POSTPONED FROM MAY 16TH TO JULY 25TH
Garrison Keillor did “A Prairie Home Companion” for forty years, wrote fiction and comedy, invented a town called Lake Wobegon where all the children are above average, even though he himself grew up evangelical in a small separatist flock where all the children expected the imminent end of the world. He’s busy in retirement, having written a memoir and a book of limericks and is at work on a musical and a Lake Wobegon screenplay, and he continues to do “The Writers Almanac” sent out daily to Internet subscribers.
Keillor & Company is an evening of stand-up, storytelling, audience song, and
poetry starring Garrison Keillor and featuring pianist Dan Chouinard and vocalist
Prudence Johnson.
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.
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.
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.
