Serving Whitman County since 1877
Serving Whitman County since 1877
Garrison Keillor warms up the crowd singing a few verses of a hymn before the two-hour broadcast.
A parade of English majors, Elvin Bishop, a veterinary urologist, mordant salutes to Wisconsin’s Paul Ryan and a mandolin player who used to live in Colton highlighted the Spokane performance of “A Prairie Home Companion,” billed as part of Garrison Keillor’s last year hosting the public radio show he started in 1974.
The Saturday afternoon live broadcast began after Keillor stepped out from a red curtain, hair unkemp, in a gray suit, to warm up his voice and the crowd. Verses from a Catholic hymn and “I Saw Her Standing There” later, the curtain parted and Keillor led the band in Paul Simon’s “Under African Skies.”
Two women from Seattle slinked up the fifth row, taking the last two seats in the sold-out INB Performing Arts Center. They bought the last two tickets – from Spokane Public Radio – six weeks before, and drove across the state in the morning.
“This is the story of how we begin to remember,” Keillor sang with duet partner and guest Aoife O’Donovan from Brooklyn, N.Y.
He gave a preview of what was to come when the On Air light came on.
A cowboy fed up with social media, he listed.
“We are exploring the biases of a number of people, not myself,” Keillor said. “Then we have a song for Paul Ryan. A guy from Wisconsin. He just made the best of a terrible thing.”
Nearing the live start, Keillor gave a last comment, explaining the timing of the 3 p.m. performance.
“So it airs for the East Coast during cocktail hour,” he said. “See you after the show.”
It began, and Dusty and Lefty rode up to a bar somewhere outside Spokane, where they encountered a cowboy railing against patrons using iPhones.
He wouldn’t even let Lefty make calls to solicit for a public radio pledge drive.
“Life is a losing battle, cowboy, that doesn’t mean we should stop livin’,” said Dusty, the On Air sign lit up at the back of the stage, next to a sign for Chestnut Street, a blue house in the backdrop, porch light on.
Then Keillor mentioned “the New York liberal who has taken over the Republican Party” before a song to Ryan.
It was then on to Elvin Bishop, originally of the Paul Butterfield Trio, a member of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
“I used to think all that was just B.S.,” he said. “Now I think it’s pretty cool.”
Keillor mentioned the trio’s seminal album from 1965.
“And he’s not even a Seminole,” he said.
Telling of Bishop’s background, the host told the crowd the guitarist went to the University of Chicago for a year and a half as a physics major.
“That was just a cover story to get from Tulsa to Chicago to the blues,” Bishop said.
The first of many Spokane references began.
“Lewis and Clark High School. A beautiful school,” Keillor said. “As if dropped right from Harvard yard. Remember when they used to build beautiful high schools in this country? Now it’s so they can easily be converted to penal facilities.”
More on the topic of Spokane: “People in Seattle never set foot in Spokane unless their parents live here.”
The talk continued, about Unitarians, Lutheran vows and Humanism, from the man whose show gained notoriety in the boomtowns era of the Twin Cities’ cultural contribution: Prince, The Replacements, Soul Asylum, pithy headlines from Fallon McElligott advertising (“If you doubt the concept of eternity, try giving a five-minute speech”), the Kirby-Puckett Twins.
A bulletin followed on whether “BOGO” should really be “BOGOF,” from POEM – Professional Organization of English Majors.
“Men work so much that in Lake Wobegon there are lawn chairs that are rusted. They’ve never been sat in,” Keillor continued.
The News from Lake Wobegon trickled in, the main question being whether it really did snow late Friday night in mid-May.
“Maple blossoms don’t melt on the street,” Keillor said.
It kept coming.
“What’s she doing in Spokane?”
“She’s a spokeswoman.”
“I entered 10 puns in a contest.”
“Did you win?”
“No pun in ten did.”
At the end, Keillor gave the official news from Lake Wobegon, the fictional town he created as the core of the show, which became books, tapes and more, beginning with the 1985 bestseller, “Lake Wobegon Days.”
This week, Keillor’s report of the news was delivered by just him, pacing the stage in his red tie and ubiquitous red Saucony running shoes.
He reeled off the detailed updates, seemingly from the top of his head, seamless, without notes, although at the end, naming off the credits, the day’s show was attributed to four writers, Keillor not one of them.
At the conclusion, after a visit from Guy Noir, Private Eye, the band and guests all stood for a curtain call, one of which was mandolin player Richard Kriehn, who lived in Colton when he got the offer to join A Prairie Home Companion’s “Powdermilk Biscuit Band,” after originally playing as a guest during a performance in Pullman in 2006.
He and his family moved to Chaska, Minn., three years ago.
“I miss the smell of the air,” Kriehn said, after the show. “The dry, clean air. It doesn’t smell like this anywhere else.”
The mandolin/violin/ fiddle player, who appeared at the Dahmen Barn last summer, after the release of his second album “Hop, Skip, Jump,” has a new musical project in the Twin Cities, playing with three other members of Keillor’s band as New Shoes.
In the final year of Keillor hosting “A Prairie Home Companion,” Kriehn and the band’s future is uncertain. New host Chris Thile will make 13 shows next year, with the rest re-runs of Keillor.
The pace will be different, compared to Kriehn’s six years now with the show, as Keillor has been doing 30-35 live performances per year.
“I’m interested like anybody else what it will turn into,” Kriehn said.
Garth Meyer is a former Whitman County Gazette reporter.
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