On The Road Again!

 
After a few weeks rest, Keillor & Company is ready to hit the road again. Garrison, Prudence Johnson, and Dan Chouinard want to entertain you with a mix of stories, love songs, poetry, and humor, plus a great sing-along as they escape Minnesota for shows in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, Maryville, Tennessee, and Frankfort, Kentucky. Find information here about these shows plus a trio of shows in early March with Heather Masse and Rich Dworsky.
 

Get tickets >>>

A week in Kansas and Missouri

 
I am an old Democrat who’s been traveling around doing shows in Republican towns in the Midwest and it’s making me a better person. I stand up on a theater stage and I hum a note and the audience hums it back and I sing “My country ’tis of thee” and by the “thee” they’re singing so beautifully and are thrilled to do it — they thought I was going to do stand-up but here we are singing “America” and they know the words. It’s a Protestant crowd and when Martin Luther launched the Reformation, he substituted congregational singing for Latin liturgy and clerical costumery and now here are a thousand of them singing four-part harmony, no organ, and they love it. We go into the spacious skies and amber waves and da doo ron ron da doo ron ron and the bright golden haze on the meadow and working on the railroad, songs they haven’t sung since grade school, and I know that they believe a lot of trashy stuff that isn’t remotely true and guess what — I DON’T CARE.
 

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The Fitzgerald Theater in 2012

This week we’ll travel back to 2006 for a show from Milwaukee, Wisconsin. With this city a progressive bastion, with its rich history of industry, immigrants, municipal innovations, and a certain bubbly beverage, we’re sure to feel right at home at the Milwaukee Theater. Featured guests include the 100-year-old Milwaukee Mandolin Orchestra, local surf-rockers The Exotics, and sitting in with the Guy’s All-Star Shoe Band, swingin’ clarinetist Chuck Hedges. Also with us, the Royal Academy of Radio Acting: Tim Russell, Sue Scott, and Fred Newman, The News from Lake Wobegon, and much more. Join us on Saturday at 5 p.m. for a listen (or if you simply cannot wait, listen now via the link below). 

Highlights include chatter about Milwaukee and some of its history, sauerkraut, and the typewriter, Catchup, English Majors, a “Goose Chase” from Pat Donohue, “On, Wisconsin” from the Milwaukee Mandolin Orchestra, “Drums A-Go-Go” from The Exotics, “ Come Sunday” from Chuck Hedges, and a fine finish on “Rave On.”

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More about this week’s featured guests:


Clarinetist Chuck Hedges built his reputation in the early 1950s in Chicago — his hometown — playing with jazz greats like George Brunies, Muggsy Spanier, and Art Hodes. He also toured the U.S. and Europe with Wild Bill Davison. In the ’60s, Chuck moved to Milwaukee and was part of the Dick Ruedebusch Band. With that group, he made a number of recordings and performed on Ed Sullivan’s popular Sunday-night TV show. Chuck also traveled worldwide playing at jazz festivals.

Listen to “I Found a New Baby” >>>

 
The Exotics first got together in the mid-’90s to play music that’s decidedly mid-’60s. The four veterans of the Chicago and Milwaukee music scenes were inspired by the likes of the Ventures, Sandy Nelson, and Link Wray, who first popularize the twangy, reverb-drenched sound. With Don Nelson on drums, Jon Ziegler on bass, Brandt Zacher on lead guitar, and Paul Wall on rhythm guitar, The Exotics toured the Midwest, including appearances in Chicago, Minneapolis.

Listen to “Fire Engine Red” >>>

The Bonne Amie Musical Circle, under the performance name “Milwaukee Mandolin Orchestra (MMO),” is the oldest fretted-instrument music organization in the United States. The Orchestra plays music arranged for 1st and 2nd mandolin, mandola, mando-cello, guitar, flute, mando-bass, percussion and voice. The MMO was organized in Milwaukee in 1900 and has been in continuous operation in that city since then. Led by Music Director Rene Izquierdo, the MMO’s repertoire centers on the best in traditional American mandolin orchestra music (waltzes, tangos, marches, and polkas) plus light classical, modern, Italian, and Latin numbers. They regularly perform their unique repertoire at music festivals, and concert halls.

Listen to “Stop, Look, and Listen” >>>

 
When the show traveled, Garrison often wrote special songs about the host city or state. Here are lyrics from this week’s featured show dedicated to Wisconsin.

I love Wisconsin’s city names
Like Oshkosh and Racine
And Manitowoc and Waukesha
Though I don’t know what they mean
Waukesha, Waukesha
Waukesha
Waukesha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha
Waukesha, Waukesha
I hope they have some cheese.
Sheboygan’s east of Fond du Lac
Eau Claire is in the west
Milwaukee’s fine and Superior
But Waukesha’s the best.

Waukesha’s a paradise
A delight in every way
And if I can ever find the time
I’ll visit there someday.
 

That Time of Year: A Minnesota Life

That Time of Year: A Minnesota Life will be released in paperback on March 7 wherever books are sold. The memoir is a self-reflective look at Garrison Keillor’s life, from his early childhood to thoughts on creating and hosting A Prairie Home Companion. In That Time of Year, Garrison looks back on his life and recounts how a Brethren boy with writerly ambitions grew up in a small town on the Mississippi in the 1950s and, after seeing three good friends die young, turned to comedy and radio. Through a series of unreasonable lucky breaks, he founded A Prairie Home Companion and put himself in line for a good life, including mistakes, regrets, and a few medical adventures. PHC lasted forty years, more than 1,500 shows, and enjoyed the freedom to do as it pleased for three or four million listeners every Saturday at 5 p.m. Central. He got to sing with Emmylou Harris and Renée Fleming and once sang two songs to the U.S. Supreme Court. He played a private eye and a cowboy, gave the news from his hometown, Lake Wobegon, and met Somali cabdrivers who’d learned English from listening to the show. He wrote bestselling novels, won a Grammy and a National Humanities Medal, and made a movie with Robert Altman with an alarming amount of improvisation.

In this extended video, Garrison reflects on what he learned about himself writing the book and shares a few of the stories from it.

Watch “What I Learned Reading My Memoir’ >>>
Preorder the “slightly updated” softcover from our store >>>
Purchase the audiobook read by Garrison Keillor >>>

The Writer's Almanac

The first two special projects from The Writer’s Almanac have been released for your listening pleasure. The first is a short collection of Love Poems that were read by Garrison on episodes of the daily podcast. This collection features five poems that lead into Garrison’s reading of his epic love poem “The Finn Who Wouldn’t Take a Sauna.” The second collection of poems is a series of poetry dedicated to Black History Month. We hope you enjoy these new ways to listen and share poetry that was first featured on the daily podcast. You can still enjoy and listen to classic episodes daily from The Writer’s Almanac archive delivered to your inbox every morning.

Listen to Love Poems >>>
Listen to Black History Month >>>
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Friendship Cards set of 8

Petrarch to Shakespeare, John Milton to John Berryman, Elizabeth Barrett Browning to
Longfellow to Langston Hughes — poets across centuries have found the sonnet to be a compelling form of poetic expression.

Garrison Keillor has too. Now eight of his uplifting sonnets — echoing aspects of friendship or
kindness — are printed on quality card stock, each poem paired with a handsome photographic
illustration.
 
There are 2 sets of cards available. Here we are featuring SET 2 (vertical format: approximately 7” x 5”).

Four different poems paired with four different photographs
2 cards of each, 8 envelopes
Themes: Walking; Summer’s Bounty; Quietude; Friends — the most valuable acquisition
Here is the sonnet featured on the “Quietude” card:

QUIETUDE
 
In a world of crunching and grinding and humming
And the confusion of people going and coming
TVs, cellphones, Muzak, hysteria
It’s a blessing to locate a peaceful area
And escape the tumult and travail
And leave a message on your voice mail:
“Just me. Nothing of great import to say,
Except that time is slipping away
And so I wanted to say hello
And hope you are well and all your brood
And that you can sometimes let go
And find something like serenity and quietude.
     A quiet day: so much happiness depends upon it,
     And that is why I sent you this quiet sonnet.

Purchase the Notecards Set #2 >>>

Lake Life in Lake Wobegon T-Shirt