BIG CHANGES AHEAD We will be saying a fond farewell to this Mailchimp version of our A Prairie Home Companion newsletter effective March 15th. No worries though; we will be moving this same newsletter over to the Substack platform. Your emails will automatically get transferred, so there will be no stop in your deliveries. Think your newsletter is missing? Check your SPAM folder.
A Prairie Home Companion newsletter moving to Substack March 15 >>> |
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The old man's winter weekend In case you’re wondering why I was not in church Sunday morning, I was in the Omaha airport at 6:30 a.m. waiting for a flight back to New York, listening to an announcement that unattended baggage would be confiscated, eating a breakfast croissant and blueberry yogurt, drinking coffee, which came to $19.74, which happens to be the year I started doing my old radio show. Read the rest of the column >>> |
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This week on A Prairie Home Companion This week on A Prairie Home Companion, we travel back to 2015 for a rocking show featuring Brandi Carlile and Jearlyn Steele plus our Royal Academy of Radio Actors, including Tim Russell, Sue Scott, and Fred Newman. Our fine band is led by musical director Richard Dworsky and we’ll catch up on the latest news from Lake Wobegon.
Highlights: an original from Rich Dworsky called “Hennepin Happening,” a few duets with Jearlyn and Garrison, including the sweet “In the Garden,” a bit of satire in song by Garrison with “Grizzly Bear,” a stunning vocal by Brandi Carlile called “The Eye” as well as a cover of Kris Kristofferson’s “Sunday Morning Coming Down.” Join us on Saturday night at 5 p.m. CT for a community listen. If you simply cannot wait, the link is included below. Listen to the Show>>>
Like our Facebook page >>> More about this week’s featured guests:
In her teens, singer-songwriter Brandi Carlile sang backup for an Elvis impersonator, but when she got her first guitar — a broken and abandoned Harmony Sovereign — she was soon playing coffeehouses, parties, and restaurants in the Seattle area. Since she released her first album in 2005, her fan base has exploded. In the past few years, she wrote her memoir, Broken Horses, produced albums by others (including Tanya Tucker), recorded with the Highwomen, and released In These Silent Days, winner of a Best Americana Album award. “Throwing Good After Bad” >>> 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 has recorded and performed with Prince, George Clinton, Mavis Staples, and others. She also hosts Steele Talkin’, a Sunday-night radio show that originates on WCCO in Minneapolis. |
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Coffee
Everyone loves coffee! Here are the lyrics to this week’s coffee jingle:
Smells so lovely when you pour it
I would like to drink a quart
Of coffee.
It’s delicious all alone, it’s
Also good with doughnuts.
Black coffee.
Coffee stimulates your system
Gives you energy and wisdom
Wakes you up in the a.m.
Face the chaos and the mayhem.
Have a pot of it today,
I’m sure you’ll say it’s awfully good coffee. |
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| That Time of Year: A Minnesota Life In this memoir (just out in a paperback edition), Garrison writes or narrates his own story from childhood until approaching age 80, delighting readers with personal reflections, tales from early childhood, teachers and people who inspired him, reflections on creating and hosting A Prairie Home Companion along with leading a cheerful and inspired life at this stage of life.
When the book was first released a couple of years ago, Garrison wrote: “Tuesday was the publication day of my new book, THAT TIME OF YEAR, which you can find at your public library. I wrote it fitfully over several years. It’s a memoir and probably is not my last book but who can tell? Publishing is very different at this age than when I was 43 and wrote LAKE WOBEGON DAYS and was ambitious for it. Ambition burns off. My reading audience is mostly gone and the world of letters is dominated by the young and brilliant, which is as it should be, but I love the practice of writing more than ever, and if the new book has a few hundred readers and if they are pleased with it, that makes me happy. My first reader was my wife, Jenny Nilsson, who lay on the couch and laughed a lot, and then came Katharine Seggerman and Hillary Speed, and then Stevie Beck corrected the grammatical mistakes and also enjoyed the story of the cheeseburger and my mother going next door to borrow bleach so she could stand and watch I Love Lucy (we didn’t have a TV because we were Plymouth Brethren) and she liked the description of my father’s hammering as he built our house. Four women who each liked it in different ways and I’m happy about that. I doubt that anyone will review it and it really doesn’t matter. What matters to me is that I loved working on it and now I love working on a new novel, which is up to 20,000 words and going strong. It is the greatest good luck to have work to do that makes you happy and that goes on without drought into old age. I am a very fortunate man.” — Garrison Keillor |
Get the Book >>>
Get the CDs >>> |
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“Nothing you do for children is ever wasted.” A simple truth from Garrison Keillor, beautifully etched in glass and gift-boxed. Buy now >>> |
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A Notecard for 2023 A New Year’s resolution: send more handwritten notes to your family and friends. You will get five greeting cards with envelopes featuring photos chosen by Garrison with a special poem composed for the New Year. Cards measure 4.5” by 6.5”. New Years: The year passes and the old man with the scythe
Is mowing closer. He hasn’t been subtle, has he.
Every day a few more people say goodbye,
Which makes me want to be lighthearted, jazzy,
Put out the hors d’oeuvres and the champagne,
Sing God Bless America, You Are My Sunshine,
In My Life, Amazing Grace, Purple Rain,
I’ll Be Your Baby Tonight, and Auld Lang Syne.
We’ve mourned for our dead and been sorry a
Long enough time. Now I take your hand, your
Eyes alight, and let us sing an aria,
To love and beauty and youth and grandeur.
May 2023 bring us before it has flown
What we would have wished for had we only known. Get the cards >>>
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