Nashville, Tenn.– Good timing is a strong-suit for “humorist, novelist, radio companion,” Garrison Keillor, who returned one of America’s more wholesome and culturally redeemable radio broadcasts, A Prairie Home Companion, to Nashville’s historic Ryman Auditorium, July 10, 2022 (appropriately re-marquee’d, A Praire Home Companion American Revival).
Keillor’s home-away-from-homecoming was intent to reboot the almost 50-year-old, Grand Ole Opry-inspired radio variety show (twice revived, now) into the host’s octogenarian years; however, Keillor and company revived the Ryman, itself, that evening, with a venue-inspired harmony fortunately still opportune to Keillor’s craftiness with a close-to-sold-out crowd six years after the host’s national cancellation during the “me, too” movement.
The broadcast featured Grammy-winning singer/songwriter and running show-contributor, Aoife O’Donovan; guitarist/banjoist, Joe Newberry; and singer/radio actor, Heather Masse, as backed by Rich Dworsky and the Guy’s All-Star Shoe Band (guitarist, Pat Donohue; bassist, Gary Raynor, with dobroist Jerry Douglas and wild mandolin/fiddle-ist, Sam Bush, sitting in), alongside The Royal Academy of Radio Actors: Tim Russell; their sound effects man, Fred Newman; and Heather Masse, again, in for Sue Scott.
This A Prairie Home Companion American Revival remained traditionally Midwestern, avoiding any direct political or social commentary responsive to the societal progression that’s affected the host within the last six years (excepting allegories), and is still brought to us by “The Catchup Advisory Board,” “Bebopareebop Rhubarb Pie,” and “Powdermilk Biscuits,” who’s folk, country, and bluegrass variety and sentiment (actually, All of which) were inspired by Keillor covering the Ryman’s final Grand Ole Opry days for The New Yorker, back in 1973-74.
“I was a kid and used to listen to [this kind of country, bluegrass music] on a big Zenith floor model radio. That’s where I first heard this music,” Keillor explained.
“I didn’t get down here until 1973 and came in summertime. It was very hot, and the Ryman did not have air conditioning and it was all sold out. I didn’t think to get a ticket, so I was standing in the parking lot and those windows way back there [Keillor pointed to the stained glass at the back] were half-open and you could stand out there amidst the pickup trucks and listen to WSM broadcast it on the radios in the cars. And you could look in and see all of Stonewall Jackson, and you could see half of Dolly Parton (crowd laughs), Roy Acuff and all the others.”
Keillor goes on about seeing Loretta Lynn getting off the bus in all her white gown glory at the Ryman’s back avenue entrance while people around were cool about it. Minnie Pearl was backstage as Sarah Ophelia Colley Cannon, a graduate from Belmont University, speaking in her real voice about how she’s still sad that two men she cared very much about, Elvis Presley and Hank Williams, took their tragic paths, in part, on account of their own success. He told us this one time, “Chet Atkins, on this stage, he came out and talked to me before the end of the show. He said, ‘Sometimes when you go out and you take a bow and you reach for my hands,’ he said, ‘don’t do that, okay?’ He said ‘These are country people. They maybe misunderstand that.’”
“What a safe man,” Keillor said, “so I walked right close to him when we took our final bow and it made him uneasy. But, I put my hand on his shoulder, and he accepted that,…But, he remembered it.” (Crowd laughs)
-And, with such moments recalled to a Sam Bush-led version of Jimmy Buffet’s “Stories We Could Tell,” in the background before people even realized it.
“The Catchup Advisory Board” ad was the first full-stage radio skit that brought out The Royal Academy of Radio Actors, Tim Russell, Fred Newman, and Heather Masse, in for Sue Scott. Set up usually with Heather Masse and Tim Russell as the married couple, Jim and Barb, at dinner, Jim is in a joking mood, establishing a few at Unitarians’ expense, as Unitarians are more all-inclusive, or more laid back (even more so than Lutherans).
Jim rattles off a couple more, gradually worse. as the skit normally goes until, “Have you been getting enough Catchup?” Barb asks. “Catchup has natural mellowing agents to enjoy life with, or without jokes,” Then, Rich Dworsky finally went to town on the Catchup theme as Keillor rust-ily directed the Guy’s All Star Shoe Band (That man, Rick Dworsky, on a piano, man. Like, Vince Guaraldi on Adderall, just raggin’ it out).
And, PHC’s long-running, Film Noir-narrated “Guy Noir: Private Eye,” (“A dark night in a city that knows how to keep its secrets, but high on the 12th floor of the Acme building, one man is still trying to find the answers: Guy Noir, Private Eye,”) announces the man of a thousand voices, Tim Russell, in a mid-Atlantic tone) brought out The Royal Academy of Radio Actors, Tim Russell, Fred Newman, and Heather Masse, in for Sue Scott.
Per the exile, something to notice is Keillor as Guy Noir. Who as him, obstacle-course narrated his way through scaring away a pigeon from the window sill of the 12th floor with a .38 pistol during 4th of July celebrations below. He accidentally shot the pigeon’s wing, so Guy laid the pigeon down to splint it, but as the window stayed open, a rocket came in the size of a piano leg and lit everything ablaze, all gone. His files, Rolodex, his computer, everything destroyed. His whole history, gone (“Talk about cancellation,” Noir said).
“Aw, Geez. You okay, Mr. Noir?” Noir’s landlord, Joey Maroni, voiced by Tim Russell, tried to be reassuring.
“Well, how am I?” Noir said. “I dunno. It depends what you mean by okay.”
“Am I still respirating? Yes.”
“Still a little hopeful about the future? No,” he said.
“I don’t think so. …Not yet, anyway.”
The landlord, Mr. Maroni, moved him to an open office a floor up, on the 13th.
“I didn’t know there was a 13th floor. I thought they went from 12 to 14,” Noir said.”
“No. It’s 13,” said Maroney.
“You know, the way my luck is going nowadays, maybe 13 is my lucky number, now,” says Noir, before finding out it belonged to a music therapist that jumped out of the window because he couldn’t pay rent (yes, it’s a he), hit the awning below and, underneath it, a pile of crated oranges, walking away only losing his language ability. Had to go to a therapist who though he was Russian, so he picked up Russian and moved to a Russian neighborhood, but it was actually Ukranian, and he got beat up.
“He tried to commit suicide and wound up in even worse shape,” Noir observed, as PHCAR’s sound effects man, Fred Newman is on stage making these sounds in real time with old, loose VHS tape to crinkle, wood blocks to whack with other various objects, -the brown, worn dress shoes tied around his neck like his neck as if it was a telephone line.
Of course, the cliché, noir femme comes in the office (Heather Masse), with a case of “trapped in sensitivity.” She wants to be hospitalized for nervous exhaustion brought on by four kids, but she can’t because every time the doc asks her, “how’s it going?”, she says, “fine,” because she was “brought up right; not to complain.”
Guy just lets her sing it out as he tries to understand, when the femme’s lady friend (Aiofe O’Donovan), comes in to duet happy thoughts, but the exhausted mother is a blues singer, deep down, and Blues-es on about looking for a singles neighborhood and hating the crap parts of motherhood, -and about a banjo-playing husband she eventually combats away with bag pipes; all bringing her happiness.
However, the neighbor complained about the music, so landlord Maroney moved him to the 14th floor to a pet sitting service office holding a walrus and a pelican, by chance, that day, but “feeding a walrus a dead fish was not work I was ever trained for, but I didn’t have anything else because life is full of surprises. You play it as it lays. Just go with the flow. Live and let live. No long term plans. One day at a time.” narrated Noir, as Tim Russell, the walrus, roars behind him, as Rich Dworsky plays the seemingly dark allegory, to a finish.
Heather Masse came out with “Don’t Advertise Your Man,” originally by Sippie Wallace, but influenced by Bonnie Raitt/nailing it, too, with Aiofe O’Donovan voicing more of a Gillian Welch intention afterwards for guests of Guy’s All Star Shoe Band’s that evening, Dobro-ist, Jerry Douglas, and that wild mandolinist, Sam Bush, to accompany in O’Donovan’s original, “Oh, Mama,” which was probably seen, heard and felt in the streets around The Ryman. -Wonderful Dobro-vocal harmony.
…“Brought to you by Beebopareebop Rhubarb Pie,” was softly spoken as the crowd applauded. The Royal Academy of Radio Actors were on mark.
Keillor intros a newly-dating couple birdwatching themselves off a cliff but saved by grabbing a passing condor as they fall, which dropped them on a bi-plane’s wing which landing next to an awaiting “freedom” boat by the riverside. The land, however, is engulfed by an active volcano whose lava hatches un-fossilized, carnivorous, [pterosaur] eggs beneath the riverbed that attack, but an unintelligible man rescues them from the sky in a hot air balloon, ferries them to his old cob-webby home filled with spiders and vampire bats, -the latter of all that would have them living off the blood of children, as liberals do, as well as exposes the man of the couple as an unvaxxed, Were-QANON member, or a man that’s been bitten by a QANON woman, causing werewolf like effects, (Were-QANON) which hasn’t been vaxxed either. And all this just six months into their relationship.
When the zombies come out, a much-needed supreme being appears, but not in the form of Diana Ross, but rather in the form of the SCOTUS, singing “Stop in the Name of Love,” while handing the young couple SCOTUS’s decision on the case, Roe v. Wade (this was July 10, 2022), which determines the couple will have to wade across the river full of alligators and crocodiles (sic), to safety on the other side….
So, “…Wouldn’t this be a good time for a piece of Rhubarb Pie?”
The crowd goes nuts.
A gracious Joe Newberry came out to share his Doc Watson-inspired original chugger, “Still Love to Hear the Whistle Blow.” A great Newberry baritone exploration. Jerry Douglas gets a hold of it, again. Afterwards, Newberry brings out the ladies, Masse and O’Donovan, for an original of his, “Singing as We Rise,” kind of a good, off-layered, “I Saw the Light.”
Keillor continued, “This auditorium was first built when they preached this message in 1892. Brother Sam Jones was the preacher and he preached against the theatre, and he preached against gambling, and he preached against alcohol, and when it comes to alcohol, if you walk over to Broadway, you’ll see there’s a lot of work left to be done. Someday, those young people are going to calm down and find the good life and it’s based on simplicity. -Has your family tried them Powdermilk?”
-Keillor noted of area-biscuit popularity, “It’s poor people’s food, and that’s part of the reverence for it is the fact that when you have so little, you do appreciate the things that you have, and having less is one of the secrets of the new life.”
Once finishing an angelic choir/bluegrass rendition of The Grateful Dead’s, “Ripple,” “We’ve come to my favorite part of the show, which is the intermission, and this is the time we bring the house lights up and all of you can stand. You’ve been sitting in hard pews. They’re not designed to make you comfortable. They’re designed to make you uncomfortable, so you can come forward when the call is made.”
“We’re gonna rise, now, and those of you who want to step out, you do that. You do that. We do not judge. Even though it is a gospel tabernacle, we do not judge. You want to step out, step out, and the rest of us are going to form a choir because there is a sound in this Ryman Auditorium. This is how it began, of course. It began as the Union Gospel Tabernacle and Reverend Sam Jones was preaching here against all sorts of things and people sang. People sang. We don’t have the opportunity, now, so often as we did, and I just have to believe that there are some Methodists, and some Baptists, and some brethren and some people in those churches that I don’t even know their name, and somehow, we’re going make some harmony here. For me, it is the pinnacle of the show.”
“Let’s find a key, here, that we’re all comfortable with…” Keillor hummed a soprano’s F for about three seconds, which is, apparently, how long it takes 2500 folks to simultaneously warm up (in harmony!) in their own right, until Keillor pulled everyone into the first verse of “Amazing Grace,” to feel the crowd he was working with.
It was everyone’s architecturally engineered wall of sound/congregation-trained harmony at that point, even with the loud, deaf, old man a few pews ahead, as well as the righteously-pitched, super-harmonizing auntie, two huge sections over.
We stood and harmonized hymns for twenty minutes in that 130-year-old, immaculately engineered, old church during PHC’s intermission that night led by Garrison Keillor, as if it were nothing extraordinary. He started in a courtesy soprano’s F (he’s a baritone) seamlessly leading us through a verse of “Amazing Grace,” into “Abide with Me,” “Nearer, My God, to Thee” (“Still looking for a hymn that everybody knoooows,” he sang to us in a C#, by then), through the climactic choruses of “It Is Well with My Soul” (He parted the sopranos [the ladies] and the baritones [the men] for the chorus’ call-and-response), then followed by a deep unison in “How Great Thou Art” (“I know you all know this and I need a baritone key, right in there” [he motions over the left side, ground floor audience, to their laughter]. The basis for that is to just get down and work with it,” he says as the crowd laughs).
“You’re so beautiful, I can’t hear anymore. I’ll just break down,” he said
corralling us over to the patriotic, “America (My Country, ‘Tis of Thee),” and
“God Bless America,” “that’ll allow the Unitarians to come back in,” he joked;
then finished us with a clap-along, “Amen.” Amen.
A text message was received by old friend, Ty Gang:
“Ty, I closed my eyes singing ‘It Is Well With My Soul,” wondering if I’d have a, ‘holysht, God is present,’ moment like we had at the big, youth conferences of Lawrence County days, but it was kinda out-lit by Garrison fckn Keillor leading us in hymn at the Ryman with the spontaneous, cultural wherewithal that drives women wild, Ty. He’s back, baby.”
“Nashville never intended to be the city of hillbilly music. It intended to be the Athens of the South. They constructed the Parthenon, Vanderbilt University, and dozens of other colleges and universities, here. They intended to represent high culture in America, but WSM came along (crowd laughs). And, they were playing classical music, and they were broadcasting Opera from New York on Saturday afternoons. And, they brought in an announcer from Chicago, George Hay, and he was the one who brought in that fiddler on the ‘tin cups.’ He sat him down in the studio and he played and they got so many cards and letters, Keillor explained of the area.
“If you want to do something that management does not approve of, Saturday night is the time.”
Keillor continued, “They were all out at the country club and they didn’t hear this broadcasting banjo and all sorts of things until finally one day after they heard enough opera, George Hay said, ‘We’ve been listening to the grand opera, and now it’s time for the Grand Ole Opry, and that was the beginning of this town.”
It’s a deeply staked, anchor of a relationship Keillor’s A Prairie Home Companion (PHC) and the Ryman have had over the last, now, 40 years, as if it were some early-established and wordlessly defined wholesomeness tied, purely, in the past, stretching through time and uncut no matter where life takes or keeps them. That’s straight-up how old friends are made. And, fortunately, Keillor doesn’t use unrelated metaphors and similes to describe it.
“So, we need to listen to each other. And if you are so lucky to have married your best friend, you get two-in-one, here in one place, as I did, then you are a lucky person. So, if you should fall in love with someone, or think you do, do something wrong and see if they mention it.
And if they don’t mention it, then do something worse. And, if they don’t mention it, then, you’ve got to rethink this.”
(As PHC fans know, the remainder of the show was “News from Lake Wobegon,” -where all the women are strong, all the men are good looking, and all the children are above; and which has it’s own book).
A Prairie Home Companion American Revival is currently working on a tentative schedule to further and farther remaining 2023-24 appearances, with future dates being added as appearances continue. The next time Keillor and company will be at Ryman Auditorium, again, will be January 11, 2024, for A Praire Home Companion‘s 50th Anniversary Tour. Regularly updated schedules can be found at Keillor’s homesite, garrisonkeillor.com/schedule (Events | Garrison Keillor), as well, daily updates on his FB homepage, and ticket access through both.
The July 10, 2022, Ryman show was live-streamed only on mandolin.com, but the recording right above, as well as in snippets of fan videos on Keillor’s Facebook page.
A reemergence of Keillor’s Writer’s Almanac (formerly, Keillor’s little, 10, or so minute radio equivalent to a frck’n awesome day-calendar NPR used to air, every day, mid-day), is making its way back as unedited versions of past …Almanacs are found at garrisonkeillor.com/radio, as well as, close equivalent to Writer’s Almanac in Keillor’s Substack newsletters are found at garrisonkeillor.substack.com.
All archival efforts, if missed here, can be found at these sites: garrisonkeillor.com; garrisonkeillor.substack.com; Keillor’s Facebook homepage, @PrairieHomeCompanion; and www.prairiehome.org.
Keillor’s newest novel, Boom Town: A Lake Wobegon Novel, was released April 11, 2022, and can be found on these websites, as well.
Keillor’s News From Lake Wobegon book series and audio cd’s can be found at shop.garrisonkeillor.com, or where ever books are sold.
Again, Garrison Keillor’s current 2023-24 schedule can be found at Events | Garrison Keillor.
Leave a Reply