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A Prairie Home Companioncontinues to delight NPR listeners
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Garrison Keillor has made fun of English majors on his National Public Radio show, A Prairie Home Companion, for almost 30 years now. The show is broadcast locally on KBSU 90.3 FM
Keillor graduated with an English degree from the University of Minnesota in 1966. Since then, he has become one of the most celebrated figures in public radio.
He first went to work for NPR in 1969, on a morning show called A Prairie Home Companion•named after the Prairie Home cemetery in Moorhead, Minnesota. The show is broadcast on Minnesota Public Radio, a smaller network within the NPR system of programming.
“When the show started, it was something funny to do with my friends, and then it became an achievement that I hoped would be successful, and now it’s a good way of life,” Keillor said.
In 1974, A Prairie Home Companion, a variety show of music and comical skits, moved to The World Theater in Downtown St. Paul. The theater at the time was dilapidated and on the verge of being condemned. With Keillor’s help, it was soon renovated and renamed the Fitzgerald Theater, after famous Minnesotan, F. Scott Fitzgerald.
PHC has been broadcast live from the theater ever since, with the exception of when the show ended for a time in 1987, after running for 13 years on NPR.
“The decision to close is mine•the sort of simple, painful decision that our parents taught us to make cheerfully. It is simply time to go,” Keillor said at the time.
After a two-year hiatus, he reemerged in New York City at the Brooklyn Academy of Music as the American Radio Company, but soon moved back to the Fitzgerald Theater, to resurrect the show under its original name.
From time to time, Keillor & Co has taken the show on the road for live performances at remote locales. They have transmitted from such places as Seattle, Kansas City, Boston, Honolulu, New York City and Portland, Oregon, and across the Atlantic Ocean, in Dublin, Ireland and London, England.
In the new millennium, PHC is heard by nearly 3 million American listeners every Saturday, on 500 public radio stations nationwide and abroad.
The fictitious “Lake Wobegon, Minnesota” is a national treasure. Every week, Keillor chronicles small town life in his segment, “News from Lake Wobegon.” He depicts the characters as fun loving, good country people. Keillor’s hilarious dramatic treatment of the town folk draws the listener into the believable scenarios.
An example of the weekly zanies, is the time when a Lake Wobegon old timer decided to dig up his septic tank, which actually was a O50s era car. He strapped the leaky car to the bucket of his tractor, and proceeded across town towards the landfill. The only problem, he forgot about the homecoming parade in prog-ress, and ended up on the float route. And if this weren’t embarrassing enough, his dau-ghter was the Homecoming Queen!
The weekly skit, “Guy Noir: Private Eye,” is the story of a typical Mickey Spillane-style detective character, who always comes across weird and unusual cases. Usually, Noir doesn’t want the cases, but a beautiful woman is his perpetual motivation to solve the crime. Done in an old radio theater-style, the saga always ends with Noir not getting the girl.
One of the highlights of the weekly show, are the faux-commercials the cast performs. For instance, An advertisement supporting the healthy benefits of ketchup, ends up sounding more like an Ensure, modern-maturity drink commercial. A middle-aged couple talks about the natural mellowing agents of ketchup and break into a song, “A new day is dawning, like ketchup on a bun. Ketchup, Ketchup.”
Over the last three decades, PHC has featured hundreds of accomplished musicians such as Willie Nelson, Emmylou Harris, Roy Rogers, Diana Krall, Keb Mo, Greg Brown, Kathy Mattea, Kelly Jo Phelps and Chet Atkins. Keillor, a singer himself, usually manages to find time for a duet with the guest musicians.
Keillor lives a parallel life as a writer. He has published several books of short stories, three novels, two children’s books and numerous magazine articles, including a National Geographic feature, “Looking for Lake Wobegon.”
His latest novel, “1956 Lake Wobegon Summer,” hilariously examines small town dynamics, drawing from his characters depicted on the weekly radio show.
Keillor admits he is a writer first and performer second, but PHC has become such a major part of him, people often forget that he does write.
“My literary ambitions have cooled a good deal since college, when we all longed to be great and to win big prizes. Now I look on writing as simply something I do every day, as some people attend Mass and others tend gardens, so I sit down and write,” Keillor said.
This Saturday’s show is a classic 1985 rebroadcast from Honolulu, Hawaii. Starring Taj Mahal, Peter Ostroushko, Butch Thompson, Sons of Hawaii and the late Chet Atkins.
J. Patrick Kelly