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A Note from Garrison About the 1998-99 Season
Even before our clothes came back from Acme Cleaners after the sweltering Fourth of July finale in Kansas City, even before we finished answering the last letter of complaint about the Joke Show, the Prairie Home Companion organization swung into action to plan the 1998-99 season. Six working committees were formed, each chaired by a PHC program executive - Community Outreach, Programming Partnerships, Mood and Tone, Program Evaluation, Music Diversity, and Pronunciation - and each has been meeting regularly over the summer, collecting information, planning, coordinating, establishing criteria, and developing themes, all with an eye toward (in the words of Vice-President for Preparedness Page Turner) "meeting the entertainment needs of the pre-
millenium for a broad range of Americans."
Meanwhile, as that work is underway, we've gone ahead and put together the new season pretty much like last year's.
(1) 32 shows, about two-thirds of them from the Fitzgerald Theater in St. Paul, and the others from New York, Atlanta, Peoria, Butte, Reno, Greeley, and Knoxville. Three St. Paul runs - fall, winter, spring - and December at Town Hall in New York and a June tour.
(2) The annual Talent from Towns Under Two Thousand (T-TUTT) contest on April 17 from Peoria, IL.
(3) Some new faces on the guest roster, including cabaret singer Ann Hampton Callaway, slide guitarist Roy Rogers, folksinger Dave Van Ronk, Cajun band Balfa Toujours, and poet Naomi Shihab Nye.
(4) Return appearances by Butch Thompson, Leo Kottke, Greg Brown, the Tannahill Weavers, the Hopeful Gospel Quartet, the Chenille Sisters, Aly Bain, BeauSoleil, and Gillian Welch and David Rawlings.
(5) And then there's the Guy's All-Star Shoe Band, with Rich Dworsky, Pat Donohue, and Andy Stein in the front line, and the Famous American Radio Theater company of Tom Keith, Tim Russell, and Sue Scott, and me, the host.
Our writing staff, including Sarah Bellum, Pete Moss, Sandy Beach, Norman Conquest, Warren Peace, Lou Tenant, and Hugh Jass, is hard at work on the new season's scripts, which remain a closely guarded secret. Each script is numbered and the numbers are kept in a locked drawer.
And on the last show of the season, July 3rd, we mark the passing of twenty-five years since the first Prairie Home Companion broadcast in 1974. (The 1999-2000 season will be our silver anniversary season.) For that long run, we
are deeply grateful to all of you who have supported this show and stayed with it. We hope to give you a shining new season that will justify your confidence in us.
All the best to you,
--Garrison Keillor
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A national holiday in Lake Wobegon is always gaudy and joyful. But what is going on between Clint Bunsen and Miss Liberty?
Everyone is here—Pastor Ingqvist, the Sons of Knute, Sister Arvonne of Our Lady of Perpetual Responsibility and her ocarina band, the Norwegian bachelor farmers, Dorothy and the Chatterbox Café, Wally in the Sidetrack Tap—as crowds converge on the little town to celebrate American independence, even as the chairman of the event broods on the great question of the day: Shall we struggle on valiantly here or shall we burst the bonds and find beautiful life in the golden west?
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Scripts and bits from A Prairie Home Companion celebrate the secret society of men and women who possess excellent spelling and punctuation skills. (You know who you are.)
Selections include "The Six-Minute Hamlet," a tribute to Emily Dickinson, a Guy Noir adventure that exposes an MFA scam, a riveting "Professional Organization of English Majors" drama, and guests Billy Collins, Robert Bly, Roy Blount Jr., and Calvin Trillin.
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