A Hot August Night from 2004
With Old Crow Medicine Show and Gillian Welch and David Rawlings
A Prairie Home Companion in Manhattan, KS
Saturday, January 13, 2024 7:30PM
McCain Auditorium at Kansas State University
A Prairie Home Companion's 50th Anniversary Tour
with Garrison Keillor. Guests include RICHARD DWORSKY and the band, SUE SCOTT, TIM RUSSELL, AND FRED NEWMAN.
$45 – $95 BUY TICKETS
The Royal Academy of Actors (Sue Scott, Tim Russell, and sound-effects wizard Fred Newman) will be there, along with music director/keyboardist Richard Dworsky leading the band. Additional guests yet to be announced. Count on songs, jokes, the grand audience sing-along intermission, and of course, the latest News from Lake Wobegon (where the women are strong, the men are good-looking, and all the children are above average).
This show is part of our upcoming series of EVENTS — Garrison performing solo or in concert with others, in addition to a few shows gathering our PHC troupe back together to celebrate the upcoming 50th Anniversary of the first Prairie Home Companion show.
Listen to our 2004 classic show
This week, we return to a great September evening in 2004 where we kicked off the new broadcast season of A Prairie Home Companion by welcoming guests Old Crow Medicine Show and Gillian Welch and David Rawlings for a spirited broadcast topped off with the season-opening street dance — music, contests, and of course, the meat loaf and mashed potato supper. The show’s highlights include a few classic songs that have become fan favorites. Old Crow Medicine Show heats things up with the original version of “Wagon Wheel,” and Gillian and Dave offer up the title track of their release Time (The Revelator). Jack Knife and the Sharps add to the fun with “Something to Remember You By,” plus words from the Catchup Advisory Council, Bridesmaid’s Insurance, English Majors, and the latest News from Lake Wobegon. Join us for a hot time using this link now or via our social pages this Saturday at 5 p.m. CT.
Old Crow Medicine Show
With a little luck and a whole lot of talent, Old Crow Medicine Show went from playing their slash-and-burn brand of old-time music on the streets of Boone, North Carolina, to bringing down the house at the Grand Ole Opry. Now based in Nashville, these Grammy winners and Grand Ole Opry inductees are bringing audiences to their feet coast to coast and then some.
The band for this broadcast: Critter Fuqua, Kevin Hayes, Morgan Jahnig, Gill Landry, Chance McCoy, Ketch Secor, and Cory Younts.
Gillian Welch and Dave Rawlings
In the early 1990s, Gillian Welch met Dave Rawlings at the Berklee College of Music in Boston while the two were students waiting to audition for the country band class. Since then, they have carved out a highly successful career, with a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Americana Music Association and recordings that include Welch’s Grammy-nominated The Harrow & The Harvest and the Dave Rawlings Machine release Nashville Obsolete.
Today, a "bonus" column about the State Fair that first appeared in the Chicago Tribune a few years ago:
Tilting and whirling at the State Fair, where Trump is just a sideshow
The sight of Percherons makes me happy, so do deep-fried cheese curds, newborn lambs, and those designer chickens with feathery pom-pom anklets, and then you enter the Horticulture Building and see pumpkins the size of studio apartments, large enough to house a man and his wife, so today I am happy, having attended the Minnesota State Fair, our Mardi Gras, when normally cautious people can go out and be jovial in public. My wife is not a Fair person. Her problem is good taste and a limited tolerance for gluttony and barkers and violent centrifugal experiences in motorized contraptions operated by tattooed men who might have done prison time for larceny. But my daughter is Fair-bred, so I have company.
We Fair people don't care that many people don't like the Fair and want to tell us why. Many people don't care for Bach. So what? Sew buttons on your underwear. What is not to like about a public event at which a quarter-million people jostle around happily, doped up on animal fats, in the uproar of motors and music and the yawp and bark of men hawking beer and pretzels and snowblowers and an amazing blender that will slice, dice, chop, mince or puree and once you have it you will wonder how you ever managed without it?
The River Run is my daughter's favorite ride: You climb aboard a raft and buckle your seatbelt and float down a sluiceway over a series of rapids and waterfalls, which takes about two minutes. We call it the Pee Ride because when it's over, I look as if I couldn't wait for the men's room. This makes her convulse with helpless laughter, seeing her old dad with wet pants. And how often does a person get to experience helpless convulsive laughter? When was your last H.C.L. experience, dear reader? So I do my part to be a laughingstock and we walk down the street laughing and have a last delicious glass of Kool-Aid and a frozen custard and go home and wait for next year.
-Continue reading
-Listen to a "best of" State Fair show compilation
Garrison Keillor’s PODCAST
You have loved the twice-weekly column and many have imagined the column in Garrison’s own voice. Well, we now have a weekly podcast that features a timely article read by Garrison himself. We hope you enjoy!
Find the NEW weekly Garrison Keillor's Podcast on:
There’s plenty of “cheer” in Garrison’s latest book.
A Prairie Home Companion 50th Anniversary Shirt
Join us in celebration of the radio show’s 50th Anniversary. On July 6, 1974, the first A Prairie Home Companion broadcast was performed before a live audience of 12 people at the Janet Wallace Auditorium at Macalester College. This T-shirt design pays homage to many elements of the live show, including the house that sat on the stage for most performances and the signature sign-off of each News from Lake Wobegon story. Available in Black and Charcoal. Sizes S – XXL.
View all EVENTS, including the 50th Anniversary Shows.
PHC Scroll Hat
This has quickly become our most popular design at the LIVE A Prairie Home Companion shows. Inspired by a Grand Ole Opry motif, a spring vine scrolls around the popular APHC microphone logo. Brushed cotton baseball cap is adjustable; one size fits most.
Another fine singer of a differing blend already claimed “A Hot August Night” many a show ago unlike yours save one: bonding. ….you both have a huge following, but his audience is greater by factors. It matters not. Both folks can’t miss singing a la carte. But one really shouts Mach 3, and yours are far more gentile.