Boom Town & Other Upcoming Events Boom Town: A Lake Wobegon Novel is due out on April 11, 2022, and we hope you’ll visit your favorite booksellers to pick up a copy. There is a special event to mark the release of the book. Keeping in mind that no one is better in front of a LIVE crowd than Garrison, we’ll be staging his ONLY scheduled reading from the book Boom Town. It will take place on April 9, 2022, at the Swedenborgian Church in St. Paul, Minnesota. Seating is limited — only 120 tickets are available — but the event will be taped and later shared via social media channels. Our store has an autographed preorder that is ongoing for the first 1,200 books. The title is starting to pop up on many online booksellers for preorders so get ready to return to the “little town that time forgot and decades could not improve” to see why the town is changing and booming. Boom Town Reading Event Tickets >>> Get an autographed book >>> This past week saw the addition of A Prairie Home Companion American Revival to our upcoming LIVE events. Currently, this is the only event featuring the full cast and band plus musical guests including Brad Paisley, Elvin Bishop, Heather Masse, and Ellie Dehn. It’s been over two years since the group has been onstage together and Red Rocks provided a perfect destination get-together. We hope to see many of you there. The full tour schedule also includes some solo shows, a few Keillor & Company shows with Prudence Johnson and Dan Chouinard, and a couple of Hopeful Gospel Quartet shows featuring Robin & Linda Williams. A Prairie Home Companion American Revival tickets >>> View all other events >>> |
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Sitting scared in church, thinking about evil In church Sunday we stood and sang, asking God to bring to this world of strife His sovereign word of peace that war may haunt the world no more and desolation cease, and what in God’s name we meant by this, I can’t tell you, it’s like waving your hand at the incoming lightning and saying, “Rain, rain, go away,” a children’s rhyme, but in church we acknowledge we are children, we’re not Unitarians, just ordinary Episcopalians. America has been so fascinated with our own circus, we didn’t fully appreciate true evil and now here’s Putin taking his place with Lenin and Stalin, this small grim man who shells hospitals and apartment buildings, driving three million refugees out of Ukraine. The only decent thing about him is that he doesn’t appear in public with his daughters or his girlfriend, he spares them the shame. Go to Garrison Keillor and Friends on Substack to read the rest of THE COLUMN >>> Are you interested in being among the first to read something from Garrison’s newest book, Boom Town: A Lake Wobegon Novel? Become a member of THE BACK ROOM on our Substack page and you can peruse the first two chapters of the book ahead of its publication date. It is an exclusive members-only treat for a limited time. Becoming a member also gives you access to other written and recorded archival materials, plus a bonus column and your chance to ask Garrison any questions courtesy of the “Post to the Host” weekly email. Join our 3,000 subscribers to help support our productions. Subscribe to THE BACK ROOM>>> |
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This week on A Prairie Home Companion This week on A Prairie Home Companion, we revisit a classic performance from 1998 from the Nob Hill Masonic Center in San Francisco, California, with Laurie Lewis and the Sonos Handbell Ensemble. Highlights include Laurie Lewis’s crystal-clear vocals on “Millionaire” and “Kiss Me Before I Die,” the amazing Sonos Handbell Ensemble chiming “Hoedown,” and opera star Frederica von Stade singing an original titled “A Route to the Sky,” plus mentions of Café Beouf and Powdermilk, a Guy Noir caper, and some sage advice from Dusty and Lefty. Also with us, the Royal Academy of Radio Actors (Tim Russell and Sue Scott), the Guy’s All-Star Shoe Band, plus the latest News from Lake Wobegon. 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
Fiddler, singer, and songwriter Laurie Lewis grew up in Berkeley, California, and began playing violin as a child. It was at the Berkeley Folk Festivals of the 1960s that she first caught the folk bug. And while she drifted away from the music after her high school days, she always kept her fiddle stashed under the bed. A prudent move. In her early 20s, she discovered the Bay Area bluegrass scene and realized that music would be her life’s work. In the mid-1970s, she helped found the Good Ol’ Persons, an all-female ensemble, and she went on to form the Grant Street String Band, Blue Rose, and the Right Hands. Mandolinist Tom Rozum, Laurie’s longtime collaborator, joins her for today’s show.
“Here Today” >>>Available music >>> The Berkeley-based Sonos Handbell Ensemble is led by artistic director James Meredith. Sonosian musicians, having achieved their musical expertise on a variety of other instruments, are attracted to the complexity and dance-like challenge of performing on handbells. This instrument requires great personal discipline, a high level of cooperation, extremely good rhythm, and a willingness to become a component of a musical whole in which the communion of all parts is essential to the success of the ensemble. Audiences around the world are awed by the intimacy of this amazing musical relationship. “Listen for Life” >>>Explore their website >>>
Since her 1970 debut with the Metropolitan Opera, mezzo-soprano Frederica von Stade has appeared with every leading American opera company and throughout Europe from Teatro alla Scala and Royal Opera Covent Garden to the Vienna State Opera and the Paris Opera. She has made more than 70 recordings, including Songs of the Cat (HighBridge), a collaboration with Garrison Keillor. In addition to her nine Grammy nominations, two Grand Prix du Disc awards, the Deutsche Schallplattenpreis, and Italy’s Premio della Critica Discografica, she was appointed as an officer of L’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres, France’s highest honor in the arts.
“The Cat Came Back” >>>“Eine Kleine Cat” >>> Get Songs of the Cat >>> |
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St. Patrick's Day
Here is a bonus episode of A Prairie Home Companion, an all-things-Irish compilation in advance of St. Patrick’s Day on the 17th. Martin Sheen plays James Joyce in an episode of The Lives of the Cowboys, the late Frank Harte sings a tune from Finnegans Wake, and Pat Donohue has the Irish Blues. Plus, Sean O’Driscoll, Cathal McConnell and The Boys of the Lough, and Solas. In Lake Wobegon, Ronnie Detmer’s uncle travels to Dublin to collect an inheritance. Don’t miss the audience sing-along of “Danny’s Boy” — it’ll have you in tears.
And the history of the day, courtesy of The Writer’s Almanac:
St. Patrick’s Day, the annual feast day celebrating a patron saint of Ireland.
St. Patrick was born around the year 385, in a village in Wales. When he was 16, a group of Irish pirates raided his village and took many of the young men back to Ireland to work as slaves. Patrick worked for six years as a herdsman in the Irish countryside. In his sixth year, he escaped and made his way back to Wales. But, according to his autobiography, soon after he got back home he heard a voice telling him to go back to Ireland and convert the Irish to Christianity. That’s eventually what he did, but first he went to France to visit monasteries and study religious texts. After 12 years in France, he went back to Ireland, where he founded monasteries, schools, and churches and converted much of the island to Christianity.
Parades are a large part of the day’s celebrations, and New York City’s is the largest in the world, with the 69th Infantry Regiment leading 150,000 marchers up Fifth Avenue. The marchers include firefighters, police officers, emigrant societies, New York politicians, high school bands, and community service organizations. The first St. Patrick’s Day parade in New York was on March 17, 1762. Boston has been celebrating St. Patrick’s Day since 1737. And since 1961, Chicago has been dyeing its river green for the holiday.
The city of Dublin is a relative newcomer to the huge parade festivities, but the celebration there has been taking off in recent years. Dublin’s first St. Patrick’s Day Festival was held in 1995 to boost tourism. Since then, the parade has grown into a weeklong event that includes a symposium with lectures on Ireland’s economic success, issues of Irish identity, and the future of the Irish state. About 500,000 people turn out to witness the Dublin parade. |
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| Beautiful Dreamer (Heather Masse and Garrison Keillor) Heather Masse will join the American Revival show at Red Rocks on May 2 — and it promises to be a memorable evening.
Click below to hear Heather and Garrison perform a duet version of “Wild Horses.” Written by Mick Jagger and Keith Richards — and ranked 334 on Billboard’s list of the 500 best songs of all time — “Wild Horses” first appeared on the Rolling Stones’ album Sticky Fingers. Now, imagine joining us at Red Rocks and hearing this tune and others under the Colorado skies! Listen to ‘Wild Horses’ >>>
Get Beautiful Dreamer >>>
Red Rocks Tickets >>> |
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Serenity at 70, Gaiety at 80
by Garrison Keillor
Before Boom Town is available, catch up on Serenity at 70, Gaiety at 80, Garrison’s humorous take on aging and why we should all want to keep getting older. It is available on Amazon and in some bookstores — in both print and digital versions.
In Serenity at 70, Gaiety at 80, GK leans into the beauty of getting old. “My life is so good at 79 I wonder why I waited this long to get here,” he writes. 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. Includes 23 rules for aging, among them “Enumerate your benefits,” “Enjoy inertia,” “Get out of the way,” “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.” Readers are sure to chuckle at the wisdom and humor contained in this short, full-color volume (there are photos from Garrison’s life as well as reproductions of fine art).
Read the preview chapter >>> Get the book >>>
Get the audiobook MP3 >>> Get the audiobook (via Audible) >>> |
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| Giving Thanks Shirt Our limited-edition Garrison quotation product selection continues with this classic shirt highlighting a simple life mantra: “Giving thanks is the key to happiness.” That’s exactly where it’s at — being happy and appreciative for everything you have in your life. Lightweight cotton/poly blend shirt is available in sizes S–XXL Get the shirt >>> |
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