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Guests
Garrison Keillor
Garrison Keillor was born in Anoka, graduated from the University of
Minnesota (’66), and lives in St. Paul. He is the author of numerous books,
including Pilgrims: A Wobegon Romance; O, What A Luxury: Verses Lyrical, Vulgar, Pathetic & Profound (Grove Press); and The Keillor Reader (Viking). He is also the editor of the Good Poems anthologies.
Tim Russell
One minute he’s mild-mannered Tim Russell; the next he’s George W. Bush or Ira Glass or Barack Obama. It’s pretty darn difficult to stump Tim. Want proof? Check out Tim Russell: Man of a Thousand Voices, a CD collection of favorite moments from his work on APHC. On film, his roles include the part of Al, the stage manager, in the Robert Altman movie A Prairie Home Companion and a detective in the Coen brothers’ A Serious Man. Tim is also a film critic; his reviews can be found at russellreviews.com.
Sue Scott
Sue Scott has taken her talents from the stage to the airwaves doing “funny voices on the radio” with A Prairie Home Companion‘s Royal Academy of Radio Actors since 1992. Never short on versatility, she has played everything from overly concerned moms to Guy Noir femme fatales to black belt reference librarians to devastatingly beautiful super models to leathery crones who’ve smoked one pack of Camel straights too many. A highly regarded character actor who has appeared in movies and on theater stages throughout the Midwest, she is also well known for her extensive voice-over work on radio and television. Sue Scott, Seriously Silly, a CD produced by A Prairie Home Companion, highlights Sue’s best work … so far.
Fred Newman
Fred Newman first learned to spin tales and scatter sounds from great storytellers in small-town Georgia. Today, he is an actor, writer, musician, composer, and sound designer for stage, screen, cartoon, and concert hall. He is also the sound-effects guy for A Prairie Home Companion. Author of the book MouthSounds, he has appeared on TV shows including Saturday Night Live, Sesame Street, Disney’s New Mickey Mouse Club, and public television’s Between the Lions. His recent projects range from the debut of his first symphony in San Francisco to imagining, for the National Park Service, the sound of Old Faithful from five miles below to surface eruption — all done with his mouth.
Musical Guests
Paul Cebar Tomorrow Sound
Paul Cebar cut his musical teeth on the Milwaukee coffeehouse folk scene of the mid-1970s. He also spent time working in New Orleans, as a musicologist in Florida, and as a journeyman wanderer in Cuba. A decade later, his band the Milwaukeeans started to make its mark in the Midwest. Several years ago, the group got a fresh name. Now Paul Cebar Tomorrow Sound brings forth a funky, lyrically charged racket that is explosive, yet intimate. Their 2014 CD is Fine Rude Thing (Groovesburg Joys). Paul Cebar (guitar, vocals), Reggie Bordeaux (drums), Bob Jennings (keyboards, saxophone), Mac Perkins (congas, percussion), and Mike Fredrickson (bass).
Rich Dworsky
Keyboardist, composer, and arranger Richard Dworsky is music director for A Prairie Home Companion, where he leads the band, composes themes, improvises script underscores, and collaborates with such diverse guests as Yo-Yo Ma, James Taylor, Brad Paisley, and Sheryl Crow. Vocalist Kristin Chenoweth included his song “Goin’ to the Dance with You” on her album Let Yourself Go. Rich has released many recordings of original material, including So Near and Dear to Me (Prairie Home Productions), and has provided music for documentaries on HBO and PBS.
Connie Evingson
When Twin Cities jazz singer Connie Evingson was a kid in Hibbing, Minnesota, she loved listening to her dad’s record collection — Count Basie, Ella Fitzgerald, Sarah Vaughan, Peggy Lee. Then she grew up to be an adventurous and inventive artist in her own right, known for her work with the vocal jazz group Moore By Four and her solo appearances on concert and club stages worldwide. She is the creator of Fever, A Tribute to Peggy Lee, which she has performed throughout the U.S. With a repertoire that ranges from jazz and Tin Pan Alley standards to the Beatles, Broadway, bossa nova, blues, gypsy jazz, and more, Connie has numerous recordings — ten, to date — heard on radio stations across the globe.
Maria Jette
Versatile soprano Maria Jette can sing opera one minute, then make a sharp turn to pop songs, chamber music, oratorio, or show tunes the next. She is often a guest on A Prairie Home Companion and has appeared with orchestras nationwide, including the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra, New York Chamber Symphony, Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra, and Minnesota Orchestra. She has collaborated with choral groups across the U.S. and has been a frequent performer at the Oregon Bach and San Luis Obispo Mozart festivals and the Oregon Festival of American Music. Among her recordings is In Our Little Paradise: Songs of P.G. Wodehouse, with pianist/accordionist Dan Chouinard.
Richard Kriehn
Minnesota-based multi-instrumentalist Richard Kriehn has been playing on A Prairie Home Companion since 2010. He has also performed in symphony orchestras, bluegrass bands, baroque ensembles, pit orchestras, cover bands, and country bands. While living in Nashville, he toured with Travis Tritt, Aaron Tippin, and Michael Peterson, all the while, playing in the Nashville Mandolin Ensemble and the bluegrass group 1946. He made numerous appearances on the Grand Ole Opry, and you may have caught him on Prime Time Country — or even an episode of Walker, Texas Ranger. Prior to moving to the Twin Cities, Richard and his family lived in Eastern Washington where he was a faculty member in the School of Music, Washington State University.
Dean Magraw
Composer, arranger, producer, guitarist Dean Magraw has honed his style of music through years of playing with some of the finest musicians in the United States and Europe. His first recording, Broken Silence, came out in 1994 and won the NAIRD award for Best Acoustic Instrumental Album of the Year. Dean has since turned out several dazzling albums, including his latest, Reservoir (Acoustic Music Records), a collaboration with renowned Hungarian guitarist Sándor Szabó. ECM recording artist Steve Tibbetts aptly described Dean’s music as “so liquid, lyrical, and effortless, it’s like listening to a dancer.”
Mickey Mills and Steel
Mickey Mills has been called “the fastest steel drum soloist on earth.” He recalls first hearing the instrument when he was eight, growing up in Port-of-Spain Trinidad, West Indies. At 12, he was performing with the Solo Harmonites Steel Orchestra. He moved to New York in 1970, where he worked with Mick Jagger, Johnny Mathis, percussionist Ralph McDonald, and Calypso artists The Mighty Sparrow and Lord Kitchener, among others. Now making his home in North Carolina, this vocalist, composer, actor, and steel drum ace keeps up a busy performance schedule while also leading an educational program called Steel-A-Rama, where students learn steel drum history, construction, and technique.
Joe Newberry
Missouri native and North Carolina transplant Joe Newberry has played music most of his life. Known for his powerful banjo work, he is also a prizewinning guitarist, fiddler, singer, and songwriter. He plays with old-time music legends Bill Hicks, Jim Watson, and Mike Craver, in a duo with mandolinist Mike Compton, and — along with Mike — performs with Bruce Molsky and Rafe Stefanini as the Jumpsteady Boys. Joe writes songs that consistently show up on the Bluegrass charts, including “Singing As We Rise,” which took the songwriting prize for Gospel Recorded Performance at the 2012 IBMA Awards.
Aoife O’Donovan
Songwriter and vocalist Aoife O’Donovan grew up in a musical family in Massachusetts. In her teens, she took an interest in the American folk tradition, and after graduating from the New England Conservatory of Music, she formed the progressive bluegrass band Crooked Still and the trio Sometymes Why. The stunning versatility of her voice has led to collaborations across a wide variety of genres, including a role as vocalist on the Grammy-winning Goat Rodeo Sessions alongside Chris Thile, Yo-Yo Ma, Edgar Meyer, and Stuart Duncan. Her debut solo album, Fossils, was released in 2013 on the Yep Roc label.
Peter Ostroushko
Mandolinist/composer Peter Ostroushko grew up listening to tunes played at family get-togethers in the Ukrainian community of northeast Minneapolis. It’s the music that provides the basis for many of his compositions. His first recording session was an uncredited mandolin set on Bob Dylan’s Blood on the Tracks. Since then, his works have been performed by the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra and the Kremlin Chamber Orchestra, among others, and his music is featured on public television specials such as Ken Burns’ The National Parks and Minnesota: A History of the Land, for which Peter won an Emmy. The Mando Chronicles, Peter’s three-CD boxed set, was released in 2012 on Red House Records.
Storyhill
Calling themselves Storyhill, acoustic duo Chris Cunningham and John Hermanson are longtime musical collaborators beginning when they started performing together as teenagers in Bozeman, Montana. (Chris still makes his home in Montana; John is based in Minnesota.) Their 2007 recording — simply titled Storyhill — was named Best CD of the Year by the Indie Acoustic Project and led to their winning the prestigious Kerrville New Folk Songwriting Competition. In 2010, they released Shade of the Trees, a collection of old-fashioned storytelling songs with hauntingly spare acoustic arrangements. They sing about love, war and the many sorrows that accompany them. Storyhill is currently in the process of working on their third disc on Red House Records, slated to be released in 2015.
Vern Sutton
Vern Sutton has collaborated with major musical organizations as a singer, actor, director and educator. He was a founding member of the Center Opera Company, which became the Minnesota Opera, and composers Dominick Argento, Robert Ward, Conrad Susa, Libby Larsen and others have written for his voice. For 36 years, he taught at the University of Minnesota School of Music, and for four summers he was artistic director of Opera in the Ozarks. At the Guthrie Theater, he has appeared in productions of A Christmas Carol and 1776. Vern was a guest on the very first broadcast of A Prairie Home Companion.
Butch Thompson
Pianist and clarinetist Butch Thompson has earned a reputation the world over as a traditional jazz and ragtime master. Born in Marine-on-St. Croix, Minnesota, he was playing Christmas carols on his mother’s upright piano by age three. Still in his teens, he began making frequent visits to New Orleans to learn from veteran musicians like clarinetist George Lewis. He played American and European festivals and by 1974, he had become A Prairie Home Companion‘s house pianist. In the decades since, he has traveled the world, from Cairo to Tokyo, as a soloist and with his trio and eight-piece Jazz Originals Band. His many recordings include Vicksburg Blues, a collaboration with guitarist Pat Donohue.
Sonja Thompson
Pianist Sonja Thompson enjoys a varied professional life as performer, educator, church musician, theater musician, conductor, and vocal coach. Based in the Minneapolis area, she keeps busy as a recitalist and chamber musician, frequently conducts musicals and operas, and is often found on the organ bench for church and chapel services. She has recently appeared with Frank Theatre, Skylark Opera, the Edvard Grieg Society of Minnesota, the City of Lakes Chamber Music Festival, and Open Eye Figure Theatre. In addition to performing, Sonja is Assistant Professor of Music and College Organist at Augsburg College.
Sara Watkins
Singer, songwriter, fiddle player Sara Watkins was only eight when she, her brother Sean, and Chris Thile started the genre-bending, Grammy-winning trio Nickel Creek. Two decades later — with Nickel Creek on hiatus — she struck out on her own, and as one reviewer put it, “Watkins isn’t afraid to pluck at the heartstrings by whatever means necessary, be it a handful of well-placed words or a rosin-powdered bow.” In 2012, Nonesuch Records released Sara Watkins’ second solo album, Sun Midnight Sun, and she has guest-starred on recordings by Béla Fleck, the Chieftains, Richard Thompson, and others.
Robin and Linda Williams
“Individually their voices can melt cheese, and in duet they can do all-purpose welding,” Garrison Keillor has said of Robin and Linda Williams. Singing the music they love, be it bluegrass, folk, old-time, or acoustic country, these two have carved out a more than four-decade career that has taken them from Carnegie Hall to the Hollywood Bowl. Robin and Linda made their first appearance on A Prairie Home Companion in 1975, the same year that they recorded their first album. In 2013, they released their 23rd, Back 40 (Red House Records), a celebration of their 40th year of making music together.
Special Guests
Billy Collins
Billy Collins was twice appointed United States poet laureate and also served as New York state poet laureate. In 2004, he was selected as the inaugural recipient of the Poetry Foundation’s Mark Twain Award for humor in poetry. Among his other honors are the Oscar Blumenthal Prize, the Bess Hokin Prize, the Frederick Bock Prize, and the Levinson Prize — all awarded by Poetry magazine. The poems in Sailing Alone Around the Room, The Trouble with Poetry, Aimless Love, and his other best-selling collections have sparked a firestorm of interest in the art. His latest is an illustrated poem for children, titled Voyage (Bunker Hill Publishing).
Jon Wiant
“Spy Guy” Jon A. Wiant returns to cast an intriguing light on espionage in the Caribbean. Jon has more than three decades in the business of foreign intelligence/espionage — in both hot wars and cold wars and a few sub-war dust-ups. He has served in senior positions at the Departments of State and Defense, the CIA, and the White House. Some colleagues characterize him as a mission-driven man of sharp judgment and analytical acuity; others recall his love for complicated practical jokes and raucous humor. Whatever the mixture, the Director of Central Intelligence presented him with the National Intelligence Distinguished Service Medal, the highest recognition for a guy in the espionage business.
Naturalists
Rich MacDonald
Naturalist Rich MacDonald fancies himself a bird nerd. Wherever you fall on the birding spectrum, from casual interest to globe-trotting life-lister, Rich will help you see something new. He has long been involved in ecological and ornithological research spanning much of the western Atlantic, from the Dominican Republic to Newfoundland (and New York’s Adirondack Mountains, too). He teaches ornithology at College of the Atlantic and leads nature tours around the world, including Antarctica. Rich has been on hand for all eight of the Prairie Home cruises, helping passengers discover local birds and rack up impressive lists of species. Along with his wife, Natalie Springuel, he operates The Natural History Center, a bird and nature tour business and retail store based in Bar Harbor, Maine.
Lytton Musselman
Lytton John Musselman earned a Ph.D. in botany from the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, and was chair of the Department of Biological Sciences at Old Dominion University in Norfolk, Virginia, where he holds the Mary Payne Hogan Chair of Botany. A passionate botanist and teacher, he is author of The Quick Guide to Edible Plants, and is working on books on plants of the Adirondacks and on using native plants for bitters and cordials. Lytton has studied plants of the Bible and Qur’an, and he contributed to the Second Qur’anic Garden Forum in Qatar in 2014. He recently received a Fulbright Specialist Grant in environmental sciences at the University of Brunei Darussalam.
Natalie Springuel
Naturalist Natalie Springuel combines her passion for the marine environment and coastal heritage with a love of teaching and adventure to assist people in discovering the ocean and coast — from whales and dolphins to fish and even fishing boats. She works for the Maine Sea Grant College Program, creating programs on the ecology and culture of coastal regions. She has led thousands of visitors on ocean and coastal adventures, by land and by sea. Part of the Prairie Home Cruise team on all the trips except Norway (when daughter Anouk was only two months old), Natalie never loses her enthusiasm for helping passengers decode the mysteries of the deep.
