We are now seeking offers for The 50th Anniversary of Prairie Home Companion featuring Garrison Keillor for June of 2023 - October of 2024. After successful shows in its 49th year at The Ryman Auditorium in Nashville, Town Hall in NYC, The Anthem in DC and at The Fox in St. Louis it felt natural to offer the show Worldwide for the 50th Anniversary.
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THE 50th ANNIVERSARY PRAIRIE HOME COMPANION is a 140-minute event celebrating the Last Live Radio Variety show with an opening video of PHC’s origins in Minnesota, Garrison Keillor’s stand-up on the beauty of being 80. Comedy sketches (Guy Noir, Private Eye. The Lives of the Cowboys. Duane’s Mom. Ruth Harrison, Reference Librarian) with the Royal Academy of Radio Acting with sound-effects wizard Fred Newman. An extended commercial for Powdermilk Biscuits on the subject: Cheerfulness Is A Choice. Also a word or two from the American Duct Tape Council, Real Hot Coffee, Guy’s Shoes, and the Ketchup Advisory Board. Features with Rich Dworsky and the Guy’s Hot Shoe Band, rags and stomps and blues. Duets with Heather Masse & Keillor with a medley of love poems & old jokes. An audience sing-along intermission and the latest News from Lake Wobegon where the women are strong, the men are good-looking, and the children are all above average.
Available June 1, 2023 - October 31, 2024
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In addition to the 50th Anniversary performance, please see below for Garrison's other formats, available year round and worldwide |
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Garrison Keillor Tonight - An evening of stand-up, storytelling, audience song, and poetry. One man, one microphone. There are sung sonnets, limericks and musical jokes, and the thread that runs through it is the beauty of growing old.
Despite the inconvenience, old age brings the contentment of LESS IS MORE. Your mistakes and big ambitions are behind you, nothing left to prove, and small things give you great pleasure because that’s what’s left. (“I was unhappy in
college because it was a requirement for an intellectual, but then I went into show business and discovered that people won’t pay to be made unhappy, their kids will do it for free.”)
There is the News from Lake Wobegon, a town booming with new entrepreneurs,
makers of artisanal firewood and gourmet meatloaf, breeders of composting
worms, and dogs trained to do childcare. But some things endure, such as the
formation of the Living Flag on Main Street, citizens in tight formation wearing
red, white or blue caps, and Mr. Keillor among them, standing close to old
neighbors, Myrtle Krebsbach (“Truckstop”) and Julie Christensen (“Bruno, The
Fishing Dog”) and Clint Bunsen. And an a cappella sing-along with the audience
singing from memory an odd medley of patriotic songs, pop standards, hymns, and
ending with the national anthem.
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Keillor & Company - An evening of stand-up, storytelling, audience song, and poetry starring Garrison Keillor and featuring pianist Dan Chouinard, guitarist Dean Magraw and vocalist Prudence Johnson.
Dan Chouinard is a St. Paul-based honky-tonk pianist, concert soloist and accompanist, street accordionist, sing-along enabler, Italian and French teacher, and bicycling vagabond. He’s been writer and host of a number of live history with-music shows broadcast on Minnesota Public Radio and Twin Cities Public Television. He played on a dozen live broadcasts of A Prairie Home Companion plus a half dozen APHC cruises, and served as rehearsal pianist for Meryl Streep, Lily Tomlin, and Lindsay Lohan on the 2005 movie. He’s featured on a number of recordings with APHC regulars Peter Ostroushko (RIP), Prudence Johnson, and Maria Jette.
Composer/ arranger/ producer/ guitarist Dean Magraw performed and recorded extensively with the Ukrainian American virtuoso Peter Ostroushko over several decades. Magraw fine-tuned his passionate “Heavy Meadow” Musical style(s) from years of performing and recording with some of the finest musicians in the North America, Europe, and Japan.
Prudence Johnson’s long and happy career as a singer, writer, and teacher has landed her on the musical theater stage, in two feature films (A River Runs Through It, A Prairie Home Companion), on a national radio show (several long stints on A Prairie Home Companion), and on concert stages across North America and occasionally Europe. She has released more than a dozen recordings, including albums dedicated to the music of Hoagy Carmichael and Greg Brown, and a collection of international lullabies.
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Garrison Keillor at 80 with Heather Masse & Richard Dworsky - A show of music, stories, and stand-up on the theme of cheerfulness — happiness depends on circumstance but cheerfulness is a choice. The show includes Keillor’s sung sonnets (“Prayer,” “Longevity,” “Love Song”) and duets with Masse on songs by Bob Dylan, Paul Simon, Tom Waits, Greg Brown, Mark Knopfler, and Ann Reed, plus an extended medley of sung classic poems and jokes.
Keillor also does the News from Lake Wobegon, reflecting on his generation, the one that knew about outhouses, slaughtered chickens, hitchhiked, drove a straight-stick transmission, skated on outdoor rinks, and told jokes.
The program concludes with the audience singing a cappella an impromptu medley of familiar songs — “America,” “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot,” “Oh Susannah,” “In My Life,” “Going to the Chapel,” etc. “We are the last generation who knows all the words,” says Keillor. “When we’re gone, they’ll disappear.”
Heather Masse - Trained as a jazz singer at the New England Conservatory of Music, Heather Masse is equally versed in a variety of traditions—folk, pop, bluegrass, and more. As member of Billboard-charting group The Wailin’ Jennys, she has performed at hundreds of venues across the world. She was a frequent guest on A Prairie Home Companion, both solo and with The Jennys. One reviewer rightly lauded her “lush velvety vocals, capable of melting butter in a Siberian winter.
For 23 years, Richard Dworsky served as A Prairie Home Companion’s pianist and music director, providing original theatrical underscoring, leading the house band, and performing as a featured soloist. The St. Paul, MN, native also accompanied many of the show’s guests, including James Taylor, Bonnie Raitt, Yo-Yo Ma, Sheryl Crow, Chet Atkins, Renée Fleming, and Kristin Chenoweth.
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A Prairie Home Holiday -
An evening of December cheer with Garrison Keillor, featuring, stories and songs about love and family and a Christmas sing-along, and the News from Lake Wobegon. This show can be presented in any of the above formats.
November 30 - December 17, 2023
November 30 - December 22, 2024
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Please call or email us for specific avails and pricing.
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