The Thacker Mountain Radio Hour is welcoming back an audience for the first time with the show in the Grove on Sunday.

The show will be the first Oxford appearance with a live crowd since the COVID-19 pandemic started in March of last year. Thacker Mountain Radio Hour is also serving as the final show of this years Summer Sunset Series.

Since the pandemic started, Thacker Mountain Radio Hour host Jim Dees shifted the show to a virtual format while still interviewing guests over the phone and having pre-recorded musical performances.

“We’re grateful we were able to keep the show going through in-studio shows,” said Alice Pierotti, producer of the Thacker Mountain Radio Hour. “But, there’s no substitute for an audience. We’re really looking forward to Sunday’s show.”

Guests for Sunday’s show include author Melissa Ginsburg, who will discuss her novel “The House Uptown,” as well as musical guests Damein Walsh and the Venture Fourths along with Effie Burt. In the event of rain or inclement weather, the show will move to the Gertrude C. Ford Center located on the University of Mississippi campus.

Sunday’s show will not be a live broadcast, but will be recorded for air later this summer. The Thacker Mountain Radio Hour can be heard locally every Thursday at 6 p.m. on WUMS 92.1 FM and every Saturday at 7 p.m. on Mississippi Public Broadcasting on 90.3 FM in Oxford.

Dees will serve as host of Sunday’s show while The Yalobushwackers return as the house band.  The show has already performed live twice this year, once in Clarksdale and once in Meridian.

“It really is like riding a bicycle,” Dees said of returning to live shows. “You think maybe you’ve forgotten how until you jump back on and take off. Our band is so tight they haven’t missed a beat — literally.”

The show is expected to resume live shows this fall at their home of Off Square Books and the Lyric Theatre with the possibility of limited seating. The fall season will begin on Sept. 2 at Off Square Books. The radio hour has performances scheduled for August at the Mississippi Book Festival in Jackson and at the Walter Anderson Museum in Ocean Springs.