| Tickets are selling so quick for our upcoming shows that we just added in another show on June 29th. We are so happy to be able to get back in front of an audience and sure hope you can join us for one of the first four shows. These shows are all about independence — from Virus and Virtual Life, Back to what’s real. Poetry and Stories and Classic Duets with Prudence Johnson, Bob Douglas, Adam Granger, and music director Dan Chouinard.
June 29th Dinner & Stories and music with Garrison and friends from a riverboat in Stillwater, MN
June 30th Dinner & Stories and music with Garrison and friends from a riverboat in Stillwater, MN
July 2nd at 7:30 p.m. at Big Top Chautauqua in Bayfield, WI
July 4th at 4:00 p.m. at Summerfield Amphitheater in St. Michael, MN
Best-selling author and radio legend Garrison Keillor will be telling stories about his childhood, sharing wry observational comedy, and leading the audience in poetry and song. Garrison will be joined onstage by a few friends who appeared with him on A Prairie Home Companion. June 29th in Stillwater, MN >>>
June 30th in Stillwater, MN >>>
July 2nd in Bayfield, WI >>>
July 4th in St. Michael, MN >>> |
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O beautiful for summer skies and waves of conversation Finally, a fine summer, which we Minnesotans appreciate, having endured winter’s attempts to depress us, and just when we were about to go into therapy and talk about how emotionally unavailable our dad was, summer came along and here I am on a sunny day with relatives on a porch enjoying a sweet slow conversation. I’m not so fond of sunshine, I’d prefer a dramatic thunderstorm; I grew up evangelical and I’m happiest when lightning bolts are flashing all around and none are hitting me. But a sunny day is okay...
Go to Garrison Keillor and Friends on Substack
for the REST OF THE COLUMN >>> |
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 This weekend we will launch the paid subscription side of Garrison Keillor and Friends on Substack. Many of you have signed up already and each weekend you will receive an unpublished writing (monologues, sonnets, limericks, essays), or chapters from a new book, or concepts for a new idea. You may even have a question or two thrown at you. We are sure this will evolve after it gets going, but it's time to get our feet wet. If you haven't subscribed for a small monthly fee you may want to consider hopping on board and getting a peek at long-lost items and/or works in progress. (Reminder: you can subscribe for free to receive the Post to the Hosts and the columns, but the paid version gets you into The Back Room). Go to Garrison Keillor and Friends on Substack
for a paid subscription>>> |
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This week on A Prairie Home Companion This week’s classic A Prairie Home Companion show comes to you from the Blossom Music Center in Cuyahoga Falls, Ohio, as we travel back to 2010. With special guest, veteran Bluegrass center fielders Ricky Skaggs and Kentucky Thunder. Also with us, Kent, Ohio’s very own Jessica Lea Mayfield, vocalist Andra Suchy, the Royal Academy of Radio Actors (Tim Russell, Sue Scott, and Fred Newman), and The Guy’s All-Star Shoe Band.
Highlights include a some thoughts about fatherhood, “Sis Draper” and “This World Is not my Home” by Ricky Skaggs, “I’ll Be the One that You Want Someday” from Jessica Lea Mayfield, a Father’s Day medley from Garrison and Andra Suchy, plus a few words from Catchup and Duct Tape, Guy Noir, and the latest News from Lake Wobegon. The link is posted on Saturdays at 5 p.m. CT each week on our Facebook page. Listen to the Show >>>Like our Facebook page >>>
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.
At 17, Ricky Skaggs — already an accomplished singer and mandolin player — was invited to join the band of the legendary Ralph Stanley. That was in the early 1970s, and since the moment he first took the stage, Skaggs has built a reputation rarely equaled in the world of bluegrass music. In addition to his own projects, the 15-time Grammy winner has collaborated with a host of musicians, from Emmylou Harris to pianist/composer Bruce Hornsby. His latest CD is Hearts Like Ours with his wife, Sharon White. On this broadcast Kentucky Thunder is Mark Fain, bass; Cody Kilby, guitar; Paul Brewster, guitar; Andy Leftwich, fiddle, Eddie Faris, guitar; and Justin Moses, banjo. “Sis Draper” >>>View available music >>>
Singer-songwriter Jessica Lea Mayfield packed a lot of music into the early years of her career. At eight, she was touring with her parents’ band, One Way Rider; at 11, she was writing her own songs and performing solo; and at 15, she put out an EP, White Lies, recorded in her big brother’s bedroom. They printed just 100 copies, one of which fell into the hands of fellow Ohioan Dan Auerbach, guitarist and vocalist for The Black Keys. Auerbach produced Mayfield’s debut full-length album, 2008’s With Blasphemy So Heartfelt (Thirty Tigers). Since then, she has released several more recordings, including 2017’s Sorry Is Gone.
“Our Hearts are Wrong” >>>View available music >>
Andra Suchy spent her childhood on a farm near Mandan, North Dakota, the daughter of two talented singers. By the time she was in grade school, she was traveling around, doing concerts and festivals with her family. She sang with several groups in the Twin Cities area — including the all-girl trio The Dollys. And she could be heard as a back-up singer and as a jingle singer on commercials for White Castle, Target, and more. “Amazing Grace” with Garrison >>>View available music >>> More from Ricky Skaggs
Here is an excerpt from our guest interview with Ricky Skaggs:
Q: How did you get your start in music and who were your biggest influences?
I started out playing the mandolin when I was five. My father bought me a mandolin, and I grew up listening to the Stanley Brothers, Flatt and Scruggs, and Bill Monroe — they were kind of my heroes. So I did study the classics. I got to play with Bill Monroe when I was six years old, and got to play with Flatt and Scruggs when I was seven. I met Ralph Stanley when I was nine. So I was ruined after that. Those guys influenced me so strong and so deeply that my music really took roots in those early days — so roots music has always been strong in my life. Read our guest interview >>> Father’s Day Doo-wop
This week’s featured show includes the song “Father’s Day Doo-wop.” Oftentimes, when Garrison writes a humorous tune or changes the lyrics to a known song to be about a specific city or event, we get emails requesting the words. Here are the lyrics to one of those tunes:
It’s Father’s Day and it makes me feel blue
Fatherhood was nothing I was planning to do
It just sort of happened, disastrously
Shangalang bop bop shbop da doo ron ron oooooweee
I was good-looking when I was young
And I was cool, all the cool songs I’ve sung
Do you remember the time we sang.
Bop bop shbop da doo ron ron oooooweee shangalang
O baby you’re looking old too
Those rotten kids have made a mess of me and you
We give them everything they want, it’s time that we stop
Shangalang da doo ron ron oooooweee bop bop shbop
We’re aging too fast, life is rushing on
It’s all the fault of our evil spawn
We’ll tell them Tuesday, they’ve got to be gone
Shangalang oooooweee bop bop shbop da doo ron ron
O baby, let’s be immature
Send the kids away and rediscover amour
We’ll sell the house, cash in the 401(k)
Shangalang bop bop shbop da doo ron ron hey hey
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That Time of Year: A Minnesota Life
Hard to believe it's been 15 years since the release of the A Prairie Home Companion movie and many have wondered how the film came about. . . here is a very short passage from the chapter titled ALTMAN in Garrison's memoir 'That Time of Year: A Minnesota Life.'
My career peaked with the publication Love Me, but I didn't know it and I kept marching. I wrote a Lake Wobegon screenplay and Tony Judge called George Sheanshang, who was Robert Altman's attorney, and we learned that Mrs. Altman, Kathryn, was a regular listener to the show. Aha! Connections! It pays to know the right people. So a meeting was arranged, and I went to Altman's office in New York with his movie posters on the wall, MASH, Nashville, Popeye, McCabe and Mrs. Miller. He was 78, moving slowly, gruff, speaking in short sentences. He said his wife liked the show, that he often sat in the next room watching basketball on TV and heard her laugh and came into her room to find out what she was laughing at. He did not say that he laughed along with her and I doubted that he had. I don't think small-town Minnesota was his territory.
The screenplay I offered him was about John Tollefson returning to Lake Wobegon for the funeral of his father, Byron, who died of a heart attack coming up from the basement with a bag of frozen peas. John had beed fired from his TV weatherman job in Boston for having said, while forecasting a thunderstorm, the limerick about lightning coming out of the ass of the young man of Madras as he clangs his brass balls together and plays "Stormy Weather." He comes home in disgrace for his dad's funeral and falls in love with his old high school sweetheart and they marry. There was a lesbian couple who fight like cats and a drunken wake and a pissing contest. The story take place in January. That is what killed it for Mr. Altman. He said, "I don't know if you've ever done location shooting in winter, but I have, and I don't plan to do it again. It's an interesting story except for one thing. The death of an old man is not a tragedy. So I don't get the point." He said he wanted to make a movie, though he ws being treated for cancer and he would consider making a movie about a radio show and shoot it entirely at the Fitzgerald Theater. So I wrote him a new script in about a week, urged on by his illness.
The remainder of the story can be found in the chapter Altman.
Get the Book >>>Get the CDs >>> |
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A Prairie Home Companion Original Logo Shirt |
Like the men and women of Lake Wobegon, this comfortable shirt is strong and good-looking, and it features a spot-on reproduction of the original sign that anchored the stage during the live shows from 1974 – 1979. Handsomely re-created and screened onto the front of our lightweight T-shirt.
NOTE: The original logo is also featured on our 2 newest additions to the store: the power pack charger for your smart phone and our bluetooth speaker to listen to the show.
Get the Shirt >>> |
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