A Prairie Home Companion was a weekly radio variety show created and hosted by Garrison Keillor that aired live from 1974 to 2016. In 2016, musician Chris Thile took over as host; the successor show, renamed Live from Here in 2017, ran until 2020. A Prairie Home Companion aired on Saturdays from the Fitzgerald Theater in Saint Paul, Minnesota; it was also frequently heard on tours to New York City and other U.S. cities. The show is known for its musical guests, especially folk and traditional musicians, tongue-in-cheek radio drama, and relaxed humor. Keillor's wry storytelling segment, "News from Lake Wobegon," was the show's best-known feature during his long tenure.
Distributed by Minnesota Public Radio's distribution arm, American Public Media, A Prairie Home Companion was heard on 690 public radio stations in the United States at its peak in spring 2015 and reached an audience of four million U.S. listeners each week. The show borrowed its name from a radio program in existence in 1969 that was named after Prairie Home Cemetery near Concordia College, in Moorhead, Minnesota. It inspired a 2006 film of the same name, written by and featuring Keillor (portraying himself).
History Origin The Saturday-evening show was a partial spin-off of A Prairie Home Morning Show with Keillor and Tom Keith, which ran from 6 to 9 a.m. on Minnesota Public Radio and was continued by Keith and Dale Connelly for many years as The Morning Show.
After researching the Grand Ole Opry for an article, Keillor became interested in doing a variety show on the radio. On July 6, 1974, the first live broadcast of A Prairie Home Companion took place on Minnesota Public Radio. That show was broadcast from St. Paul in the Janet Wallace Auditorium of Macalester College. Twelve audience members turned out, mostly children. The second episode featured the first performance on the show by Butch Thompson, who became house pianist. Thompson stayed with the program until 1986 and frequently performed on the show until its 2016 conclusion.
In 1978, the show moved into the World Theater in St. Paul, which Minnesota Public Radio purchased and renovated in 1986 and renamed the Fitzgerald Theater in 1994. This is the same venue the program used to the end of its run.
A Prairie Home Companion began national distribution in May 1980. Because National Public Radio (NPR) rejected the show due to its president Frank Mankiewicz perceiving the show as too expensive and insulting towards small towns, the show was initially distributed through a public radio satellite system that had been completed by June 1980 and allowed NPR member stations to distribute programs outside the NPR network. In 1983, Minnesota Public Radio president William Kling started a new company to distribute A Prairie Home Companion called American Public Radio, which would later be renamed Public Radio International in 1994.
Hiatus The show went off the air in 1987, with a "final performance" on June 13, and Keillor married and spent some time abroad during the following two years. For a brief time, the show was replaced — both on the air and in the World Theater — by Good Evening, hosted by Noah Adams, a live variety show designed by ex-Prairie Home and All Things Considered staffers to retain the audience Keillor had cultivated over the years. However, many stations opted instead to continue APHC repeats in its traditional Saturday time slot.
In 1989, Keillor returned to radio with The American Radio Company of the Air (renamed Garrison Keillor's American Radio Company in its second season), broadcast originally from the Brooklyn Academy of Music. The new program featured a broadly similar format to A Prairie Home Companion, with sketches and musical guests reflecting a more New York sensibility, rather than the country and folk music predominant in APHC. Also, while Keillor sang and delivered a regular monologue on American Radio Company, Lake Wobegon was initially downplayed, as he felt it was "cruel" to talk to a Brooklyn audience about life in a small town. During this period, Keillor revived the full APHC format only for "annual farewell performances." In the fall of 1992, Keillor returned to the Fitzgerald Theater with ARC for the majority of the season, with Lake Wobegon and other APHC elements gradually but unmistakably returning to prominence.
Return to broadcast
The following year, on October 2, 1993, the program officially reverted to the A Prairie Home Companion name and format.
The show was originally distributed nationally by Minnesota Public Radio in association with Public Radio International. Later, its distributor was Minnesota Public Radio's distribution unit, American Public Media.
Guest hosts
Singer Sara Watkins of San Diego, California, hosted the January 15, 2011, broadcast. The format was the same, but Keillor appeared only as a guest actor and to deliver the "News from Lake Wobegon". He claimed he had taken the chance to see the show being performed for himself. It was reported that this could be the beginning of a trend toward Keillor's eventual retirement, and on March 16, 2011, Keillor stated in an interview with the AARP that he would most likely retire from the show by the time he turned 70 in August 2012.Kaufmann, Carol (2011-03-16). Garrison Keillor Announces Retirement. AARP Bulletin. Retrieved March 18, 2011.
In September 2011, Keillor told The Tuscaloosa News that his last broadcast would be recorded in "early July 2013", and that instead of a permanent replacement host, there would be "a whole group of people. A rotation of hosts",Cobb, Mark Hughes (2011-09-09). 'Prairie Home Companion' tour comes to the Amp. The Tuscaloosa News. Page 5 of 5. Retrieved September 9, 2011. but in December 2011 Keillor said he had changed his mind and reconsidered his plans to retire because he still enjoyed hosting the show.
On February 7 and 14, 2015, mandolinist Chris Thile hosted the show (like Sara Watkins, a member of Nickel Creek). As when Watkins hosted, the format remained largely unchanged, but Keillor did not make an appearance. Instead, storyteller Tristan Jimerson appeared on the February 7 show and comedienne/storyteller Elna Baker on the February 14 show. Thile's band Punch Brothers performed on the February 7 show. Thile was named permanent host of the show in late June 2015, and took over as permanent host on October 15, 2016.Charlton, Lauretta. 'A Prairie Home Companion' Gets a New Host — and Maybe a Future. Vulture (June 30, 2015). Retrieved July 1, 2015.
Keillor's departure When Keillor formally announced his departure from APHC at the show's airing on July 21, 2015, he indicated that Thile would succeed him as permanent host in 2016. Keillor recorded his final regular episode as host live at the Hollywood Bowl before an audience of 18,000, on July 1, 2016; it was aired on the following day. The episode was titled , and was a vocal duet show of "time-honored American ballads, British Invasion romps, country-western weepers, and Broadway classics," guest-starring Sara Watkins, Sarah Jarosz, Aoife O'Donovan, Heather Masse, and Christine DiGiallonardo, alongside the "Royal Academy of Radio Actors," Tim Russell, Sue Scott, and Fred Newman, and the APHC band, with music director and pianist Rich Dworsky and Bernie Dresel (drums), Larry Kohut (bass), Richard Kriehn (mandolin and fiddle), and Chris Siebold (guitar).
Barack Obama recorded a telephone call into the show, which ran on the Saturday broadcast, and Keillor performed his last "Lives of the Cowboys" sketch as regular host, with regulars Scott, Russell, and Newman, and including a series of duets with the guests Masse, O'Donovan, Jarosz, DiGiallonardo, and Watkins.
While the July 2 Hollywood Bowl performance was the last regular episode of A Prairie Home Companion, Garrison Keillor also hosted a final live performance titled "The Minnesota Show" at the Minnesota State Fair on September 2, 2016, including the last-ever "Guy Noir" and "News from Lake Wobegon" segments.
Since his departure from the radio show, Keillor has continued to tour with his stage show also called A Prairie Home Companion.
Name change On November 29, 2017, Minnesota Public Radio terminated its contract with Keillor because of "allegations of his inappropriate behavior with an individual who worked with him." Because Keillor still owned artistic rights and the trademark to the show's name, MPR also announced that it would change the name. After two episodes under the placeholder name The Show with Chris Thile, the new title was announced as Live from Here live on the December 16, 2017, broadcast of the show. MPR also announced it would cease distributing reruns of A Prairie Home Companion featuring Keillor. Keillor stated he had been "fired" from MPR, but he had technically not been employed by MPR/APM since 2002, working instead as an independent contractor. When it was announced in 2019 that Live from Here was going to be based in and broadcast out of New York City, many Minnesotan fans publicly complained that the radio show was losing its Midwestern style. Live from Here was canceled in 2020.
Broadcast archives
On April 13, 2018, Minnesota Public Radio posted a message stating its intent to reinstate the free online archives of A Prairie Home Companion and The Writer's Almanac."MPR Reaches Agreement with Garrison Keillor to Restore Public Access to Online Archives", Minnesota Public Radio, retrieved April 13, 2018. The portion of the PrairieHome.org website containing the archives was restored later in the year.
Format
From the show's inception until 1987, its theme song was Hank Snow's hit "Hello Love". After 1987, each show has opened with Spencer Williams' composition "Tishomingo Blues" as the theme song, with lyrics by Garrison Keillor Justin, Neal. Daher, Natalie. "Chris Thile addresses scandal around his 'Prairie Home' predecessor Garrison Keillor". Associated Press News online. December 2, 2017 written especially for A Prairie Home Companion.
Music was a main feature of the program; the show was a significant outlet for American folk music of many genres, especially country, bluegrass, blues, and gospel, but it also had guest performers from a wide variety of other styles of music, including classical, opera, and music from a number of different countries. The country musician and former record company executive Chet Atkins appeared on the show many times, as did singer-songwriters Mark Knopfler (lead guitarist and frontman of the bands Dire Straits and the Notting Hillbillies) and Jeff Lang. Folk/gospel duo Robin and Linda Williams had been regular guests since 1976, and often join Keillor and another female performer, often Jearlyn Steele, to form "The Hopeful Gospel Quartet". Peter Ostroushko, Greg Brown, Jean Redpath, and Prudence Johnson, among others, were recurring guests on the program between 1974 and 1987. The Wailin' Jennys and Andra Suchy were also recurring guests, and when the show travelled, Keillor generally featured local musicians and acts.
Greetings from members of the audience to friends and family at home (frequently humorous) were read each week by Keillor just after the show's intermission, at the top of the second hour. Birthdays and anniversaries of famous composers and musicians were also observed.
Features
Keillor and the ensemble performed comedy skits. Notable skits and characters often recur, such as the satirical "Guy Noir, Private Eye", which parodied film noir and radio dramas. Guy Noir's popularity was such that the first few notes of the theme or the first lines of the announcer's introduction ("A dark night in a city that knows how to keep its secrets ...") often drew applause and cheers from the audience. Also regularly featured were the adventures of Dusty and Lefty, "The Lives of the Cowboys".
News from Lake Wobegon