An idea, probably wrong, but it's an idea I’m thinking I should get to work on a museum of the era before the internet and cellphones and streaming music so that people under 40 know what it was like to talk on a phone with a cord on the kitchen wall and gossip without your mother understanding what it was about. People wrote on stationery with a pen back then, not a stationary bike but paper, wrote letters in a cursive hand to their grandmas and Grandma told you what fine handwriting you had. Now Grandma is happy if you stick with your birth gender and don’t get tangled up with fentanyl.
I’m not nostalgic for those days, I simply feel that you young people need to know some history. When I was 20, 60 years ago, I walked into the Capitol in Washington one evening and there was one cop sitting at a table inside the door, reading a book. There was no metal detector. Nowadays, they put up metal detectors at the doors to elementary schools. I’m not kidding. Go to Garrison Keillor and Friends on Substack to read the rest of
THE COLUMN >>> Become a member of THE BACK ROOM on our Substack page for exclusive access to News from Lake Wobegon stories, archived goodies. excerpts from unpublished works, previews of other works, a second weekly column and on occasion, a full-length video stream of a show from 2015-2016. Also if you shop in the store, THE BACK ROOM subscribers receive 20% discounts. ($6 per mos or $65 annual subscription). |
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This week on "A Prairie Home Companion" A show that was performed live from the Fitzgerald Theater in St. Paul, Minnesota, in 1997 featuring the guitar sounds of Sharon Isbin, some polka from John Filipczak along with some piano magic from Steve Ross. Our fine Royal Academy of Radio Actors pitch in on The Story of Bob, The Lives of the Cowboys, Fred Farrell, and Silver Lining. Some fine music from The Guy’s All-Star Shoe Band plus the latest News from Lake Wobegon. It’s a classic you do not want to miss! So, gather around your computer or smartphone and spend the next two hours of fun and frivolity with us. Join us Saturday for a listen via our Facebook page at 5 p.m. CT (or click the link below). Listen to the Show >>>Like our Facebook page >>> More about this week’s featured guests
Sharon Isbin is one of the world’s top classical guitarists. She grew up in Minneapolis and started playing guitar at the age of nine. When she was 14, she won a guitar competition and a chance to play with the Minneapolis Symphony in front of an audience of 5,000. Isbin has performed all over the world. She is on the faculty at The Juilliard School as the director of the guitar department, which she founded in 1989, following up on the dying wish of her sometime teacher Andres Segovia. She is an avid researcher of the history of the guitar and the author of The Acoustic Guitar Answer Book, and she has collaborated with artists such as Carlos Barbosa-Lima, Laurindo Almeida, and Gaudencio Thiago de Mello. Her most recent releases are AFFINITY: World Premiere Recordings and STRINGS FOR PEACE: Premieres for Guitar & Sarod with Amjad Ali Khan, both of which were named Best of 2020 by NPR. “Recuerdos de la Alhambra” >>> John Filipczak & the Classics are an exceptional polka band playing in the Polish “honky-style,” which came out of Chicago in the ’50s and has been called “the Dixieland of polka.” In this form of polka, the trumpet is the lead instrument, the clarinet plays above and below the melody line, and the concertina, string bass, and the drums keep the band together. John Filipczak (trumpet, concertina) started out his 40-year career as the original trumpet player with the Jolly Brothers Polka Band. Gary Jasicki (clarinet, saxophone) has played with the Jolly Jokers and Linda Jasicki (vocals, trumpet) has played trumpet with her father’s German-style group The Country cousins. Darleen Hansen comes from a long line of musicians and began her musical career at age six, doing commercials for the Howdy Dowdy show. Fred Axberg (drums) has played for rock, jazz, country, and polka bands. “Kids of All Ages Dance” >>> In the early 1980s, Steve Ross was hurled into the spotlight with a three-year run at the Algonquin Hotel’s Oak Room. He began playing in bars when he was only a teenager in his native Washington, D.C. In 1968, he moved to New York and got a big break a few years later at Ted Hook’s Backstage in Times Square, where he played piano for stars like Ethel Merman and Ginger Rogers, which launched his run at the Algonquin. He has since performed in the best clubs of New York, Paris, London, and Tokyo. |
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| As we approach the holiday season, there are two opportunities to join the old gang in song and spirit, either in person or via our LIVESTREAM events. First up is our traditional post-Thanksgiving show from The Town Hall in New York City on November 26, which will be followed by our Christmas show from the Fabulous Fox Theatre in St. Louis. Limited tickets remain to join us in person, but we have worked with Mandolin.com to bring you a LIVESTREAM — watch live and have access for 48 hours afterward. Gather family and friends and have a listening party while you enjoy A Prairie Home Companion LIVE from your living room! Order the 2 LIVESTREAM package >>> GARRISON KEILLOR on the road: We have just added several shows to our upcoming calendar as we venture into Kansas and Missouri with Prudence Johnson and Dan Chouinard. On the Event schedule, you will find a range of shows: full A Prairie Home Companion productions mentioned above, some solo shows (including this week’s appearance in Mount Tabor, New Jersey), a date with Robin and Linda Williams next week, plus many Keillor & Company shows. There is something for everyone! We hope to see you on the road this holiday season and beyond! VIEW the EVENT schedule >>> |
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GET Wobegon Boy FREE with purchases over $25 (till November 21st) |
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Can you believe it’s been 25 years since the release of Wobegon Boy? The book was Garrison’s return in written form to the fictional small town he created — only Lake Wobegon Days and Leaving Home were released before it.
Here is a description of the book:
A promising young man, John Tollefson, last seen leaving home in Lake Wobegon Days, lands in a lovely town in upstate New York, the manager of a public radio station at a college for the academically challenged children of financially gifted parents. He buys a fine house, finds a wonderful girlfriend named Alida, launches a restaurant, puts on good parties, is presented with radio’s coveted Wally Award, and then it dawns on him that his life is empty, without grandeur. And that grandeur is to be found in the life in which his Lutheran parents brought him up. Ultimately that leads the Wobegon Boy not back to Lake Wobegon, but to New York City.
From Kirkus Review
“No, that’s not thunder you’re hearing. More likely it’s laughter from the Hereafter, for if there’s any justice here or there, Mark Twain, Will Rogers, and James Thurber have already received their advance copies of this latest installment in the ongoing saga of Minnesota’s endearingly phlegmatic Norwegian-Americans. Wobegon Boy isn’t exactly a novel, but what the hell, who really wants one from the genial creator and host of public radio’s A Prairie Home Companion? What we’re given here is a shred of a story — narrated by Keillor’s protagonist John Tollefson, who escapes the stultifying “cheerfulness” of his homeland (and the girlfriend he doesn’t want to marry) by securing a job as manager of a newly created radio station at upstate New York’s nondescript St. James College. Shades of Jon Hassler close about the Horatio Algerlike John, who picks his way in and out of relationships with assorted academic phonies, potential business partners, and — most importantly — the Amazonian Alida Freeman, a lively university historian who isn’t above any number of amorous tumbles with the smitten Wobegonian, but won’t commit herself to “the doldrums of marriage.” The plot is really only an excuse for comic riffs on such irresistible targets as political correctness, talk radio, feminist militancy, academic unfreedom, the polite impregnability of the Norwegian national character, sexual good manners, New Age music, and Lord knows what all else. There’s a laugh on virtually every page of this fresh reimagining of the young-man-up-from-the-provinces novel, even during the truly touching extended sequence that describes John’s return home for his father’s funeral and reconciliation with exasperating friends and relations he thought he’d seen the last of. And John Tollefson is no mere innocent afoot (consider, for example, his perfectly reasonable theory that the New England Transcendentalists all suffered from chronic constipation). Drollery raised to the level of genuine comic art. And that’s the news from Lake Wobegon.” (October, 1997)
From now until November 21st, ALL ORDERS over $25 will include a free copy of Wobegon Boy to celebrate the 25th Anniversary of its publication. You need to do nothing except place your order. Through this time, we will be sharing excerpts, quotations, reviews, and other information to celebrate the release of the book. Offer is for a printed copy of the book. |
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| A Prairie Home Companion Socks | Peter Rosen once produced a documentary about Garrison Keillor entitled ‘The Man on the Radio in the Red Shoes.’ What the title failed to realize is that Garrison not only wore red shoes onstage for the APHC shows, he also wore a red tie and red socks to match. Now, you can wear a pair of Prairie Home socks and keep your feet warm on those cool winter nights. Knit jacquard socks are made with a woven imprint combining both the original logo and the microphone from the more recent logo. One size fits all. |
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| Serenity at 70; Gaeity at 80 Serenity at 70, Gaiety at 80
Why you should keep on getting older
Created just for fans as a keepsake from Garrison and available only in our store, this wonderful gem on aging will have you laughing and contemplating your way into the next phase of life. Shipping begins at the end of November. Here is a short preview:
“My life is so good at 79 I wonder why I waited this long
to get here,” writes Mr. Keillor. “I look at the front page
of the paper and think, ‘Not My Problem.’ The world
belongs to the young, I am only a tourist, and I love being
a foreigner in America. I enjoy it as I would enjoy Paris or
Copenhagen, except I mostly know the language. I don’t
know who famous people are anymore and I’m okay with
that. You learn that Less Is More, the great lesson of
Jesus and also Buddha. Each day becomes important after
you pass the point of life expectancy. Big problems vanish,
small things make you happy. And the worst is behind you
because you lack the energy to be as foolish as you might
otherwise be.
“We arrive at old age by luck; virtue is not crucial. Luck
is crucial. If you took time to plan your life carefully,
you’d be 90 by the time you turn 25. So aim for adequacy.
Be good enough.”
Don’t miss the chapter of 23 rules for aging, including
“Enumerate your benefits,” “Enjoy inertia,” “Get out of
the way,” “Tell your likely survivors absolutely not to use
the words ‘A Celebration of Life’ (you already did that
yourself),” “Don’t fight with younger people; they will be
writing your obituary,” and finally, “Ignore rules you read
in a book. Do what you were going to do anyway.”
Also the Five Stages of Aging, for those who like
lists, and Mr. Keillor’s account of 24 hours in a New York
ER, in which he saw clearly his own good fortune and
also got an EEG and a lesson in contentment from Bob
the Buddhist. And a few poems for no extra charge:
Every day is a beautiful gift,
Tender and precious and swift.
The light and the sound,
The sky and the ground,
Every hour cries out to be lived.
Though I may be over the hill,
Still I think I can and I will.
I’ve forgotten just what
I can and will, but
They remain a goal of mine still.
Every year I pass the date
When my balloon shall deflate.
My mom entered heaven
At age ninety-seven,
And I aim to reach ninety-eight.
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| The NEW Duct Tape Shirt Sponsored by the American Duct Tape Council, since duct tape is the only tool you need at your disposal. And this shirt humorously tells folks why. Gray cotton shirt is available in sizes S–XXL.
Get the Shirt >>>
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