Thacker Mountain Radio welcomes former SNL writer to Lyric Thursday

The Thacker Mountain Radio Hour will welcome former Saturday Night Live screenwriter David Sheffield at 6 p.m. this Thursday at the Lyric Theatre.

Admission is free and the public is invited.

Other guests will include Alabama country singer Jon Byrd and Delta bluesman Sean “Bad” Apple.

The host of the show is Jim Dees and the house band, the Yalobushwhackers.

The program will be broadcast locally on WUMS 92.1 FM and online.

Thursday’s show will celebrate the 20th anniversary of the Oxford Film Festival which runs from Wednesday through Sunday. (No film pass is required for the Thacker show).

A full schedule of films, parties and events connected with the film festival is available at the festival’s website: https://www.ox-film.com/.

Screenwriter David Sheffield is a Biloxi native, who was living in Ocean Springs in 1980 when he was hired (after a series of improbable long-shots) to write for Saturday Night Live.

There, he co-wrote classic sketches for a young Eddie Murphy that led to a 40-year association with Murphy and co-writer Barry Blaustein.

Sheffield’s screen credits include several Murphy vehicles including the 2021 Netflix hit, “Coming 2 America” as well as the 1988 original, “Coming to America” and Murphy’s “The Nutty Professor” and “The Nutty Professor II: The Klumps.”

Sheffield’s most recent project is a play he wrote and produced, The Heartbreak Henry, based on his hilarious experiences managing the old Henry Hotel in Oxford in 1967 when he was just 19 years old.

A 25-minute documentary about the making of the play, “The Heartbreak Henry: The Show Must Go On,” will screen at 3:45 p.m. on Friday at Malco Commons during the Oxford Film Festival.

Country twangster Jon Byrd, from Birmingham, Alabama, will also be featured on Thursday’s show. Byrd quickly made a name for himself in Nashville with his 2007 album, Byrd’s Auto Parts. Mojo Magazine proclaimed the album is, “Americana the way it was and the way it should be.”

Bluesman Sean “Bad” Apple has been a longtime mainstay in the Clarksdale, MS blues scene. He recently became a club owner when he converted the old Club 2000 on Issaquena Avenue in Clarksdale into the Bad Apple Blues Club.

The Thacker Mountain Radio Hour returns to the Powerhouse Arts Center on Thursday, March. The show will be off for spring break on Thursday, March 16.

The show resumes on Thursday, March 23, and runs every Thursday through April 27.

A full schedule of shows is available at the show’s website: https://thackermountain.com/.

Staff report