A Prairie Home Companion

The 17th and final broadcast from Tanglewood of A Prairie Home Companion, with Garrison Keillor, was a perfectly entertaining two hour live radio show for the enjoyment of millions of listeners worldwide wrapped in nearly another two hours of singing and storytelling around the Berkshires campfire. Some twenty minutes before airtime, Keillor and duets partner Heather Masse sauntered from the stage in the Koussevitsky Music Shed out onto the lawn, to serenade the massive audience, first with America the Beautiful and then with familiar, wistful songs that everybody loves to sing aloud.

Back on stage he introduced a story that he would flesh out during the broadcast and then return to three and a half hours later while bidding farewell to one of his favorite venues. It was about a trip last week to give a speech in Oslo, and during the broadcast he urges the audience to tell their European friends to come here first – to the Berkshires and towna like Lenox and Stockbridge, so that they can see America at its best. The show is available, whole or in segments, at prairiehome.com.

origin of A Prairie Home Companion

The last stroy he told here, more than an hour after the end of the broadcast, was the true story of how he named the show in remembrance of the Prairie Home Cemetery, founded by Nowegian Lutherans in Moorhead, MN, a gesture that seems to have established a permanent bond between the settlers of the Red River Valley and the characters who would populate Lake Wobegon. Besides a solid hour of impromptu singing with The DiGiallonardo Sisters and Heather Masse, with backing and a few solos from the band – music director Rich Dworsky on keyboards, Jonathan Dresel on drums, bassist Larry Kohut, Richard Kriehn on mandolin and fiddle, guitarist Chris Siebold and guest pianist and long-time Keillor associate Rob Fisher, Keillor also reached out to several front-row patrons, interviewing them to the delight of the audience, and also distributed about twenty copies of The Keillor Reader.

photos from Tanglewood finale of A Prairie Home Companion

Bill Clinton on first and last Tanglewood A Prairie Home Companion shows

We got a kick out of the fact that Bill Clinton made an appearance on this show, just as he had the first A Prairie Home Companion at Tanglewood in 2000, when Tim Russell did an uncanny impersonation of President Clinton reciting Bob Dylan’s Like A Rolling Stone after Keillor had asked him, “How does it feel to be leaving the White House?” One of the funniest bits tonight came in the last segment, with Keillor on the phone telling his father that he was visiting Tanglewood for a few concerts, giving Russell the opportunity to voice the father doing an impersonation of Brian Wilson singing, because he’s heard he’d just performed here. (Our review).

favorites from A Prairie Home Companion at Tanglewood

We attended every episode of A Prairie Home Companion at Tanglewood except for the one in 2007, when we were drawn instead to the Bob Dylan show at Bethel Woods. Thirty two hours of live broadcast and half again as many hours of after-show fun add up quite a trove of fond memories, such as Steve Martin and the Steep Canyon Rangers performing the Orange Blossom Special after the 2009 show:

More here: summary of A Prairie Home Companion at Tanglewood, 2000 – 2015.

Perhaps the greatest and most endearing spectacle was the appearance on the first show of the Berkshire Highlanders, including their parade through the ailses of the Shed. We’ve also been introduced to many wonderful artists and musical acts during the show’s 42 year history, such as Robin and Linda Williams, as well as the stunning Inga Swearingen, whose Tanglewood appearances included the 2008 show, which also featured U.S. Poet Laureate Donald Hall, with whom we since become acquainted, making 3 visits to his home at Eagle Pond Farm in NH. Hall and his wife Jane Kenyon are featured regularly on The Writer’s Almanac, one of the projects that Mr. Keillor has said he now intends to spend more time on. Good luck with that, Garrison Keillor, and thanks for the memories.

With a bevy of harmonious beauties in tow, and bluesman Keb Mo, Garrison Keillor returned to the Koussevitsky Music Shed at Tanglewood for the 15th year in a row. This is a case where familiarity breeds competition and comparison. Audience members were heard bragging about being at the 1st Tanglewood show, or having their greeting read by Keillor at last year’s. We even overheard a debate on the lawn over the relative merits of Wailin Jennys, The DiGiallonardo Sisters, each of whom have made several appearances and both today.

Pre-show serenade for Tanglewood picnickers

Longest encore in radio show business

And knowing a late June evening in the Berkshires had to be savored, he stretched the show until every moment of daylight had been exhausted. There’s just a quiet moment on stage when the broadcast ends at 8PM; the applause builds steadily, evincing the audience’s appetite for more, which gets fulfilled, in ample measure. Today, Garrison and company kept the party going until after nine. They improvised an impressive setlist, including such audience favorites and sing along standards as Going to the Chapel, Brown-Eyed Girl, Sweet Caroline, Swing Low Sweet Chariot, Honky Tonk Woman, You’ve Got a Friend, and Amazing Grace.

It was a beautiful day in the Berkshires – what they used to call “chamber of commerce” weather; for more, do visit the American Public Media do a great job maintaining audio and video archives of A Prairie Home Companion.

A Prairie Home Companion with Garrison Keillor made their 14th consecutive appearance at Tanglewood, on June 29, 2013. The show featured musical guests Joy Kills Sorrow a string band with Canadian roots, singer Heather Masse, a member of the Wailing Jennys, and frequent guests The DiGiallonardo Sisters. Also on hand for the final live broadcast of the season were show regulars the Royal Academy of Radio Actors, Tim Russell, Sue Scott, and Fred Newman, plus the Guy’s All Star Shoe Band along with harmonica virtuoso Howard Levy.

Mr. Keillor and A Prairie Home Companion are both sui generis. He is a literary kind of guy who started writing for the New Yorker five years before his work on a project there inspired him to create, in 1974, a variety show for radio. But whereas his model, the Grand Ole Opry, sat still in Nashville, operating more like a religion with a fixed liturgy, APHC has acquired a trans-continental congregation by presenting a regular banquet of humor, pathos, comedy and an amazing variety of guest artists representing every musical genre.

Bringing the show on the road and performing for large audiences is no gimmick, no money-making ruse. In fact, the show at Tanglewood, at least, is way better in person than it is on the radio, because it is preceded by an audience serenade and concludes with ninety minutes or so of encore performances by Keillor and the program’s musical guests. An indication of what is represented by the shows run just at Tanglewood is this pattern we noticed: the 2000 show had Tim Russell as President Clinton, singing Bob Dylan’s Like a Polling Stone, by way of whining about having no home once he leaves the White House; today’s show had Russell as President Obama, reflecting on his fond memory of the 2004 Democratic convention in Boston and daydreaming about feeling “… good at Tanglewood in Massachusetts.” to the tune of My Way.

Garrison Keillor and Heather Masse on the lawn at Tanglewood

Garrison Keillor and Heather Masse serenade the Tanglewood lawn audience before start of the June 29, 2013 radio broadcast of A Prairie Home Companion from the Koussevitsky Music Shed.

Just as Tanglewood is important to the Berkshires, so too is it important to Garrison Keillor, who told the audience in 2000 during the first live broadcast of A Prairie Home Companion at Tanglewood that it was where he and his wife had their second date. Keillor and his nonpariel radio crew have come back every year since, putting on shows in the Koussevitsky Music Shed on the Saturday before the Boston Symphony Orchestra arrives for their summer residency.

It is an aspect of Garrison Keillor’s genius that he can basically do the same thing week after week year after year for decades and have each program feel like a singular work of art. The lineup for the 12th annual broadcast of A Prairie Home Companion at Tanglewood hasn’t been announced, but it takes only a glance at a list of guests from the first eleven shows to be assured that it will be a winner. Follow the links to see our review, plus photos and/or video from that show.

Tanglewood picnic with Garrison Keillor and Andrea Suchy

This video clip of Garrison Keillor and Andrea Suchy serenading Tanglewood patrons minutes before the start of the June 28, 2010 live broadcast of A Prairie Home Companion at Tanglewood shows an element of the show unknown to the radio audience.

An extra benefit from attending the live broadcast of A Prairie Home Companion are the encores, such as these from the 2009 show posted to our Youtube channel:

• Video of Steve Martin & The Steep Canyon Rangers playing Orange Blossom Special
• Arlo Guthrie plays City of New Orleans

The 13th live broadcast from Tanglewood of A Prairie Home Companion, with Garrison Keillor, featured the familiar guests Arlo Guthrie, Heather Masse, and The DiGiallonardo Sisters, as well as the Guys All Star Shoe Band and the Royal Academy of Radio Actors, Tim Russell, Sue Scott, and Mr. Fred Newman.

The show got off to a fast start with the DiGiallonardo Sisters harmonizing on a hilarious Berkshires version of George M. Cohan’s Give My Regards to Broadway:

“Give My Regards to Stockbridge, Remember me To Lenox and Lee;
…
Oh how my heart is yearning, to see the Koussivitsky Shed;
Give my regards to Tanglewood, We’re gonna try to knock’em dead.”

By the time the live broadcast closed with City of New Orleans, Arlo Guthrie at the grand piano leading a vast chorus of singers, Mr. Keillor had once again delivered a thoroughly entertaining program, comprised of a perfect blend of heartfelt and hokey singing and humorous skits with pan-o-sonic effects. Then there’s the News from Lake Woebegon, which always has a poignancy because its denizens and their misadventures, for all their odd particularities, are pretty much like the people we know, some of whom we miss now.

Sometimes at Tanglewood, the 2 hour radio program can feel like a pretty fancy warm up to the best event of the day – the on-stage after party concert and sing-along that today lasted well past 9PM. We left the Shed during the enchanting Swing Low Sweet Chariot, which is great fun to sing as a member of an ad hoc choir of thousands.

Thirty minutes earlier we sang along with Arlo on Home on the Range; watching him singing that song and wearing a handsome cowboy hat, we remembered that Arlo Guthrie was named for Davy Crockett!

As completely satisfying as the weekly 2 hour broadcast of A Prairie Home Companion is, it can seem like a souvenir when compared to a live broadcast, such as we’ve witnessed at Tanglewood the first Saturday of summer since 2000. The radio audience gets 120 minutes of humor and music; those in attendance get all that, plus the chance that the strolling serenading Keillor will help himself to their picnic goodies before airtime, and the opportunity to sing along with him, the show’s musical guests, and the Guy’s All Star Show Band for another hour afterwards.

Garrison Keillor and Andrea Suchy sing America the Beautiful, 2010 Tanglewood encore

With BSO opening night two weeks away, the show was without the usual participation of BSO/TMC musicians. Rather, it featured 3 musical guests, all drawn from the distaff side: Andrea Suchy, Hilary Thavis, and The Wailin’ Jennys. Expanding upon that gynocentric theme were the Lives of the Cowboys skit and the introduction of Erica Rhodes as Keillor’s replacement as the show’s host (once certain issues are resolved, that is).

The localised scripts were funny; especially Guy Noir on the case of the imaginary grandson of Edith and Teddy Wharton showing up to claim the Mount and convert it into a dirt bike race track. Scripts and podcast of the show are available at PrairieHome.org.

Update: Your intrepid reporter is seen on the Prairie Home Youtube clip (above) capturing Flip video of the encore: