The Hopeful Gospel Quartet was formed when four friends discovered their shared interest in gospel music. They were standing around backstage before a performance of A Prairie Home Companion, and one of them began to sing. The others joined in. Original members were Garrison Keillor, Kate MacKenzie, and Robin & Linda Williams. They performed concerts across the country, recorded two albums, and appeared on Austin City Limits. For these shows, Garrison and Robin & Linda will be joined by Prudence Johnson and Dan Chouinard for an evening of songs, stories, and some poetry or limericks. Join us!
Nov. 11     7:00 PM     The Wayne Theatre, Waynesboro, VA           TICKETS
Nov. 12     7:30 PM     High Point Theatre, High Point, NC               TICKETS


ALSO AVAILABLE: 
Information regarding previously announced holiday shows is available on our website.

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I’ve been skipping the news about Senator Colon Gas of West Virginia lately and his objections to reducing greenhouse gases and I’ve been focused on the pleasures of being an old man, which includes the occasional steak-and-eggs breakfast. An old man must choose his vices carefully and I gave up smoking and drinking when the thrill was gone but if I were offered a Last Meal the night before I swing from the gallows, steak and eggs would be it and possibly (why not?) a glass of Pinot Noir, robust but subtle, moderate tannins, floral aroma, notes of cherry and plum with a slight rhubarb accent, otherwise a bottle of Grain Belt.

Something wicked this way comes and this week it’s the two-hour Halloween show, full of vampires, ghouls, ghosts, and even a few tricks as we travel back to 1998 with a broadcast featuring The Chenille Sisters, Butch Thompson, and Kate MacKenzie — plus tunes from the Shoe Band featuring Andy Stein and Pat Donohue. Highlights include “Too Young to Die” and “’Taint No Sin to Take Off Your Skin,” The Chenille Sisters take on “The House is Haunted,” Garrison and Kate’s duet on “The Long Black Veil,” plus Vampires, Guy Noir, Ketchup, and Rhubarb. All your favorites gathered together for two hours of fun and frivolity. This plus the latest News from your favorite small town: Lake Wobegon. Join us Saturday for a listen via our Facebook page at 5 p.m. CT (or click the link below).  
 
More about this week’s featured guests
The Chenille Sisters insist that they are sisters, it’s just that they have different parents. Their voices blend like siblings — à la the Andrews, Boswells, and McGarrigles — and their music is very reminiscent of the sound of those girl groups. Their own moniker shows their identification with sister bands, as well as with groups like the Nylons and the Chiffons: they’ve memorialized chenille, the soft and nubby fabric of bathrobes and grandmothers’ bedspreads. Related or not, these three women have slowly and carefully made a name for themselves — first across the Midwest and then throughout the nation — as hilarious and talented songstresses.
For 12 years, Butch Thompson was A Prairie Home Companion’s house pianist, dating back to the show’s second broadcast, in July 1974. Born and raised in Marine-on-St. Croix, Minnesota, Butch was already playing Christmas carols on his mother’s upright piano by age three, and he led his first professional jazz group as a teenager. Also an ace clarinetist, he has a worldwide reputation as a master of ragtime, stride, and classic jazz.
A Prairie Home Companion favorite dating back to 1981, Kate MacKenzie did coast-to-coast tours, farewell and reunion shows, 20 Disney Channel television broadcasts, the 1993 Book of Guys tour, and a recurring dramatic role as Sheila, the Christian Jungle girl (wild, yet pure). For many years, she was lead singer of Stoney Lonesome, with whom she recorded six bluegrass albums and toured Japan and North America. With the Hopeful Gospel Quartet, MacKenzie recorded a live album from Carnegie Hall, performed at folk festivals in Scotland and Denmark, and performed on PBS’ Austin City Limits. Her first solo album, Let Them Talk, was on the National Bluegrass Charts for 10 months. Her second solo album, Age of Innocence, garnered Kate her first Grammy Award nomination. Her success was noted in the New York Times, which grouped MacKenzie in “the new wave of strong female voices.”   
 
More from Kate MacKenzie:
Who were your early influences, both for singing and for picking?
Some of my earliest and most important influences were Hazel & Alice (I think I learned every single one of their songs), Ola Belle Reed, Doc Watson, Jean Ritchie, Patsy Cline, and the Stanley Brothers, to name a few. I believed every word they sang!! 

After forming the bluegrass band Stoney Lonesome and becoming one of the premier bluegrass bands in Minnesota, the band made its first appearance as a featured guest on A Prairie Home Companion just two years later. This began quite a history for you with the show, since it led to many more appearances with Stoney Lonesome, then as a solo performer, and then becoming a favorite duet partner of Garrison’s, singing with the Hopeful Gospel Quartet (as well as producing duties on one of its CD releases), being featured in sketches and even co-hosting a show. What is your favorite memory from A Prairie Home Companion?
So many of my favorite PHC memories involve the Hopefuls. I remember a sound check at the Birchmere in D.C. where we were literally on the floor we were laughing so hard. 

The show put you alongside many legends — Chet Atkins, Emmylou Harris, among others. Do you have a special performance or opportunity that you cherish because of the show?
I really can’t believe how lucky I was to get to work with all of my heroes, including Garrison! Singing sweet harmonies with Emmylou, and pumping Chet Atkins for more stories about the early days in Nashville. And I had to pinch myself to make sure I wasn’t dreaming when I got to sing with Don and Phil Everly.

On her new album MacKenzie Adkins
My favorite tune on the new disc is the Bob Dylan-written tune “Tonight I’ll Be Staying Here with You.” What a great lyric. What drew you to the song? How did you go about figuring who sang lead on each track?
“Tonight I’ll Be Staying Here with You” is a song that has haunted me for 35 years. I always thought it would make a great bluegrass tune but never had the right moment to record it until now. Who knew it would ring so true when 2020 arrived and we all ended up staying home together? We could only talk Suzanne into singing two songs, so Dale and I brought our favorites to complete the album. The three of us are so compatible yet coming from slightly different corners of the musical universe, so it was a fun mix.

Since the Hopeful Gospel Quartet was featured on last week’s classic show and Robin & Linda Williams will be featured on this Saturday evening’s show, it’s only fitting that we look to Garrison’s memoir, That Time of Year, to discover some history. So here is a short passage from the chapter Coast to Coast (along with a pic from the book):

Robin and Linda Williams were regular houseguests and Kate MacKenzie came over one day and we formed the Hopeful Gospel Quartet. We sat in the garden behind the board fence and sang, Come thou fount of every blessing, tune my heart to sing thy praise, and Sheep, sheep, don’t you know the road—yes, Lord, I know the road and when Jean Redpath heard us in the yard, she came down to join us, her Scots soprano filling out, You’re drifting too far from the shore and He may not come when you want Him but He’s right on time. I sang bass. Finally, I was a member of a band, a big jump in status from hostship. Gospel music as unknown on public radio, except in a documentary about the civil rights movement or an Aaron Copland arrangement, but I’d grown up with it and loved the sonorities: the descending bass part on “Now the Day Is Over,” singing, Shadows of the evening steal across the sky. We sang “Softly and Tenderly Jesus Is Calling” and sensed that, for most of our audience, songs of repentance were not what they’d come to hear, but what the hell, a little guilt never hurt anybody. And our “Calling My Children Home” actually made people cry, especially parents of teenagers: I’m lonesome for my precious children, they live so far away. Oh may they hear my calling—calling—and come back home someday. We did a couple of national tours and even played Carnegie Hall, and we sang my dad’s favorite poem, Twilight and evening bell, and after that the dark! And may there be no sadness of farewell when I embark.