Lighten up, he says, and he means it The picture sticks in the mind, the mobile home park after the hurricane went through, the boxes scattered, the tide of flotsam and wreckage, trees blown down by 145 mph winds, a former paradise become a moonscape of destruction, and how will they ever put it all back together? It’ll take years. And many of the occupants were elderly. Do they now go back north to live with their children? Has the loss put them in a funk for the next three years? What can be done? Read the rest of the column >>> Do you subscribe to our Substack page? It’s free and delivers an extra GK column weekly plus “Post to the Host.” If you opt in to the paid Subscription page, The Back Room, you will unlock a full archive of published goodies from the past year. Three thousand-plus subscribers have been treated to a weekly monologue from the early years (the 1980s), poems and lyrics from the archive, articles, photos, and show videos. We have recently uncovered a few recordings from our “Rhubarb” and “Night Out” shows, “Literary Friendships,” and “Comedy College.” Over the next few months, we will be posting these to The Back Room as well. The subscription dollars help pay for the production of the newsletters and the support of the archive.
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Classic A Prairie Home Companion This week on the classic A Prairie Home Companion program, we’re featuring a show originally broadcast from downtown St. Paul. Special guests: Nashville singer-songwriter Gillian Welch, soul siblings Jearlyn and Jevetta Steele, and pedal steel master Joe Savage. 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 Garrison’s original tune “Beautiful,” “Can’t Stand the Rain” by Jearlyn and Jevetta Steele, “Hard Times” and “The Way It Goes” from Gillian Welch and David Rawlings, Bob’s Bank, Zombies, Birds, and Coffee, a few words from Mom, and the latest News from Lake Wobegon.
Every Saturday, a classic broadcast from the archives is featured on our Facebook fan page and on the website for your listening pleasure. The link to the show is posted at 5 p.m. CT but can be accessed anytime using the link below. Listen to this week’s show >>>
Follow our Facebook fan page >>>
Browse the PHC archive >>>
Featured on this A Prairie Home Companion Show:
Gillian Welch grew up in Los Angeles, where her musical parents wrote for The Carol Burnett Show. In the early 1990s, she met Dave Rawlings at the Berklee College of Music in Boston, while the two were students waiting to audition for the country-band class. Over the past three decades, they have carved out a highly successful and diverse career.
Listen to “Everything Is Free” >>> Growing up in Indiana, Jearlyn Steele sang with her siblings as The Steele Children. One by one, they moved to Minnesota and started singing together again. Now music is the family business. Jearlyn also hosts Steele Talkin', a Sunday-night radio show that originates on WCCO in Minneapolis. In the 1980s, Jevetta Steele — along with her family group, The Steeles — toured the world in the musical The Gospel at Colonus. The show had another successful run at Ordway Center for the Performing Arts in 2010. And many remember Jevetta’s Academy Award-nominated performance of “Calling You,” from the film Baghdad Café. Listen to “The Full Moon Show” >>>
Here are the lyrics to “Beautiful” from this week’s feature show. It’s a song where Garrison has rewritten the lyrics to create an all new song. Enjoy this tune about the fall season.
It is so beautiful, so beautiful, when fall arrives, a chill is in the air,
And serious girls with long beautiful dark hair
Walk down the street in warm jackets and jeans and sweaters woven from the wool of little lambs,
Thinking about their midterm exams.
When fall comes at Macalester, St. Kate’s and St. Thomas,
Young people decide they will live up to their promise,
They will not make a career
Out of video games and beer.
And though they may want
To go back to bed,
They head for the library instead.
Across the street, as you ride your bike
On a fall day that is so much like
The Octobers of your youth, the same chill, the same old folks
Strolling under the elms and maples and oaks.
On the corner school children with big backpacks and rosy cheeks
Wait for the bus — nerds, jocks, goofballs, and geeks —
Mechanics hanging around outside their body shop, in their mechanic suits
Looking at a stunning young woman with long hair and bright red lipstick, in tall leather boots.
Two little girls in school uniforms with their dad,
Telling him about something somebody did or said or had,
An older lady carrying a yoga mat,
Stores selling expensive cookware and china vases,
People in a croissant shop stuffing their faces.
Four-story Victorian houses with gingerbread and turrets;
A cross-country team runs by in identical maroon T-shirts.
Under the trees, red and yellow and gold, everything perfectly still,
Heading down Summit, toward the long hill
Along the grand boulevards
And the well-kept yards
And the trees well-trimmed full-grown.
And James J. Hill’s mansion of red sandstone
Past the Cathedral where an organ is playing hushed and holy
And past the History Center and then slowly
Past the State Capitol grounds,
Toward the skyline of downtown,
Past the hockey arena and the old courthouse and on the way
The homeless center named for Dorothy Day.
In Mickey’s Diner a man sits hunched at the counter,
Eating his hamburger, a half-pounder,
And nearby
A big slab of pumpkin pie.
And down to Exchange Street, where we see
The Fitzgerald Theater marquee
And a handsome profile of F. Scott
The gifted writer who was famous for a while and then suddenly not.
Time moves on, onward toward cold and winter, boats against the current, on we go.
And now I believe it is time for the show. |
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From the Archives: The News from Lake Wobegon - 1983 We have raided the vault and assembled the fourth chronological look at the origin stories of Lake Wobegon!
When A Prairie Home Companion went national in 1980, Garrison Keillor started turning his vignettes, updates, and letters from Lake Wobegon into a full-fledged story each week. In this vintage collection, you can hear America’s favorite storyteller hone his craft in front of a live audience, regaling them with stories about what takes place in “the little town that time forgot and decades could not improve.” This collection includes monologues from A Prairie Home Companion that aired in the year 1983.
These stories will enchant you today as much as they did four decades ago. Many haven’t been heard since about 1987, and so you might think of this compilation as a new Lake Wobegon story collection. It’s time to return to your favorite small town. From the Archives: 1983 CDs >>>
From the Archives: 1983 mp3 downloads >>> Also Available
From the Archives: 1980 >>>
From the Archives: 1981 >>>
From the Archives: 1982 >>> |
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Celebrating Peter Ostroushko Mandolinist/composer Peter Ostroushko grew up listening to tunes played at family get-togethers in the Ukrainian community of northeast Minneapolis. It’s the music that provides the basis for many of his compositions. His first recording session was an uncredited mandolin set on Bob Dylan’s Blood on the Tracks. Since then, his works have been performed by the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra and the Kremlin Chamber Orchestra, among others, and his music has been featured on public television specials such as Ken Burns’s film The National Parks. Check out Peter’s podcast, “My Life and Time as a Radio Musician,” where he talked about his journey playing on A Prairie Home Companion. Along the way, you’ll get to hear some wonderful recordings from the archives.
A celebration of Peter’s life and music was recently held at the Woman’s Club of Minneapolis. Many of Peter’s friends took part in this celebration, and it is now available to watch on Facebook. See link below. Watch the Facebook tribute video >>>
Listen to the podcast >>>
Visit his website >>>
Read our guest interview >>> |
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| 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 >>> |
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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 “Walking” card:
WALKING
It’s good to take a brisk walk every day
And it does wonders to improve your mood.
And you may run into Claude Monet
Or hear Chopin humming his sweet étude.
Jack Benny, Bessie Smith stand not far apart,
Marilyn Monroe, Bill Monroe, you never know,
The Duke of Earl, Amelia Earhart,
Vincent van Gogh out looking at the snow,
Melville whose book you meant to read,
Out walking, despite all he’s been through.
“To comprehend a nectar requires sorest need,”
Said Emily Dickinson. (She’s here, too.)
Life is hard. Lord, the injuries we bear
And yet it’s good to get out in the open air. Get the cards >>>
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