The meaning of life as it as it dawned on me the other night I enjoy writing this column every week but how would you know that, me being from Minnesota, from stoical people, brought up to bite our tongue and persevere through suffering, and if pleasure occurs, be patient, it will soon pass. In other parts of the country, our stoicism would be diagnosed as depression. Sedatives are pretty much wasted on us. Joy is a word on Christmas cards, not used in conversation. At games, the cheerleaders only try to keep the crowd awake, and if our team wins, we think, “Well, I guess it could’ve been worse and next time it probably will be.” We’re people of few words and that’s why we’ve produced very few writers. Fitzgerald was an Easterner born in St. Paul by mistake and he left as soon as he could and never returned. The poet Robert Bly’s big book was Silence in the Snowy Fields, which pretty much says it all, and then he wrote Iron John about plumbing. As for Louise Erdrich, she grew up in North Dakota. Read the rest of the column >>>
Need a second weekly dose of Garrison? Garrison publishes a second column every Friday exclusively for his substack followers. You can sign up here >>>. |
|
Featured A Prairie Home Companion Show: This week, we revisit a classic from 2005 from the Blossom Music Center in Cuyahoga Falls, Ohio. Our friends Elana Fremerman — now called Elana James — (on fiddle) and Cindy Cashdollar (on dobro and steel guitar) are there, and the Minnesota-based a cappella group Tonic Sol-fa joins us as well. Plus: the Hopeful Gospel Quartet (Garrison, Robin & Linda Williams, and Mollie O’Brien), the Royal Academy of Radio Actors, the News From Lake Wobegon, and more.
Highlights include some talk about Cuyahoga Falls, advice on marriage, the full sound-effects cast joining in on Guy Noir and The Lives of the Cowboys, plus a battle of vocal quartets featuring the Hopeful Gospel Quartet squaring off against Tonic Sol-fa. Pat Donohue sings “Looking Out My Back Door,” and the Guy’s All-Star Shoe Band plays a “Twin Guitar Special.” And there’s the latest news from our favorite small town. The link appears on our Facebook page at 5 p.m. CT on Saturday (but if you simply cannot wait, click on the link below). Listen to the show >>>
Follow our Facebook page >>>
More Information About our featured guest performers:
Robin & Linda Williams, Mollie O’Brien, and Garrison Keillor offer this description of the quartet: “The Hopeful Gospel Quartet began its career backstage at Prairie Home shows, when we stood waiting for the balloon to go up and sang to pass the time and found out that we all like gospel songs and that they sound wonderful in a stairwell. And at heart we are still a stairwell quartet, searching for the sound. Radio City had a great booming stairway, the Fox Theatre in St. Louis had a good one, and also the Flynn in Burlington, Vermont. Somewhere in backstage America, we feel, the Spirit had a stairway for us, with the exact perfect landing with the right plaster walls and just the right angles. When you sing in a great stairwell, it doesn’t feel as if the music comes out of you as much as it comes through you, and that is the true gospel vision: to be an instrument. We’re still looking, and we remain hopeful.”
Having always sung gospel music, in the late 1980s Robin & Linda Williams teamed up with their old friend Garrison Keillor to form The Hopeful Gospel Quartet. Rounding out the ensemble is Mollie O’Brien, who has has earned rave notices at major festivals and venues across the U.S. and beyond.
NOTE: Robin & Linda Williams will team up with Garrison Keillor onstage on June 8 in Bend, Oregon, and June 10th in Livermore, California. The Hopefuls will perform a few tunes, share some stories, and have the crowd join them for a song or two.
Listen to "When I Wake Up to Sleep No More' >>>
Ticket info >>> Tonic Sol-fa is an a cappella quartet hailing from Minnesota. The group has been wowing audiences and winning awards since the 1990s and their beginnings at St. John’s University in Collegeville, Minnesota. For this Prairie Home Companion show, the lineup included Shaun Johnson, lead; Greg Bannwarth, tenor; Mark McGowan, baritone; Jared Dove, bass. As for the name, Tonic Sol-fa, Jared jokes that “It can only be blamed on heavy drinking. Listen to 'Long Black Train' >>> Elana Fremerman (now James) played violin from the age of five (her parents were violinists in the Kansas City Symphony). She studied classical music in New York City and a style of North Indian music for a while, in India, and worked in Kathmandu, Nepal; returned to the U.S. and worked as a horse wrangler in Colorado and played in a cowboy band. It wasn’t until 1994 that she discovered Western Swing; she and guitarist Whit Smith formed the Hot Club of Cowtown in 1996. Originally a duo playing traditional swing and originals, they moved to Austin, Texas, added a bass player and recorded their first album, Swingin’ Stampede! in 1998. Listen to 'My Candy' >>> |
|
A Prairie Home Companion!
As we approach Garrison’s 80th birthday, Garrison has decided to get the group together again for a show or two. It all began in Denver and now continues with a couple more shows described below:
A Prairie Home Companion American Revival:
Garrison Keillor returns to the venue that gave him the idea for the radio show: the Ryman Auditorium. GK traveled to Nashville in 1974 to see the final Grand Ole Opry broadcast from that venerable hall and write about the event for The New Yorker. A Prairie Home Companion reopened the Ryman after its remodel in 1991. For the July 10th show, Garrison is joined by Aoife O’Donovan, Heather Masse, the Guy’s All-Star Shoe Band, our talented acting company, and more. Get Tickets >>> Garrison Keillor & Friends:
Garrison returns to Bayfield, Wisconsin, for a show near the shores of Lake Superior. Garrison and his Prairie Home friends (Fred Newman, Heather Masse, Rich Dworsky, Richard Kriehn, and Dean Magraw) will take the stage at Big Top Chautauqua for an evening of laughter, song, and the News from Lake Wobegon. Mark your calendar: August 20th. Get Tickets >>> |
|
| The most comprehensive collection of songs and sketches from the archives of A Prairie Home Companion. It’s a who’s who of artists who have graced the stage to perform live on Saturday evenings. From early favorites like the Everly Brothers and Chet Atkins to Los Texmaniacs’ performance in 2014, we’ve chosen more than 87 memorable acts. Also includes one CD of highlights from the weekend-long 40th Anniversary Celebration live from Macalester College in St. Paul, Minnesota Listen to a sample >>>
Purchase the 40th Anniversary Collection >>>
|
|
Boom Town: A Lake Wobegon Novel Return to Lake Wobegon one more time as Garrison discovers that while many things have changed, many things stay the same. Discover the charms of small town life in what Garrison describes as the best book he’s written yet.
With Boom Town, the author travels to his hometown and finds that Lake Wobegon is in the midst of a rising economic tide driven by millennial entrepreneurs. “I go back home mainly for funerals, which these days are for people my age, 79, which gets my attention, an obituary with my number in it,” he writes, as he sits at the bedside of long-ago sweetheart Arlene Bunsen, who is dying with humor and grace. He spends the summer in the old Gunderson lake cabin, pondering the past and observing the present.
Garrison Keillor wrote Boom Town during the pandemic lockdown in New York,
reading drafts of it to his wife, Jenny, sitting across the room. He did parts of the book in monologues for audiences in Boston, New York, Washington, Pennsylvania, Georgia, and Virginia, along with the story of how, in the 8th grade, his shop teacher Orville Buehler, worried about the boy’s carelessness with the power saw, sent him up to LaVona Person’s speech class, thus changing his life. Keillor says, “For many people, the key to success is discipline and education, but for me, it was ineptitude with power tools.”
Here are a few comments from readers about the book:“I’ve liked all his Wobegon novels and this didn’t disappoint.” — mildmannered1, from Goodreads
When I read Lake Wobegon Virus, I loved the fact that Garrison Keillor had put himself into his own town that he made up — the fictitious Lake Wobegon. He’s done it again. It’s an ingenious idea and Keillor pulls it off. It is, of course, hilarious.” — Robert, on Goodreads
“Nice to be back by the lake. As much as things have changed, they’re still very much the same, and that’s a wonderful thing! A quick and highly enjoyable read.” — Bigelow, from Amazon
“Great experience to have this wonderful book read by the same author. Love the radio show and this was as good as that.” — Monroy, from Amazon Buy now >>> |
|
|
|
|
