In the Shadows of an Autumn Evening

Preorder the new 50th Anniversary release at a discount!

The 50th Anniversary Celebration (2CD) Pre-Sale

On July 6, 1974, Garrison Keillor and a few musicians and friends staged the very first A Prairie Home Companion show at the Janet Wallace Auditorium before a small but encouraging crowd. Now, 50 years later, Garrison gathered together the Royal Academy of Radio Actors and the Guy’s All-Star Shoe Band plus some guest musicians and duet partners and began a 50th Anniversary Tour of shows around the country. What began as a concept of five Live shows has turned into about 35 shows, with Garrison rewriting portions of the show for each stop. It is a true celebration of A Prairie Home Companion — an almost three-hour show with songs and stories, words from your favorite sponsors, sketches featuring Guy Noir, the Cowboys, and Mom, a few duets and solos plus the latest News from Lake Wobegon. It is a show that has gotten fans fairly nostalgic and left them wanting more. We appreciate notes and stories from fans letting us know what the show has meant to them, and this gem of a CD offers highlights of the often funny and nostalgic performances. We sure hope you enjoy it! Get the CDs.

The final 50th Anniversary Show will be held in Atlanta on November 8th. We hope you can join us for one last time to celebrate the old show. Ticket information

Listen to the November 2, 2013, show!

This week, we revisit a broadcast of A Prairie Home Companion with Garrison Keillor from November 2, 2013, from the State Theatre in Minneapolis. With special guests, the Pied Piper of Poetry, Billy Collins, mandolinist and bluegrass ambassador Sam Bush, men's vocal ensemble Cantus, and singer Hilary Thavis. Plus, the Royal Academy of Radio Actors (Tim Russell, Sue Scott, and Fred Newman), The Guy's All-Star Shoe Band, and the latest News from Lake Wobegon. Listen to the show.

About our guest performers:

Sam Bush was just 11 when he got his first mandolin. By the time he was 17, he had won the title of National Junior Fiddle Champion for three years running. And he had made his recording debut, Poor Richard's Almanac. Founder of cutting-edge bands like New Grass Revival and Strength in Numbers, he has also been the go-to sideman for Lyle Lovett, the Flecktones, and dozens of others.

Twin Cities-based Cantus is recognized as one of America's finest professional male vocal ensembles. The artist-led group is known for adventurous programs that cover many periods and genres — chant to spirituals, art song to folk song, Bach to the Beatles. The Washington Post characterized their sound as having both “exalting finesse” and “expressive power.”

Billy Collins was twice appointed United States poet laureate and also served as New York State poet laureate. In 2004, he was selected as the inaugural recipient of the Poetry Foundation’s Mark Twain Award for humor in poetry. The poems in Questions About Angels; Picnic, Lightning; Sailing Alone Around the Room; Nine Horses; The Trouble with Poetry; Ballistics, Musical Tables, and his other best-selling books have sparked a firestorm of interest in the art.

Funny how things come together. Born in Rome, Italy, to parents from Minnesota, Hilary Thavis grew up loving music — especially folk music, from Woody Guthrie to Italian folk singers like Fabrizio De André and Francesco De Gregori. But it was the blues that ultimately captured her attention.

Here are the lyrics to “November Day” from this week’s show.

A clear blue sky, November day

There’s homemade chili at the café

A cup of coffee, a slice of pie

Hello to winter. Summer, goodbye.

November day. Under the sun.

There’s leaves to rake, work to be done,

House and yard and woods around.

Great piles of leaves lie on the ground.

And after dark, women and men

Relive their childhoods again

Jumping in to those great piles

And roll around and play awhile.

Serenity at 70, Gaiety at 80
Why you should keep on getting older

Created just for fans as a keepsake from Garrison and available only in our store, this wonderful gem on aging will have you bursting at the seams from laughter! Here is a short preview:

“My life is so good at 79 I wonder why I waited this long
to get here,” writes Mr. Keillor. “I look at the front page
of the paper and think, ‘Not My Problem.’ The world
belongs to the young, I am only a tourist, and I love being
a foreigner in America. I enjoy it as I would enjoy Paris or
Copenhagen, except I mostly know the language. I don’t
know who famous people are anymore and I’m okay with
that. You learn that Less Is More, the great lesson of
Jesus and also Buddha. Each day becomes important after
you pass the point of life expectancy. Big problems vanish,
small things make you happy. And the worst is behind you
because you lack the energy to be as foolish as you might
otherwise be.
“We arrive at old age by luck; virtue is not crucial. Luck
is crucial. If you took time to plan your life carefully,
you’d be 90 by the time you turn 25. So aim for adequacy.
Be good enough.”

With a chapter of 23 rules for aging, including
“Enumerate your benefits,” “Enjoy inertia,” “Get out of
the way,” “Tell your likely survivors absolutely not to use
the words ‘A Celebration of Life’ (you already did that
yourself), “Don’t fight with younger people; they will be
writing your obituary,” and finally, “Ignore rules you read
in a book. Do what you were going to do anyway.”

Also including the Five Stages of Aging, for those who like
lists, and Mr. Keillor’s account of 24 hours in a New York
ER, in which he saw clearly his own good fortune and
also got an EEG and a lesson in contentment from Bob
the Buddhist. And a few poems for no extra charge:

Every day is a beautiful gift,
Tender and precious and swift.
The light and the sound,
The sky and the ground,
Every hour cries out to be lived.
Though I may be over the hill,
Still I think I can and I will.
I’ve forgotten just what
I can and will, but
They remain a goal of mine still.
Every year I pass the date
When my balloon shall deflate.
My mom entered heaven
At age ninety-seven,
And I aim to reach ninety-eight.
 

Get the book  >>>