California Blues from 2008

City Winery Tour

This week, we pick up the Garrison solo trek with additional stops at City Winery locations in Atlanta, Nashville, St. Louis, and Chicago. Join us for a great evening featuring Poetry, Limericks, Sing-Along, and the News from Lake Wobegon. View EVENTS

Listen to the classic show

This week, we'll march our phalanx of pen-wielding English majors into the Greek Theatre in Los Angeles, bringing Minnesotan cultural exchange to the coastal peoples of the Pacific as we revisit a show from June 7, 2008. With special guests, blue-eyed soul sister Bonnie Raitt, actor and “flower in the gun barrel” Martin Sheen, and gospel singer Jearlyn Steele. Also with us, The Royal Academy of Radio Actors: Tim Russell, Sue Scott, and Fred Newman, The Guy's All-Star Shoe Band with Rich Dworsky, and The News from Lake Wobegon.

Highlights include Bonnie Raitt and Keb’ Mo’ collaborating on “No Getting Over You,” Jearlyn belting out “I’ll Take You There,” Pat Donohue has the “California Blues,” talk of D-Day with Martin Sheen, English Majors, sound effects, and Guy Noir. Listen to the show.

About our guest performers:

Minnesota has a claim to fame in music legend Bonnie Raitt’s extraordinary career: Her first album was recorded in the Twin Cities suburb of Minnetonka and produced by Minneapolis blues stalwart Willie Murphy. Born to a musical family (she’s the daughter of celebrated Broadway singer John Raitt and pianist/singer Marge Goddard), Raitt grew up in Los Angeles. Her creative journey began the Christmas she was eight, when she got her first guitar. In her teens, she heard the album Blues at Newport 1963. “That one record changed my life,” she says. By the late ’60s, as a Harvard/Radcliffe student majoring in African studies, she was making the rounds of Cambridge coffeehouses. After three years of college, she quit school to commit herself full-time to music. Soon she was opening for the likes of Mississippi Fred McDowell, Son House, Muddy Waters, and John Lee Hooker. These days, Raitt can claim legions of fans, stacks of recordings, and a host of awards, including thirteen Grammys.

Growing up in Indiana, Jearlyn Steele sang with her siblings as The Steele Children. One by one, they moved to Minnesota and started singing together again. Now music is the family business: The Steele Family has garnered fans across the globe. A Prairie Home favorite, Jearlyn has performed with Minnesota Orchestra, the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, and others.

Serenity at 70, Gaiety at 80: Why We Should Keep Getting Older

“I’m an honest writer, not an inspirational speaker or a sales agent for a seniors’ condo complex, and they believe me when I say old age is a heroic role you’ve been preparing for for decades and now comes the easy part: walking tall, exemplifying wisdom and maturity while maintaining humility while retaining the right to freedom of expression and that includes talking to yourself, and despite your eccentricities and crotchets, being beloved. Belovedness is the point of it all. Why would you want anything less? If you are very very old, of course there are no rules, and you can probably get away with homicide if you choose a truly despicable person to poison and you have a doctor who will testify to your mental instability, but anyway here are some helpful suggestions.”

And so Garrison begins his 23 Rules of the Game, tips on living life to the fullest and why we should all want to keep getting older, better, and wiser. This anchors a full chapter in his recent book Serenity at 70, Gaiety at 80: Why We Should Keep On Getting Older. It’s a great humorous and inspiring take on advancing in years. So grab the book that the Saturday Evening Post described as “a playful yet deeply felt meditation that ought to be a standard in the literature of human aging.”