A Prairie Home Companion 50th Anniversary Celebration (2 CDs) PRE-ORDER

Fifty years ago, a Minnesota guy with literary ambitions took a sharp turn into the radio variety show business and thereby turned his life inside out. He was a loner, a stranger to bright lights, and the show brought him into the society of musicians and a stage crew, actors, and every Saturday at 5 p.m. families filed in to fill the empty seats, first a storefront in downtown St. Paul, then little theaters, eventually amphitheaters, concert halls, music parks, fairgrounds. Luckily for him, he wasn’t smart enough to get stage fright. He just went out and pretended to know what he was doing and it was enjoyable because radio wasn’t his ambition, literature was.

People are awestruck by writers. I met S.J. Perelman once and could hardly get a word out, same with Jane Smiley, John Updike, Philip Roth, Amy Tan –– I start proofreading and rewriting the words before they come out my mouth, but when people meet a guy from the radio they walk up, smile and say, “Are you ––?” and I am and so we talk. We talk about them because they already know me. I ask where they’re from, what do they do, where they’re headed, and it’s a pleasure listening to them. This happens in shops, airports, doctors’ offices, city parks, and it’s a pure pleasure, and my motive for doing twenty shows celebrating the 50^th anniversary of A Prairie Home Companion was to meet those people again.

They told me how they’d discovered the show, how they took tapes in the car on vacations, how they imagined Lake Wobegon was a real place, how they became fans of the musicians they heard. People in their fifties told me how they were forced to listen by their parents and how they resented it but eventually came to enjoy it.

Bill Kling, the leading light in public radio in America, was the one who put it on the air. My wife, Mary, sat at the piano and played for the first rehearsals. Tom Keith did sound effects. Bill Hinkley and Judy Larson, Peter Ostroushko, Butch Thompson, Chet Atkins, Rob Fisher, Robin and Linda Williams came and Heather Masse, and countless others. I am the show’s severest critic. But never mind, it became my connection to so many thousands of good people, starting with Mr. Bill Whitworth, my editor at The New Yorker, who, after I wrote a story about the Grand Ole Opry in Nashville, said, “You should try to do something like that.” So I did and my editor became a listener. I went to Dublin recently and was stopped in the airport by people who said, “Aren’t you from Lake Wobegon?” “Trying to be,” I said.

Garrison Keillor, Heather Masse, Christine DiGiallonardo, Sue Scott, Tim Russell, Fred Newman, Richard Dworsky, Pat Donohue, Bryan Sutton, Richard Kriehn, Chris Siebold, Lawrence Kohut

CD 1:

1. These Are the Days
2. Tishomingo Blues
3. OPEN
4. School is Out
5. In Spite of Ourselves
6. Teach Your Elders
7. Lutheran Air
8. Fitz SFX
9. Coffee
10. Powdermilk Biscuits
11. Brownie and Pete
12. Willie's Blues
13. POEM
14. Summertime
15. Why Worry
16. Mom

CD 2:

1. My Little Pumpkin Pie
2. Under African Skies
3. I'll Be Your Baby Tonight
4. Airplane Story/Fatherhood
5. Catchup
6. Home
7. Feels Like Home
8. The News from Lake Wobegon
9. Brokedown Palace
10. The Next Time I'm in Town
11. A Fool Such As I