Christmas Time's a Coming Join us tomorrow evening (December 15) at 7:00 p.m. CT for a LIVESTREAM of our Christmas show from St. Louis. The holidays are a time to gather, exchange a few stories, and sing a couple of tunes. So who better to do that with than your friends from the old radio show. Tune in from the comfort of your home for two-plus hours of festive stories and songs. Order the LIVESTREAM >>>
NOTE: The LIVESTREAM will be available for 48 hours after the broadcast to watch for the first time or rewatch your favorite parts.
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A rainy December day, long thoughts therein I saw the phrase “friendship recession” in a headline last week, which has a musical swing to it but refers to growing social isolation, particularly among men, due to people working from home, avoiding crowded places, being reluctant joiners, and then I stopped reading because sociology has always bored me ever since I was nineteen and sat in Dr. Cooperman’s class and looked around at the girls in the room and tried to imagine how I might strike up a conversation with one of them. Talking about sociology did not seem like the way to begin.
Go to Garrison Keillor and Friends on Substack to read the rest of THE COLUMN >>>
Become a member of THE BACK ROOM on our Substack page for exclusive access to News from Lake Wobegon stories, archived goodies such as the novel A Christmas Blizzard, excerpts from unpublished works, previews of other works, a second weekly column, and on occasion, a full-length video stream of a show from 2015 to 2016. Also, if you shop in the store, THE BACK ROOM subscribers receive 20% discounts. (Subscription to The Back Room: $6 per months or $65 annually.)
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This week on "A Prairie Home Companion" Spread the Christmas cheer — this classic PHC is full of tinsel and ornaments you will fondly recall for years to come. This week, the ghost of Christmas past takes us back to The Town Hall for a show from 2014, with special guests, Greenwich Village poet Edward Field, pianist and writer Jeremy Denk, and singers Karan Casey and Christine DiGiallonardo. Plus, the Royal Academy of Radio Actors, multi-instrumentalists Sam Bush and Stuart Duncan sit in with pianist and musical director Rich Dworsky and The 43rd Street Band, and the latest News from Lake Wobegon. Join us Saturday for some delightful festivity! Listen via our Facebook page at 5 p.m. CT (or click the link below). Listen to the Show >>>
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More about this week’s featured guests:
Jeremy Denk is one of America’s most thought-provoking, multifaceted, and compelling artists — “a pianist you want to hear no matter what he performs,” said the New York Times. Among other projects, he is an Artistic Partner of the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra. Also a respected writer, Denk’s articles have appeared in The New Yorker, The Guardian, the New York Times Book Review, and more. His recording J.S. Bach: Goldberg Variations (Nonesuch) reached No. 1 on Billboard’s Classical Chart. Songs Without Words >>>
The Los Angeles Times has called Karan Casey’s voice “as pure and clear as the crystal from County Waterford, where she was born.” She spent her childhood singing with her family, then studied voice and piano at the Royal Irish Academy of Music in Dublin. After courses in jazz at Long Island University-Brooklyn, she joined the celebrated Irish-American band Solas and later embarked on a solo career. “Love is Pleasing” >>>
During a three-day train trip after his Army Air Corps basic training in World War II, a Red Cross worker handed Edward Field a paperback anthology of poetry. By the time the trip was over, the young soldier knew that he was going to be a poet. Field has published many volumes of fiction and nonfiction, in addition to poetry collections like Counting Myself Lucky, A Frieze for a Temple of Love, and After the Fall: Poems Old and New. The native New Yorker has been honored with the Lambda Literary Award and the W.H. Auden Award, among others. A reading >>>
Here is a winning take on O. Henry’s The Gift of the Magi. WATCH >>>
In the tiny apartment on the Lower East Side,
The beautiful Della combed her long hair,
And thought about Christmas and bitterly cried,
For they had no money, no money to spare.
So little money, and Christmas was near,
And Jim worked so hard and for so little pay.
He’d grown discouraged, her darling, her dear
She must give him Christmas, she must find a way.
So she went to a wig shop and sold them her hair,
Her beautiful hair that her husband adored,
Her face was all pale as she sat in the chair,
And she cried as the barber cut it off short.
And out in the street, with a scarf on her head,
And the money in hand, Della searched through the shops,
And there in a window was the gift she must get:
A platinum chain Jim could hang on his watch.
His beautiful watch that his father had owned,
So handsome and beautiful, just like her Jim.
And she bought him the chain and gladly went home
And curled her short hair as she waited for him.
He opened the door and he saw her hair
And she ran to his side and tried to explain
It would grow back so quickly and she didn’t care
And she gave him the beautiful platinum chain.
Jim took her gift — how brightly it shone.
He covered his face and sighed in despair,
And he told her, “I bought you those tortoise shell combs,
Tortoiseshell combs for your beautiful hair.”
He had pawned his watch to buy her the combs,
To buy him the watch chain, she sold her hair
And the two of them looked at each other and groaned,
At the sight of the two useless gifts sitting there.
They sat holding hands and they started to laugh
At the beautiful emptiness of what they were wishing
The gift of the Magi is to hold what you have
And not think a minute of what you are missing. |
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Guy Noir It’s a dark night in a city that knows how to keep its secrets, but high above the mean streets, a light burns on the 12th floor of the Acme Building, where Guy Noir — hard-boiled, world-weary, yet surprisingly articulate — is trying to find the answers to life’s questions. In his big swivel chair under the bare bulb beside the beat-up gray file cabinet, he awaits the call of his clientele: the disappointed, the paranoid, the embittered, the rejected — and the hilarious.
Garrison Keillor’s private eye spoof thrilled audiences every week for over twenty years on live public radio broadcasts of A Prairie Home Companion. Thirty-six all-time favorite Guy Noir episodes are available in one collection. Follow the intrepid detective as he solves cases no other gumshoe would touch and enjoy Keillor’s intelligent — but always funny — spin on the classic detective genre.
Featuring Garrison Keillor, Sue Scott, Tim Russell, Fred Newman, Tom Keith, Walter Bobbie, and special guests, with music by Richard Dworsky. Listen to a sample >>>
Get the Best of Guy Noir Collector’s Edition >>> |
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Our “guaranteed-by-Christmas” ordering deadlines have passed, but we will still do our best to ship items as fast as we can! Orders of in-stock items have been hitting the post office on the same day.
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The Lake Wobegon Virus Softcover |
Now in paperback. Bestselling author and humorist Garrison Keillor returns to one of America’s most beloved mythical towns — a town beset by a contagion of alarming candor.
A mysterious virus has infiltrated the good people of Lake Wobegon, transmitted via unpasteurized cheese made by a Norwegian bachelor farmer, the effect of which is episodic loss of social inhibition. Mayor Alice, Father Wilmer, Pastor Liz, the Bunsens and Krebsbachs, formerly taciturn elders, burst into political rants, inappropriate confessions, and rhapsodic proclamations, while their teenagers watch in amazement. Meanwhile, a wealthy outsider is buying up farmland for a Keep America Truckin’ motorway and amusement park, estimated to draw 2.2 million visitors a year. Clint Bunsen and Elena the hometown epidemiologist to the rescue, with a Fourth of July Living Flag and sweet corn feast for a finale. |
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Get the BOOK >>> |
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| A Prairie Home Companion RED SOCKS |
| Peter Rosen once produced a documentary about Garrison Keillor titled The Man on the Radio in the Red Shoes. What the title failed to realize is that Garrison not only wore red shoes onstage for the APHC shows, but he also wore a red tie and red socks to match. Now, you can wear a pair of Prairie Home socks and keep your feet warm on those cool winter nights. Knit jacquard socks are made with a woven imprint combining both the original logo and the microphone from the more recent logo. One size fits all. |
Get the socks >>> |
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| A Year in Lake Wobegon “What I quickly came to appreciate was the universal truth in Garrison Keillor’s rich vein of stories. That they are set in Lake Wobegon is not incidental, neither is it absolutely necessary. Those truths, after all, are played out in the Lake Wobegons of our own experience wherever they may occur — whether in prairie hamlets, Sun Belt suburbs, or big-city neighborhoods.” —Tom Brokaw
Family gatherings, holiday celebrations, the predictable, the unexpected — a lot goes on over the course of a year, even in a small town. This collection gathers together 12 “above average” Lake Wobegon stories from live A Prairie Home Companion broadcasts to demonstrate that much can happen in “the little town that time forgot and the decades could not improve.” Get the CDs >>> |
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