GUY NOIR WRITERS In “The Back Room” this Saturday, Garrison will write the beginning of a Guy Noir story. With assistance from readers, he will take ideas and comments to continue this story thread and over a few weeks’ time, a full story will emerge written by Garrison and readers. If you fancy yourself someone that can add to this story, please join us in “The Back Room.” Substack is a site designed for authors to better communicate and share with their readers. “Garrison Keillor and Friends” is free but in the paid subscription, ”The Back Room,” one can unlock additional writings and these interactive experiences. Go to Garrison Keillor and Friends on Substack
for a paid subscription >>> Happiness comes to those that don't give a rip I am a happy man now that I know what the secret of happiness is, which, according to Buddha and Jesus both, is to give up wanting things. It’s just that simple. I’ve bought houses in hopes of happiness, taken vacation trips to Hawaii and Norway and Barbados, bought three-piece suits and shirts with French cuffs, and spent as much as $28 on a haircut, and felt vaguely dissatisfied after, but now I am 78, an age at which I expected to be cranky and of course there’s still time but now I discover I can’t get what I want because I’ve forgotten what it is. So there you are. Time solves another problem....
Go to Garrison Keillor and Friends on Substack
for THE COLUMN >>>
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This week on A Prairie Home Companion This week’s classic A Prairie Home Companion show comes to you from Yellowstone National Park in Wyoming as we travel back to 1997 to the only radio show that featured a star turn from Old Faithful plus guests including The Hopeful Gospel Quartet with Kate MacKenzie, Robin and Linda Williams, and Garrison, plus Skip Gorman and Pat Williams. Also with us, the Royal Academy of Radio Actors (Tim Russell, Sue Scott, and Tom Keith), and The Guy’s All-Star Shoe Band.
Highlights include a slew of campfire songs sent in from listeners, plus “Count Your Blessings,” “America the Beautiful,” “Home on the Range,” Skip Gorman’s take on “Rye Whiskey.” And don’t miss the spitting contest between Dusty and Lefty 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.
Skip Gorman has long been one of this country’s finest performers of old-time cowboy music. Beginning at age eight by playing guitar and singing along with Jimmie Rodgers records, Skip went on to master the traditional flavors of American fiddle and mandolin styles. He was a member of the Deseret String Band in the 1970s, recording Powder River (Folk Legacy), his first album of cowboy songs and fiddle tunes in 1977. This was followed by Trail to Mexico and The Old Style Mandolin. His “Cowboy Waltz” was featured on Ken Burn’s documentary Baseball. Skip has performed at the National Folk Festival at Wolf Trap, the Shetland Festival, and taught at Augusta Heritage and Pinewoods. And he has spent part of his time employed as a musician/wrangler for the 1880s-period cattle drives at High Island Ranch in Hamilton Dome, Wyoming. “Pretty Fair Maid in the Garden” >>>View available music >>>
The Hopeful Gospel Quartet was formed when four friends discovered their shared interest in gospel music; they were standing around backstage, waiting for one of the Prairie Home Companion shows to begin, and one of them began to sing. The others joined in, and — fast-forward — the Hopeful Gospel Quartet, or the Hopefuls, toured with Chet Atkins and performed at Carnegie Hall, Radio City Music Hall, the Universal Amphitheatre, and at the Great Prairie Home Hymn-Sing Festival in Moorhead, Minnesota. The Hopefuls released two albums: Garrison Keillor & the Hopeful Gospel Quartet and Climbing Up on the Rough Side. The members of the Hopeful Gospel Quartet for this show are Kate MacKenzie, Garrison Keillor, and Robin and Linda Williams. “I Bid You Goodnight” >>>Purchase “Climbing Up on the Rough Side” >>> History of the Hopeful Gospel Quartet >>>
Tom Keith: Sound-Effects Man
Tom Keith is featured in several sketches during Saturday’s classic A Prairie Home Companion episode. Tom provided sound effects and so much more, working alongside Garrison since 1969. Upon Tom Keith’s passing in 2011, this is what Garrison wrote:
Our colleague the actor and sound-effects man Tom Keith died Sunday night at his home in St. Paul. He performed on the show October 22 at the Fitzgerald with the cast and guest John Lithgow — played a zombie and a beery Elizabethan bartender, did the sound effects for “Lives of the Cowboys” and “Mom” and did a wonderful and shocking sound effect of a grade school teacher being shrunk from six feet to three inches, using a balloon, some small sticks, and vocal thwops and splorts, and then did the voice of a three-inch-tall female. He complained of shortness of breath the next week, but put off going to see a doctor, and collapsed Sunday night around 6 p.m. He was conscious afterward but died in the ambulance on his way to the hospital.
Tom was one of radio’s great clowns. He was serious about silliness and worked hard to get a moo exactly right and the cluck too and the woof. His whinny was amazing — noble, vulnerable, articulate. He did bagpipes, helicopters, mortars, common drunks, caribou (and elands and elk and wapiti), garbage trucks backing up, handsaws and hammers, and a beautiful vocalization of a man falling from a great height into piranha-infested waters.
He was an engineer at Minnesota Public Radio in 1971, when I did the morning show in the studios in Park Square Court in Lowertown St. Paul, and he took the name Jim Ed Poole, did the sports segment, and talked about his pet chicken, Curtis, who lived with him at the Hotel Transom. When Prairie Home Companion started in 1974, he engineered most of the first two seasons, using a five-channel mixer, and then graduated to the stage where he played three roles in the ongoing “Buster the Show Dog” — the dog, Father Finian, and Timmy the Sad Rich Teenage Boy. He was Maurice the maître d’ at the Café Boeuf and he was Larry who lived in the basement under the Fitzgerald stage.
He was an ex-Marine (who could do a fine drill instructor), a good golfer, a sturdy, reliable, can-do colleague, a gifted performer with the unassuming demeanor of a stagehand. Whenever Tom came onstage for a sketch, I could see the audience’s heads turn in his direction. They could hear me but they wanted to see Tom, same as you’d watch any magician. Boys watched him closely to see how he did the shotgun volleys, the singing walrus, the siren, the helicopter, the water drips. His effects were graceful, precise, understated, like the man himself. All of us at the show are shocked by his passing and send our sincere condolences to his family and also to the listeners who enjoyed his work so much.
Here is an excerpt from a guest interview with Tom Keith from 2010:
How is it that you came to work with Garrison Keillor?
I first started working with Garrison when he began doing his Prairie Home Morning Show in 1974 … I think that was the year. It was the third time he did a daily morning show on MPR. I was the engineer on duty at that time of morning. I had never heard the earlier shows but I first heard about Garrison when I was taking a comedy class at the University of Minnesota and our class had to critique an article he wrote for The New Yorker. I told him about that and he asked me what I thought of the article and I said, “It was OK.”
You have been a part of many memorable scripts including “The Six-Minute Hamlet,” the opera spoof “La Influenza,” etc. When do you first see a script and how do you prepare or get ready to perform the piece?
We, the Academy of Radio Actors, first see the scripts on Friday during our first rehearsal. That’s when it is timed for length and I try out my sound effects to hear what works and what doesn’t. Garrison knows what I have in my sound-effects kit, but sometimes I have to come up with something new. If I can’t, then the script will be adjusted. The next day we will get the scripts again with edits. Sometimes on Saturday we might even get a new script we haven’t seen and run through it during rehearsal and then have that edited just before broadcast. You have to be flexible.
Is there a lot of “live” ad-libbing of sound effects?
Sometimes it looks like Garrison is trying to trick me, but I usually know when it is going to happen. But there have been one or two times where he has extended a script by adding a few extra sound effects.
What is your favorite sketch to participate in? Any episodes that stand out in particular?
Some of my favorite sketches were the ones that we did touring as the “Annual Final Show.” Those were Buster and Timmy with Sheila the Christian jungle girl, played by Kate MacKenzie. “Guy Noir” is always fun and is usually filled with sound effects and can be quite a challenge. Read the full Guest Interview >>>Explore his sound-effects table >>> |
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The Royal Academy of Radio Actors (4 CDs)
The most talented acting company in all of radio! The Royal Academy of Radio Actors features Garrison Keillor, Sue Scott, Tim Russell, Fred Newman, and the late Tom Keith performing Guy Noir, The Lives of the Cowboys, Mom & Duane, and more. Each CD features pieces individually chosen by each performer as the scripts they treasure and remember the most. Over 3 hours on 4 CDs. Includes Tom Keith: Sound-Effects Man. Get the CD >>>Listen to a sample from Tom Keith: Sound Effects Man >>> |
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Make America Great Again Hat |
| Garrison wades into the 2020 presidential election, devising an alternative to President Trump’s “Make America Great Again” slogan. While America has never NOT been great, it has always been intelligent! With white letters printed on Democrat blue, the hat is adjustable so one size fits most. Price has been REDUCED! |
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