A Blue Ribbon Show from 2006

Garrison Keillor Tonight at the

The Lyric Theatre in Lexington, KY

The Caverns in Pelham, TN

Garrison Keillor brings his solo show to The Lyric Theatre in Lexington, Kentucky, and the unique setting of The Caverns in Pelham, Tennessee, next month.

One man, one microphone. There are sung sonnets, limericks, and musical jokes. And the thread that runs through it is the beauty of growing old. Despite the inconvenience, old age brings the contentment of LESS IS MORE. Your mistakes and big ambitions are behind you, nothing left to prove, and small things give you great pleasure because that’s what’s left.

There is the News from Lake Wobegon, the little town that time forgot and the decades cannot improve. Plus an a cappella sing-along with the audience singing from memory an odd medley of patriotic songs, pop standards, hymns, and more. 

September 15th at 7:30 p.m. at the Lyric Theater in Lexington, KY

September 17th at 5:00 p.m. at the Caverns in Pelham, TN

This show is part of our upcoming series of EVENTS — Garrison performing solo or in concert with others in addition to a few shows gathering our PHC troupe back together to celebrate the upcoming 50th Anniversary of the first Prairie Home Companion show. 

VIEW ALL EVENTS

Listen to this 2006 classic Grandstand show

We’ve got a blue-ribbon winner of a show for you this week from the Grandstand of the Minnesota State Fair. Highlights include Garrison’s talk about Labor Day and the end of summer, his tender duet with Becky Schlegel on “If Teardrops Were Pennies,” and the Del McCoury band with “Five Flat Rocks” and “Led by the Master’s Hand.” The Tommy Mischke Band adds flavor to “Back to the Water,” plus some sound effects fun, a cheese curd tasting contest, words from a few sponsors, the News from Lake Wobegon, and the finale sing-along on “The Star-Spangled Banner.”Join us via this link onlineor by our Facebook page on Saturday night at 5:00 p.m. CT.

** You are in for a special treat. This is the full show version from the Friday night concert show (2 hours and 51 minutes).

The Del McCoury Band

The Del McCoury Band is led by Del McCoury, who’s been playing bluegrass for more than six decades. McCoury spent most of his youth in York County, Pennsylvania, and learned music from his mother, Hazel, a church organist who also played guitar, piano, and harmonica. In his teenage years, he and his older brother played together in a church quartet. That led Del to a job picking banjo for a local bluegrass band that played on a Pennsylvania radio station, which led to appearances in the late 1950s and early ’60s with groups like the Blue Ridge Ramblers and the Virginia Playboys. It wasn’t long before he met Bill Monroe, the father of bluegrass, who asked McCoury to play in his band, The Blue Grass Boys. McCoury played guitar and sang lead vocals with The Blue Grass Boys and traveled with them for a year before quitting the band and getting married. He ended up back in Pennsylvania, working at a sawmill and playing music on weekends. As his sons got older, they began playing in their dad’s band. Ronnie joined the band in 1981 and Rob followed in 1987. In the early ’90s, this five-person band was formed. The Del McCoury Band was named Entertainers of the Year nine times by the International Bluegrass Music Association (IBMA), and in won a Grammy Award for their 2013 album, The Streets of Baltimore.

Becky Schlegel

When a college friend gave Becky Schlegel a couple of Reno and Smiley albums, the die was cast: She was sold on bluegrass. She left her South Dakota home, moved to Minnesota, and became a favorite on the Upper Midwest music scene — named Bluegrass/Old-Time Artist of the Year at the Minnesota Music Awards four years running. After living in Nashville for several years, she headed back to Minnesota. She continues to record, paint, and perform.

Tommy Mischke

It didn’t take much back in the ’80s to get a twentysomething Tommy Mischke hooked. On a whim, the young freelance writer and delivery van driver put a quarter in a pay phone and called in to a Twin Cities radio station. A few seconds of airtime proved so alluring that Mischke continued calling for the next year. The staff of Don Vogel’s KSTP radio show dubbed him the “Phantom Caller,” and six years later he was finally hired as a regular on Vogel’s program. In 1994, the station gave Mischke his own nighttime show, The Mischke Broadcast. Mischke was born and raised in St. Paul, Minnesota. As a teenager, he honed his writing chops by penning articles for the community newspaper his dad owned. The kid who was voted “best sense of humor” at Highland Park High went on to study journalism in college, but he soon found that writing didn’t necessarily make for a lucrative living. He spent some time traveling around, usually hopping freights, and wound up living in Butte, Montana. But he missed Minnesota, so he returned to St. Paul, where the radio venture began.

Tommy Mischke’s new book will be available in October, 2023. Winter's Song celebrates the intimate and intense relationship Americans living in the northern Midwest have with winter. The season is often viewed as an inhospitable time of year, accompanied by yearnings to fly south, yet Mischke invites us to view winter through the rich and varied lives of the hearty Northerners who have come to accept the season's extraordinary presentation-its hard lessons and hidden treasures.

With this year’s show, like others from the Grandstand, Garrison is inspired by the Fair. His love for “the great Minnesota get-together” can be heard through the threads of his chats with guests or by listening to the words in the songs and scripts that he has written. He does have a strong fondness for the tastes and smells and people and animals that are on the grounds. Here are the words to “You Better Leave That Corn Dog Alone,” which struck such a nerve that it translated the following year to one of our best-selling State Fair shirts, where the lyrics were printed on the back.

You had a bratwurst and corn on the cob A hot fudge sundae and a shish kebab You got a bucket of cheese curds in your hand And yet you’re stopping at the hot dog stand. CHORUS If you don’t want to get in trouble If you don’t want to get in trouble If you don’t want to get in trouble You better leave that corn dog alone When I married you I had no idea You’d sell your soul for a beef tortilla. I’m leaving you now. That’s it. I’m done. If you fall down, call 9-1-1. CHORUS You had a taco four inches thick And a deep-fried walleye on a stick You better be careful with that Pronto Pup ’Cause what goes down might come back up. CHORUS You had the onion rings and for desserts A caramel apple and more cheese curds I see the swine barn right over here I might put you in a pen with a tag on your ear. CHORUS (2x) 

More about the State Fair:

It's that time of year again! Discover the joys of the state fair in this article Garrison wrote for the July 2009 issue of National Geographic:

The Ten Chief Joys of the State Fair are:

1. To eat food with your two hands.

2. To feel extreme centrifugal force reshaping your face and jowls as you are flung or whirled turbulently and you experience that intense joyfulness that is indistinguishable from anguish, or (as you get older) to observe other persons in extreme centrifugal situations.

3. To mingle, merge, mill, jostle gently, and flock together with throngs, swarms, mobs, and multitudes of persons slight or hefty, punky or preppy, young or ancient, wandering through the hubbub and amplified razzmatazz and raw neon and clouds of wiener steam in search of some elusive thing, nobody is sure exactly what.

4. To witness the stupidity of others, their gluttony and low-grade obsessions, their poor manners and slack-jawed, mouth-breathing, pop-eyed yahootude, and feel rather sophisticated by comparison.

5. To see the art of salesmanship, of barking, hustling, touting, and see how effectively it works on others and not on cool you.

6. To see designer chickens, the largest swine, teams of mighty draft horses, llamas, rare breeds of geese, geckos, poisonous snakes, a two-headed calf, a 650-pound man, and whatever else appeals to the keen, inquiring mind.

7. To watch the judging of livestock.

8. To observe entertainers attempt to engage a crowd that is moving laterally.

9. To sit down and rest amid the turmoil and reconsider the meaning of life.

10. To turn away from food and amusement and crass pleasure and to resolve to live on a higher plane from now on.

Continue reading 

A Prairie Home Companion Scroll Shirt

Almost 50 years ago, Garrison wrote a piece about the history of the Grand Ole Opry for The New Yorker magazine. The article triggered an idea for a Midwestern version of the show, featuring music, comedy, sketches, and storytelling. And thus began A Prairie Home Companion. For the 40th anniversary of the show, we took a look at some historical shirt designs that the Opry created and we borrowed their scroll concept for this handsome T-shirt featuring the classic microphone logo. A Prairie Home Companion will return to Nashville’s Ryman Auditorium in January to celebrate the 50th Anniversary of the show at this legendary venue that is such a huge part of PHC history. Join us!

Get the Shirt

Church People: The Lutherans of Lake Wobegon

Lutherans have given us hotdish, church ladies, self-effacement, and solid advice (“Watch your manners, make yourself useful, and mind your own business”). Now they’ve given us a this APrairie Home Companion collection. Sketches, songs, stories, and more from A Prairie Home Companion reveal the secret world of a stalwart people. 

When you fly Lutheran Air, there’s no first class, meals are potluck with assignments by rows (rows 1–6, bring rolls; rows, 7–15, salad), all fares are by free-will offering, and the plane doesn’t land until the budget is met.

Welcome to the land of Lutherans, where people drive Fords, wear cardigans, go to church at Third Lutheran (which used to be called First Lutheran, but Lutherans are more comfortable with being Third), drink a lot of coffee, serve chow mein noodles on tuna hotdish, work hard, and don’t make a fuss. Selected from live broadcasts of A Prairie Home Companion, this collection celebrates the kindest people on God’s green earth — except for the mean ones. If you’re not a Lutheran, you’ll laugh out loud. If you are, you’ll smile as hard as you can.

Get the CDs 
Listen to a sample 

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