FALL EVENTS We are just starting to add dates to the fall calendar and we will continue to update as more dates come in. Whether you live close or plan to travel, we would love to see you again.
Garrison Keillor with Prudence Johnson and Dan Chouinard
Saturday, September 11 Ladysmith, WI
Sunday, September 12 Menomonie, WI
Garrison Keillor Solo
Saturday, October 2 Sellersville, PA
Sunday, October 3 Jim Thorpe, PA
Thursday, November 4 Carrollton, GA
Garrison Keillor and the Hopefuls (Robin and Linda Williams)
Friday, November 5 Carrollton, GA
Friday, November 12 High Point, NC For Performance Details >>> |
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Another week, another column or two
If you want to read Garrison's weekly column, follow the link to Garrison Keillor and Friends on Substack.
Did you know that you can read Garrison's column in the Union Leader and other small newspapers? Contact your local paper and let them know you'd like to see Garrison's column there too! THE COLUMN >>> |
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This week on A Prairie Home Companion Heavens, these classic shows are tasty! Have you been listening and sharing bits from the shows? This week, we travel with some Powdermilk Biscuits back to 2005 for a show at the Ravinia Festival, featuring Prudence Johnson, the Mila Vocal Ensemble, and the Ditty Bops. Andy Stein and Howard Levy sit in with the Guy’s All-Star Shoe Band for a great show. Honey, could you ask for more?
Highlights include Pat Donohue singing “I Got My Mojo Working” and “Down the Road,” Prudence crooning “I Ain’t Got Nobody” and “The Jitterbug Waltz,” the Ditty Bops tackle “Sister Kate” and sing a few tunes with Garrison, the Mila Vocal Ensemble with “O, Moj Mile,” and a few words from our sponsors — plus a couple of sketches featuring our fine cast, plus 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 featured guests:
Prudence Johnson’s decades-long career in music has taken her from honky-tonks to Carnegie Hall, from the Midwest to the Middle East, from the theater stage to the Silver Screen (Robert Redford’s A River Runs Through It and Robert Altman’s A Prairie Home Companion). Her more than a dozen album releases include Little Dreamer, a collection of international lullabies, Moon Country, which features the music of Hoagy Carmichael, and S’Gershwin, a collaboration with pianist Dan Chouinard.
We are working on Garrison’s tour schedule for the fall season and hope to announce a few shows with Prudence Johnson soon. Stay tuned!
The Ditty Bops’ act has been described as everything from innocent and whimsical musical theater or a sophisticated early jazz swirl with heavenly harmonies, to an upbeat mix of country swing, Tin Pan Alley, and contemporary rock. They admit to a range of influences as diverse as Merle Travis, Joni Mitchell, Dan Hicks and his Hot Licks, Django Reinhardt, and Velvet Underground. The two California women — Amanda Barrett originally from Topanga and Abby DeWald from Shasta County — discovered that they had both learned to juggle as kids (a coincidence too unlikely to ignore) so they assembled a show and began to work in small cafés and coffeehouses. They went on to release a half-dozen recordings, including Jelly for President — Yes We Jam. “Sister Kate” >>>View available music >>>
Mila Vocal Ensemble is a women’s vocal group committed to carrying on the traditions of over thirty countries, in over a dozen distinct vocal styles. Grounded in the harmonic traditions of Eastern Europe, their repertoire also includes music from Central and Western Europe, Asia, and the Americas. The singers hail from unique musical backgrounds and together they speak a dozen languages; they’ve studied with vocalists from Bulgaria, France, Hungary, Macedonia, Serbia, Spain, and Ukraine, and are passionate about accurately capturing regional style and nuance. In a typical concert they will use fifteen different vocal techniques. Their recordings include a studio album, Sadila Moma, featuring songs from Bulgaria, Latvia, Russia, Scotland, Serbia, Ukraine, and the U.S. “Singing for our Lives” >>>View available music >>>
Andy Stein
A Prairie Home Commonplace Book serves as a scrapbook for the first 25 years of the show. The following passage is about Andy Stein, who sits in with the Guy’s All-Star Shoe Band on this week’s classic show.
Andy Stein plays violin and saxophone in Guy’s All-Star Shoe Band. He started his career as a musician playing with Bill Hinkley at the Ark in Ann Arbor in 1967. He has performed with many groups (including Asleep at the Wheel and Commander Cody and His Lost Planet Airmen) and orchestras. His orchestration for Schubert’s Death and the Maiden was premiered by the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra in 1998. On Fridays, Andy flies to wherever PHC broadcasts from. The rest of the week he does studio work in New York or plays in Broadway shows.
Andy recalls the first American Radio Company season in Brooklyn. He would take the subway over, get scrambled eggs with lox and onions at Junior’s Delicatessen on Flatbush Avenue, and go to the theater for a harrowing rehearsal with the Coffee Club Orchestra and Rob Fisher. “We did underscoring that was written by Russell Warner sitting in the wings, scoring a Lonesome Radio Theater script Garrison had finished late the night before, and we did band features ranging from ragtime and Charles Mingus to Beach Boys and Puccini, and we’d back up guests from Marilyn Horne to Big Joe Williams to Chet Atkins and Johnny Gimble to Bill Hinkley and Judy Larson. And then during the broadcast they’d hand me a note saying GK is going to read something and he wants four or five minutes of fiddle in it.”
Andy is featured along with the full Guy’s All-Star Shoe Band on the release Shake It, Break It, and Hang It on the Wall, featuring many of the band’s and Garrison’s go-to songs for the show. Keep up with his appearances and latest news by visiting his website. Buy Shake It, Break It, and Hang It on the Wall >>> Visit his website >>> |
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A Prairie Home Companion Soundtrack |
Can you believe it’s been 15 years since the release of the PHC movie? Garrison Keillor’s long-running public radio show, “A Prairie Home Companion” was the center of a Robert Altman film of the same name starring Keillor, Meryl Streep, Lily Tomlin, Woody Harrelson, John C. Reilly, Kevin Kline, Lindsay Lohan, Virginia Madsen, Maya Rudolph, and Tommy Lee Jones. The story is a fictional one of what happens on and off stage during the last broadcast of the beloved radio show. The soundtrack showcases the spectacular onstage performances by the cast. Watch “Gold Watch and Chain” >>>Get the CD >>> |
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| My Little Town: Stories from Lake Wobegon | Revisit the Lake Wobegon places and people we know and love — The Chatterbox Cafe, the Sidetrack Tap, the Church of Our Lady of Perpetual Responsibility, the Bunsens and the Krebsbachs — in this collection of tales from Garrison Keillor. The stories are full of gentle humor and surprising insights into family, relationships, community, faith, and hope. |
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