This week's Prairie Home episode: June 13, 2015 Originally broadcast from the Chateau Ste. Michelle Winery in Woodinville, Washington, featuring honkytonk music from the Caleb Klauder Country Band & Reeb Willms, Scandinavian folk music from Skolkis, and Appalachian song & dance from Squirrel Butter.
Plus: The Royal Academy of Radio Actors, Rich Dworsky and The Barolo Boys (Bernie Dresel, Richard Kriehn, Chris Siebold, and Larry Steen), and the news from Lake Wobegon.
Check the archive link for bonuses such as poem & song audio downloads--especially if you are from Seattle.
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How we survive in these hard, hard times A man in isolation in a pandemic with his wife in an apartment is a sailor without a ship and a cowboy with no horse and I shouldn’t complain but life without complaint would be too much like church so I will. A year ago my wife and I left our 5-BR house and became apartment people because we didn’t know four other couples we wanted to form a commune with and play dulcimers and work for world peace, and it’s okay but I miss my house and feel a loss of manhood. I once, solo, wearing gloves, carrying a plastic pail with an LP record jacket for a lid, removed a bloodthirsty bat clinging to the curtain in the family room and pounded a stake in its heart and saved my wife, who was on the balcony in a diaphanous gown looking at the moon, from an eternity of undeath. In an apartment building, the manager would do that. In the house, I once made a risotto that my wife said was the Van Gogh “Sunflowers” of risottos, which I accomplished because she was outdoors sunning on the patio. In the apartment kitchen, I would’ve been under her close supervision and, frankly, I’ve never done well under supervision. As I write this, she is not looking over my shoulder pointing out that Van Gogh painted several series of sunflower pictures and maybe I should be more specific and say it’s the one in the National Gallery in London. The paragraph was better without that sentence, was it not? My wife is a violinist/violist and so she believes in exact precision, whereas I am a writer of fiction and enjoy the freedom of living in our apartment here in Montmartre with a walled garden in back where I read Proust in French and have no idea who is in the White House, none, and don’t care to know. “C’est la vie,” as we c’est. Continue reading >>> |
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Lake Wobegon: From the Archives, 1981 Pt. II We have raided the vault once again, this time creating the second digital installment of vintage, 1981 monologues from A Prairie Home Companion. In “From the Archives: The News from Lake Wobegon, May - August 1981," you can really hear Garrison developing a knack for telling tales of the town that time forgot and the decades could not improve. This album is available exclusively as mp3s via digital platforms, which means you don't have to wait for shipping! Buy on Amazon >>>
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Lonesome Shorty As we approach the 25th Anniversary of the publication of Garrison Keillor's short story collection The Book of Guys, we are revisiting a few of the stories from the book with new introductions from Garrison. Here is what Garrison wrote about "Lonesome Shorty":
Written for The New Yorker, this story inspired the radio serial "Lives of the Cowboys" on A Prairie Home Companion, with Dusty and Lefty, Lefty's lost love Evelyn Beebalo, and the villain Big Messer, which takes place in and around Yellow Gulch, Wyoming. It's Samuel Beckett for fourteen-year-olds. The cowboys suffer extreme loneliness, which drives them to visit town, where, in a short time, they are disgusted by society and return to the godforsaken plains, where, in due course, they suffer extreme loneliness and return to Yellow Gulch, only to be disgusted. That's how life seemed to me when I was fourteen.
Excerpt from "Lonesome Shorty":
The summer before last, I was headed for Billings on my horse Old Dan, driving two hundred head of the ripest-smelling longhorns you ever rode downwind of, when suddenly here come some tumbleweeds tumbling along with a newspaper stuck inside—I had been without news for weeks so I leaned down and snatched it up and read it trotting along, though the front page was missing and all there was was columnists and the Lifestyle section, so bouncing along in a cloud of manure I read an article entitled “43 Fabulous Salads to Freshen Up Your Summertime Table” which made me wonder if my extreme lonesomeness might not be the result of diet. Maybe I’m plumb loco, but a cowboy doesn’t get much fiber and he eats way too much beef. You herd cattle all day, you come to despise them, and pretty soon, by jingo, you have gone and shot one, and then you must eat it, whilst all those cattle tromping around on the greens takes away your taste for salads, just like when you arrive at a creek and see that cattle have tromped in the water and drunk from it and crapped in it, it seems to turn a man toward whiskey.
I thought to myself, Shorty, you’ve got to get out of this cowboy life. I mentioned this to my partner, old Eugene, and he squinted at me and said, “Eeyup."
“Eugene,” I said, “I’ve been cowboyin for nigh onto two decades now. I know every water hole between Kansas and the Sierra Nevada, but consarn it, I miss the company of my fellow man. Scenery ain’t enough for me, Eugene, nor freedom. I’m sceneried out, pardner, and freedom is vastly overrated as an experience, if you ask me. I got to be with people. I’m a people cowboy, not a cow cowboy.” Continue reading >>>
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Perfect for Father's Day! Our staff and volunteers worked on this collection for about a year, picking the very best newer stories to represent each month of the year. Despite what Keillor often says about it being a quiet week in Lake Wobegon, a lot happens in "the little town that time forgot and decades could not improve."
These 12 stories capture family gatherings and holiday celebrations, both humorous and touching, that happen during one calendar year. Material includes more than 3 hours of monologues culled from live broadcasts of A Prairie Home Companion that aired between 2014 and 2016. Also included: a poem by Garrison for each month of the calendar year, plus music by Peter Ostroushko. Get the CDs >>> |
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| A bounty of cases waiting to be solved by America's favorite private detective. The collector's edition gathers every previously released Guy Noir episode and includes a full CD of never-before-available capers plus a souvenir booklet.
It's a dark night in a city that knows how to keep its secrets, but high above the mean streets, a light burns on the 12th floor of the Acme Building, where Guy Noir is trying to find the answers to life's persistent questions. In his big swivel chair under the bare bulb beside the beat-up gray file cabinet, he awaits the call of his clientele: the disappointed, the paranoid, the embittered, the rejected--and the absurd.
Garrison Keillor's private eye spoof thrilled audiences for over twenty years on live public radio broadcasts of A Prairie Home Companion. Now, for the very first time, thirty-six all-time favorite Guy Noir episodes are available in one collection. Follow the intrepid detective as he solves cases no other gumshoe would touch, and enjoy Keillor's intelligent & funny spin on the classic detective genre. Featuring Garrison Keillor, Sue Scott, Tim Russell, Fred Newman, Tom Keith, Walter Bobbie and special guests, with music by Richard Dworsky. Over 6 hours on 5 CDs. Get the CDs >>> |
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