Garrison Keillor
“I hear that old piano from down the avenue,” has grown to be such a soothing national treasure that’s passed America’s ears for almost 40 years’ worth of Saturday afternoons. We can thank National Public Radio for conditioning listeners to expect the following two hours after the line’s broadcast to be filled with the most wholesome entertainment imaginable, as well as the old voice carrying the anticipatory line, renowned American author and founding host of the Opry-inspired comedy/variety show A Prairie Home Companion, Mr. Garrison Keillor, who, along with the Royal Academy of Radio Actors and the virtuosic All Star Shoe Band, delivers the line without fail every week. Upon hearing the opening lyric, masses of folks have been known to blip out, mindlessly turn up their volume knobs, and fluff their seat cushions while doing whatever in their homes, cars and workplaces. It’s phenomenal when a people thoughtlessly, yet intently, are sucked into perfect harmony around the country for a couple of hours of peace at the end of a long and tiresome week and it somehow only happens when that old piano starts to play.
A Prairie Home Companion usually broadcasts every Saturday afternoon from the Fitzgerald Theatre in St. Paul, Minn., but is as equally recognized for hitting the road, depending on what’s happening in the rest of the country or how tired they are of St. Paul. For the Nov. 5 show this year, the troupe headed south to the CFSB (Community Financial Services Bank) Center on the campus of Murray State University in Murray, Ken., to celebrate the 100th birthday of bluegrass legend, Bill Monroe, who—along with the help of around 175 musicians that made up his band, The Bluegrass Boys, over a fifty-plus year period—molded bluegrass music into the tradition it is today. Monroe’s birthday was Sept. 13, 1911, and he was born in the not-far-from-Murray town of Rosine, so why not drop in if you have the leading Americana-fueled radio program in the nation, and why not bring some of the remaining Bluegrass Boys with you since you’re down this way?
The Murray State stage was set up with a comfortably lit, real-life, blue, two-story house front, welcoming porch light and all, jutting from back stage to provide the setting for twenty-some-odd well-dressed people scattered around countless microphones, musical instruments, and traveling wardrobes filled with sound props while a street light sat atop it’s post, stage left, with a sign underneath glowing “On Air,” when need be. It’s as if a big family finished dinner and came into the front yard to play for a couple hours in front of a stadium’s worth of people that somehow collected in the street without notice, but they didn’t mind at all.
Everything A Prairie Home has offered over the years was heard that November afternoon, including tweaks the show’s locations dictate. In the Kentucky show’s case, there was less emphasis on the big-band’s clunky gospel and orchestral powered arrangements of PHC’s guitarist Pat Donahue and pianist Rich Dworsky, giving way to another all-star lineup they tailored just for this show made up of former Blue Grass Boys, guitarists Pete Rowan and Tom Ewing, fiddlers Bobby Hicks and Bob Black, and banjo player Blake Williams, as well as fiddler Stuart Duncan and singer Kathy Chiavola belting out a couple of blues numbers with Mr. Keillor later in the show.
If you’re wise to the broadcast but haven’t seen it live yet, it’s exciting to find out what goes on off air as they really start fifteen minutes till when Keillor gets down in the audience, greeting and serenading the first rows while the band and the street lamp warm up on stage. As the hour grew closer, the street light brightened as Keillor lankily skittered back to the stage singing that soothing line out into the world and adding for this particular show, “Holding high his mandolin/to the microphone/he traveled far/ by bus and car/but Kentucky was home sweet home,” to their bluegrass version of “Tishomingo Blues” before sticking the guest Blue Grass Boys on a well-known Monroe hit, “Gold Rush,” that brought the house to their feet for yet another successful opening.
Once warmed up, Mr. Keillor took the opportunity to ask all on stage that knew Bill Monroe how it was living, traveling, loving and playing as part of such an incredible institution as The Bluegrass Boys. All of them obliged in turn with their own tales ranging from pit stops turned fully dressed concerts, to meeting Ray Charles singing “Blue Moon of Kentucky” in some hallway, to even a love-loss tale of how The Bluegrass Boys almost gained a bluegrass girl. The girl-in-tale, Kathy Chiavola, lead everyone into Monroe’s timeless number “Old, Old House,” after that story as a soft banjo and fiddle played along from the boys beside her.
It was a beautifully sad moment, to say the least, but they didn’t leave everyone bereft for long as the Powder Milk Biscuits jingle erupted soon thereafter, livening things back up. An insanely comedic ketchup ad spot worked similar magic in the second half, bringing the crowd back up after announcing the life and work of PHC sound effects technician, Tom Keith, unfortunately ended a week before this Kentucky appearance, but they knew all anyone needed after such a heart-felt commemoration were the calming and mellowing agents of ketchup and more Chiavola and The Boys picking through other tremendous Monroe songs like “A Beautiful Life,” “Kentucky Waltz” and “Uncle Pen,” with Keillor joining in on the bass harmony for rest of the show. It worked well to cheer everyone up again and marveled everyone just as much at how great an emotional rollercoaster these Minnesotans can put on.
The radio actors shone all night, too, but in one of the more famous bits of the show in particular, they shone especially bright. Guy Noir, Private Eye, who had an adventure in Kentucky that week, too, was hired to figure out if a distraught father’s college-bound son was planning to attend Murray State as expected or if he was, in fact, thinking about attending Murray’s neighboring basketball rival (and liberal college!), Western Kentucky, to the father’s dismay.
“News from Lake Wobegon” wasn’t too bad that week, either. “It’s been gray and it’s been chilly . . . but things could’ve been worse,” Keillor described. Deer season has started up there, bringing his reminder of deer’s retaliatory and kamikaze nature against cars driving down the roads this time of year and his advice to drive safe. It’s deer season in Kentucky and Tennessee too. Other than that, all is well in Lake Wobegon in an impressive literary fashion, as usual, and they wished warmth to those gearing up for the confused Southern winter that may or may not have already started.
The last sad note happened after signing off. With the News follows the ending shortly after, so Keillor turned to the band and began orchestrating, of all things, “Rawhide,” and the crowd shuffled out of the stadium into one of the warmest nights in November. After two and a half hours of pure entertainment, everyone left the CFSB Center with a deep warmth and satisfaction only listeners of the show know. It’s a beautiful and inviting feeling we’re more than happy to share with you, if you like. Just as long as “Rawhide” is playing.
A Prairie Home Companion airs on National Public Radio, 90.3 FM in Middle Tennessee, every Saturday from 5–7 p.m. and again the following Sunday around noon. They usually mention if they’re out and about to perform shows, but in case it’s missed, the show’s schedule, along with podcasts of shows past and present, can be found at prairiehomecompanion.org and when you’re ready for it, there is some pretty funny merchandise there too.
