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Garrison KeillorGuest Artist
His tales of life in his fictional Minnesota home town, Lake Wobegon, have provided a soothingly wry view of life in small-town America. A Prairie Home Companion debuted as an old-style variety show before a live audience in 1974, featuring guest musicians and a cadre cast doing musical numbers and comic skits replete with elaborate live sound effects. The show was punctuated by spoof commercial spots from such fictitious sponsors as Jack's Auto Repair and Powdermilk Biscuits. Later imaginary sponsors have included Ralph's Pretty Good Grocery, Bertha's Kitty Boutique, the Catchup Advisory Board, the American Duct Tape Council, and Bebop-A-Reebop Rhubarb Pie. 1980, Minnesota Public Radio began to distribute A Prairie Home Companion nationally. Since then it has had some changes of name and format but is essentially the same mixture of songs, sketches, poems, and guest musicians. It broadcasts live for thirty-five weeks of the year, with about a third of the shows coming from Saint Paul and can be heard on the web at www.prairiehome.org. Keillor writes most of the show, producing forty pages of script in a few days each week. The highlight is still The News from Lake Wobegon, an extemporised twenty-minute monologue. He lives in Saint Paul with his wife and daughter. He has two grandsons. |
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