If you showed up on July 6, 1974 at the Janet Wallace Auditorium at Macalester College in Saint Paul to attend the very first broadcast of A Prairie Home Companion, you were in select company. There were about 12 people in the audience.
Forty years later the show will return to the Macalester campus for an anniversary celebration with three days of music, comedy, food, and festivities July 4-6th. The show expects a slightly larger attendance than that first performance. In fact thousands of fans will make their way to Macalester for the festivities.
“We intended the show to last for a year, or maybe two, but just as we were about to quit, the show started to draw an audience, fifty, a hundred, two hundred people coming to see it on Saturday night, and we kept going so we could figure out what we were doing right. The formula is simple: a variety of music that appeals, radio actors who can do noir, or horror, or soap, strong writing, a Midwestern ethos, and the thrill of live radio. And a support staff to do the work. It isn’t what I planned to be doing for forty years but luckily for me my plans went awry. It’s a good show. People have grown up listening to it and now they are middle-aged and still like it.” – Garrison Keillor
Special guests coming together to play on various stages, including the 3-hour extended Anniversary Broadcast, are friends who have appeared on the show over the last four decades -- some from the very first show. A partial list includes Old Crow Medicine Show, Iris DeMent, Robin & Linda Williams, The Wailin’ Jennys, Butch Thompson, Jearlyn & Jevetta Steele, and members from the original Powdermilk Biscuit Band, along with Richard Dworsky and the Guy’s All-Star Shoe Band and the Royal Academy of Radio Actors – Sue Scott, Tim Russell and sound effects man, Fred Newman.
TUNE IN: Tune in Saturdays to any of the hundreds of public radio stations coast to coast (many rebroadcast the show on Sunday). Or listen to a live audio Web stream. Check local listings or go to www.prairiehome.org for specifics.
A Prairie Home Companion is heard on over 600 public radio stations across the U.S., with a weekly audience that tops 4 million listeners. The program can also be heard on the Armed Forces Network Europe, the Far East Network, and in dozens of European cities via the Astra satellite network.
Garrison Keillor has been the host and writer of A Prairie Home Companion since the program started production in 1974. He is also the author of more than two dozen books, including Lake Wobegon Days; Love Me; O, What a Luxury, and his soon to be released, The Keillor Reader
A Prairie Home Companion is produced by Prairie Home Productions and presented by American Public Media. The show is sponsored nationally by Holiday Vacations and by Ford. The July 4-6 weekend is sponsored by Macalester College. Audio clips, scripts and more information on A Prairie Home Companion and all the weekend’s events can be found online at www.prairiehome.org.
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