Good Old St Paul from 2002

50th Anniversary Memories, Trivia, and Audio Highlights

Here are memories of performing on the show from LINDA WILLIAMS — singer, songwriter, performer (ROBIN AND LINDA WILLIAMS).

We were sitting on the front porch at GK’s house after a show and hanging around for the show a weekend later. He came up with the idea of our doing a record pitch commercial — fast hard-hitting bluegrass snippets of Broadway songs that were not in any way connected with common themes from country or bluegrass. He said to do songs from West Side Story or other musicals but nothing from, say, Oklahoma, shows that leaned country. We’d do them as fast as we could, playing and singing harmony. That led to Marvin and Mavis Smiley and the Manhattan Valley Boys.

Smiley is a big name in Augusta County, Virginia, where we live, so we used that last name, and he most likely added the first names and the Manhattan Valley Boys. We continued to be asked to bring back Marvin and Mavis many times over the years, sometimes with other themes, like Down Home Diva with bluegrass snippets of familiar opera arias.

It was always very hard to get through a Marvin and Mavis segment without us breaking into laughter. We used to get lots of requests to do that in concert, which was impossible to do without the band, especially the drummer.

Read additional memories, trivia and stories, peruse some pictures and listen to some favorite performances on our 50th Anniversary website.

Join us in ATLANTA on November 8th for the final 50th Anniversary Show. Ticket info.

Listen to the classic show

This week, we trek back to October 12, 2002, for a show from St. Paul, Minnesota, with Ledward Kaapana, Owana Salazar, Dave Frishberg, and Lynn Peterson, plus Dan Newton sitting in with the Shoe Band.

Highlights include talk of baseball, a Win Twins song, duets with Lynn on “I Will Guide Thee” and “Just Someone I Used to Know,” “Miranda” by Pat Donohue, “I Kona” from Ledward Kaapana, and “My Country Used to Be” from David Frishberg. Also, The Story of Bob, Guy Noir, Married Life, and the latest News from Lake Wobegon. Listen to the show.

LEDWARD KAAPANA grew up in the village of Kalapana; his was a big family in a small place on the Big Island, and they all played music. They had no electricity, which meant no television and only battery radio. “So we entertained ourselves,” he said. “You could go to any house and everybody was playing music.” Parties in that village went on for days. “People played in shifts, taking over when somebody went to bed. You’d fall asleep to the music, wake up and the music was still playing. The best alarm clock I ever had. Even today when I play, I still picture all the family getting together and sharing their songs.”

He plays the slack key guitar in at least eight tunings, as well as ukulele, bass, and steel guitar, and sings baritone and falsetto. He has recorded dozens of albums in his multidecade career.

He learned to play at an early age by watching, listening, and imitating, and he practiced hard. He says that, from the beginning, improvisation came naturally to him. “I was doing it before I knew what it was,” he says. “Everything you play, every time you play, there’s a mood, an energy. If you plug into it, the music just flows. Even in a simple song — there are so many different ways to play the melody, the rhythm, the harmony. It never stops if you stay open to it.”

Princess Owana Salazar, a gifted singer, slack key and steel guitarist, accompanies Ledward on this show. She is the niece, six generations removed, of King Kamehameha the Great, the conqueror and unifier of Hawaii.

DAVID FRISHBERG was born in St. Paul in 1933. His two dozen albums include By Himself, Not A Care in the World, and Do You Miss New York? Live at Jazz at Lincoln Center. He began his career as a journalist, playing music part time, and then got a job as intermission pianist at Eddy Condon’s, where he stayed for a year before moving on to Bud Freeman’s quartet and then to Gene Krupa. He began writing songs, including an early hit recorded by Blossom Dearie, titled “Peel Me a Grape.”

He worked in the 1960s for Ben Webster and for Al Cohn and Zoot Sims, including a long stay at New York’s Half-Note; he also played for Carmen McRae, Kai Winding, Bobby Hackett, and others. He left in 1971 to write for a weekly TV show and suddenly found himself with an offer to join Herb Alpert. He was quoted: "When I heard the personnel I jumped at the chance. I loved it — it was the most fun I’d had. I got a solo spot and played some of my Jelly Roll Morton stuff.”

Before his passing in 2021, Dave Frishberg wrote hundreds of dry and clever songs, such as “Blizzard of Lies”:

We’ll send someone right out
This won’t hurt a bit
He’s in a meeting now
That coat’s a perfect fit.

DAN NEWTON, a.k.a. “Daddy Squeeze,” has been a Twin Cities resident since 1987. After studying folklore and music at the University of Nebraska, he traveled extensively in the British Isles and across the U.S., learning whatever he could about regional music and food. Dan now resides in St. Paul where he maintains his lifelong fascination with all things spicy: pungent food, French roast coffee, dark beer, jug band, Cajun Gypsy, and cumbia music, and unbelievable stories.

Dan spends much of his time playing accordion with his group the “Café Accordion Orchestra,” performing the repertoire of the popular Parisian dance bands of the 1920s and ’30s, Musette orchestras. He has appeared on recordings by Prudence Johnson, the Proclaimers, Peter Ostroushko, Son Volt, and Neal & Leandra.

LYNN PETERSON is a Minneapolis-based singer/songwriter who has appeared in “Best of the Rest” at the Beacon Theatre in New York and performed on the Today show several times with B.J. Thomas. She sang the national anthem at several professional basketball games in Denver and lived in New York for eight years singing commercial jingles and recording and writing R&B songs.

And here is an excerpt of a song from the “Married Life” sketch in this week’s classic show:

Who knows how long I’ve loved you
You know I love you still
Will I wait a lonely lifetime
If you want me to I will

For if I ever saw you
I didn’t catch your name
But it never really mattered
I will always feel the same

Love you forever and forever
Love you with all my heart
Love you whenever we’re together
Love you when we’re apart

And when at last I find you
Your song will fill the air
Sing it loud so I can hear you
Make it easy to be near you
For the things you do endear me to you
Ah, you know I will
I will.

La la la la la la la la la
La la la la la la la.

And when at last I find you
Your song will fill the air
Sing it loud so I can hear you
Make it easy to be near you
For the things you do endear me to you
Ah, you know I will
I will.

La la la la la la la la la
La la la la la la la.

Friendship Sonnet 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.
 
Friendships are important so why not send your pals a card!
 
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.

Get the cards >>>

A Year in Lake Wobegon

One might think not a lot happens during a course of a year in a small town, but one would be wrong! This collection gathers 12 “above-average” stories representing all the goings-on in Lake Wobegon during one calendar year. Family get-togethers, holiday celebrations, the predictable, the unexpected — it all happens in “the little town that time forgot and decades could not improve.” Each monologue is culled from episodes of A Prairie Home Companion that aired between 2014 and 2016.

As an added bonus, liner notes contain a poem for each month written by Garrison Keillor. Plus, between monologues you will hear music by Peter Ostroushko.

 Get the CD set >>>