah, that's how I was living.♪ ♪But all that ever got me was some time.♪ ♪Yeah, but now I'm set on back.♪ ♪I've had some time to reflect.♪ ♪And I just thank God that I didn't lose my mind.♪ Where you at, Lee?

Come on, LJ.

♪Now I close my eyes and think, I'm glad the law caught up with me, y'all,♪ ♪'cause I was gonna wind up buried six feet deep.♪ ♪'Cause I was out there running around the streets of Memphis,♪ ♪selling my soul with dope and a bag of lies.♪ ♪Chasing money, sin and women, that's how I was living,♪ ♪but all that ever got me was some time.♪ ♪Yeah, but now I'm set on back.♪ ♪I've had some time to reflect.♪ ♪And I just thank God that I didn't lose my mind.♪ [Applause] Thank you.

- The Parchman Band.

Great show tonight.

Thank you all for being here.

We're going to get one more tune from this cool band, and we will see you on the radio.

♪♪♪ ♪Now when I was just a little boy♪ ♪Standing at my daddy's knee♪ ♪My papa says son don't let the man get you,♪ ♪do what he done to me.♪ ♪Cause he'll get you,♪ ♪cause he'll get you, now, now.♪ ♪I can remember the Fourth of July, running through♪ ♪the back lot there.♪ ♪And I can still hear my old hound dog barking,♪ ♪chasing down the hoodoo there.♪ ♪Chasing down the hoodoo there.♪ ♪Born on the bayou♪ ♪Born on the bayou♪ ♪Born on the bayou♪ ♪♪ ♪Wish I was back on the bayou,♪ ♪rollin' with some Cajun queens.♪ ♪Wishing I were fast as a freight train,♪ ♪just toolin' down to New Orleans.♪ ♪Born on the bayou,♪ ♪Born on the bayou,♪ ♪Born on the bayou,♪ ♪Born on the bayou, yeah.♪ ♪Born on the bayou,♪ ♪I'm born on the bayou,♪ ♪Ooh, yeah, I'm gonna get you now, now,♪ ♪Gonna get you now, now.♪ [applause] - Thank you all, have a good night.