Aoife O'Donovan and Elvin Bishop are featured on a show from 2016, Spokane, WA

A Prairie Home Companion American Revival (#2)

It's an American Revival! This time Garrison will bring the show back to the venue that gave him the idea for A Prairie Home Companion. Join us at the Ryman Auditorium in Nashville, TN, July 10th. Tickets will go up for sale this Friday morning.

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Nobody asked but I'll tell you anyway

I come from Minnesota, the modest K-shaped state with the bump on top, sitting on the front line of defense against Canada, predominantly white Protestant but trying not to be too obvious about it, maybe grow a beard and eat oysters on the half shell and read poetry to raise questions in people’s minds. Sometimes we’re called the North Star State, sometimes the Gopher State, but really we’re the Recovery State, where Hazelden was born and various programs for curing chem-dep and other addictions. AA is big. There are thousands of big rooms full of folding chairs where people hear accusatory talks and then break up into discussion groups.

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This week on A Prairie Home Companion

This week, we travel back to 2016 for a broadcast from the INB Performing Arts Center (these days called the First Interstate Center for the Arts). It was a show under Spokane, Washington’s sapphire skies, a stone’s throw from the Spokane River. Bluesman Elvin Bishop brought his Big Fun Trio up from the Bay Area (with Bob Welsh on guitar and Willy Jordan Jr. on percussion), and singer and composer Aoife O’Donovan added her clear and certain voice to duets with the host. Plus: Kate Beahen joined Tim Russell and Fred Newman in the Royal Academy of Radio Actors, with Guy Noir and the Cowboys doing the Lilac City proud. Music director and pianist Rich Dworsky led the house band (drummer Bernie Dresel, bassist Larry Kohut, Richard Kriehn on mandolin and fiddle, and Chris Siebold on guitar) on everything from crooked folk songs to straight-ahead blues. All that, and the latest rumors and rumblings from Lake Wobegon.
Highlights include a revved-up version of “Fooled Around and Fell in Love” and “My Dog” from Elvin Bishop, “Mother, the Queen of my Heart,” a duet version of “Bramble and the Rose,” featuring Garrison and Aoife O’Donovan, a solo version of “Stanley Park,” plus POEM, Cowboys Noir, and the News from Lake Wobegon. The link is posted on Saturdays at 5 p.m. CT each week on our Facebook page.

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More about this week’s guests

For every show, we will start on Tuesday of each week to promote Saturday’s classic broadcast. But as a primer, we will publish links to teasers, bios, and videos of the week’s musical guests to whet your appetite to tune in for the show. And who knows, we may even pop in for some live commentary and profiles via the Facebook page.
As a kid in Tulsa in the 1950s, Elvin Bishop could — if the conditions were just right — pick up WLAC, Nashville. He was captivated by Jimmy Reed’s piercing harmonica sounds coming over the airwaves. The blues cast a spell on him — one that’s never lifted. A founding member of Chicago’s groundbreaking Paul Butterfield Blues Band, he went solo in 1968, moved to the Bay Area, and continued a music career now into its sixth decade. His 20-some recordings include Something Smells Funky ’Round Here (Alligator Records). Willy Jordan Jr., drums; Bob Welsh, guitar.

“What the Hell” >>>
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Growing up in a musical family, Aoife O’Donovan took an interest in the American folk tradition. And after graduating from the New England Conservatory of Music, she formed the progressive bluegrass band Crooked Still and the trio Sometymes Why. More recently, she collaborated with Sara Watkins and Sarah Jarosz to create the “I’m With Her” tour, which took the trio to the U.K., Europe, and across the U.S. Aoife’s latest recording is 2022’s Age of Apathy.

“Phoenix” >>>
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Colorado and now onward

A Prairie Home Companion American Revival show in Denver was a great success and we hope to share bits of the show with everyone in the near future. Please be patient since we have a small staff and technical director Sam Hudson has been on the road with Garrison visiting small towns in Indiana for GK’s solo shows. We hope to offer a number of pictures and listener stories, too, but first, a nice homage to our truck driver Russ Ringsak by merchandise manager David Edin:
Russ was a kind man with a generous heart and a big smile. He somehow always managed to get the equipment needed to stage the show to the proper location week after week, through snow, sleet, rain or sunshine. He also managed to somehow arrange his thoughts about his weekly travels into a column that became a favorite on the A Prairie Home Companion website.
And so to continue the tradition, here are a few of my own random thoughts from the road.

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Of note:
Sue Scott just finished recording a new live episode of her podcast “Island of Discarded Women,” featuring the great Ann Reed, Jennifer Baldwin Peden, and Mary Jo Pehl. You can check out the new episode soon on her website as well as peruse all other episodes. It was a joy to catch up with Sue in Denver where she knocked it out of the park in every sketch, including Guy Noir and as Mom.

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Kathy Mattea — who has taken over as host of the public radio program Mountain Stage — has released a new song (featuring the Mountain Stage band) called “Turn off the News (Build a Garden).” Updates about where she will be touring — either solo or with Suzy Bogguss — or recording with Mountain Stage can be found on her website.

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Aoife O’Donovan begins her tour this week with an early emphasis on East Coast dates. With her captivating voice, no wonder Aoife is a fan favorite and frequent PHC guest performer.

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Described by The Saturday Evening Post as “a 90-page self-­published masterwork about the inexorable decrepitude that accompanies old age — but, more importantly, also the manifold pleasures that accrue as you arrive there,” Serenity at 70, Gaiety at 80 is a playful yet deeply felt meditation that ought to be a standard in the literature of human aging. Asked how she’d characterize the work, Kate Gustafson (who heads up Keillor’s production company) paused for a while and then ventured this brief summation: “It’s a novelty book, a gift book.” No, no, Keillor corrected, it’s actually “a memoir with an essay wrapped around it.” Whatever, Serenity at 70 is a must-have humorous take on getting older, complete with rules for aging.

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