One Long Saturday Night from 2008
featuring BR549, Jearlyn Steele and Pat Donohue
We’ve got two upcoming A Prairie Home Companion shows, including our return to Tanglewood for the first time since 2016. We hope you can join us for one of these special reunion shows celebrating the old radio show and our listeners. Or join Garrison for one of his solo shows where he captivates listeners for two hours in story and song.
Listen to the April 26, 2008, show
This Prairie Home broadcast comes from Hot Springs, Arkansas, with guests BR549 and Jearlyn Steele. Also with us, the Royal Academy of Radio Actors (Tim Russell, Sue Scott, and Fred Newman), the News from Lake Wobegon, and much more.
Highlights include Garrison and Jearlyn duetting on “Blessed Assurance,” the Guy’s All-Star Shoe Band kicking things up with their original “Little Rock Getaway,” Pat Donohue’s got the “Weary Blues,” BR549 adds “It’ll Be Me,” plus the Lives of the Cowboys, Guy Noir, and the latest News. Listen to the show.
Here are pieces of a song that runs through the Lives of the Cowboys sketch from this week’s show:
I came to Hot Springs and my spirit rejoiced
A chance to get clean and happy and moist
I sat in the hot springs until I was healed
All anger was gone ’cause my brain had congealed.
Whoopitiyiyo git along little doggies
It's the hottest hot springs that you ever saw
Whoopitiyiyo git along little cowboys
You might think it's Hades but it's Arkansas.
Hot Springs a town just outside Little Rock
A place to escape all the noise and the talk
And the stress and confusion and sit and relax
And let the world’s troubles just wash off your backs.
Whoopitiyiyo …
… get along little doggies
Lie in the water and inhale the steam
Whoopitiyiyo get along little cowboys
And all of life's heartaches just fade like a dream.
Hillbilly band BR549 took its name from Junior Samples's phone number on Hee Haw. The group began playing in the mid-1990s on Nashville's Lower Broadway and released their first EP on Arista records in 1996.
JEARLYN STEELE started singing with her siblings in the aptly named group The Steele Children. The children sang in church and when Jearlyn was only four, she and three siblings opened for gospel legend Mahalia Jackson. They sang in churches, concert halls, and on radio and television across the state of Indiana. Jearlyn left the Hoosier State to attend the University of Minnesota and, one by one, the rest of her brothers and sisters followed. For fun, they started singing together again as The Steele Family. The public wanted more, and so the family turned to singing full-time, which they've been doing ever since. In 1983, the Steeles sang in Gospel at Colonus at the Guthrie Theater. The show toured and ended up on Broadway in 1988. Jearlyn has recorded many local and national commercials, and has been heard on various albums with top acts like George Clinton and Prince.
PAT DONOHUE is a lifelong resident of St. Paul, Minnesota. He began playing guitar at age 12, when he first learned a few chords on his sister’s guitar and played through a Beatles songbook. He played drums in garage bands in high school, switching to guitar after being exposed to what he calls “serious guitar music” — country blues, ragtime, and jazz (nearly chronologically from Louis Armstrong through Miles Davis). Donohue took only a few guitar lessons, learning instead from recordings, a method he humorously documented in his song “Stealin’ From Chet.” He is a National Fingerstyle Guitar Champion and an innovative songwriter, with more than a dozen albums to his credit on Red House Records and Bluesky Records. He performed on A Prairie Home Companion as a regular member of The Guy’s All-Star Shoe Band for almost two decades.
Can you believe it’s been 25 years since the original version of the Pretty Good Joke Book was released? Throughout the year, we will feature jokes and anecdotes about the almost-annual EVENT. Fourteen complete shows plus good parts of several others created a fan favorite. Many jokes were sent in online via the joke generator after the first couple of shows, but the show became an albatross of sorts to the staff since Garrison truly didn’t want to repeat a joke — and many hours were spent making sure that didn’t happen Well, the Joke Book gathers the jokes together, plus many that were submitted but not used on air, and organizes them into easy-to-access categories for enjoyment and sharing. Here is one that Garrison has woven into a song during his solo shows and even on several stops on the 50th Anniversary Celebration Tour.
So Tommy goes into a confessional and says, “Bless me, Father, for I have sinned. I have been with a loose woman.”
The priest says, “Is that you, Tommy?”
“Yes, Father, it is I.”
“Who was the woman you were with, my son?”
“I cannot tell you, Father, for I do not wish to ruin her reputation.”
“Was it Brenda?”
“No, Father.”
“Was it Fiona?”
“No, Father.”
“Was it Ann?”
“No, Father.”
“Very well, Tommy. Go say five Our Fathers and four Hail Marys.”
Tommy goes back to his pew, and his buddy Sean slides over and asks, “What happened?”
And Tommy says, “ I got five Our Fathers, four Hail Marys, and three good leads.”
Grab the Joke Book and entertain yourself or share a few of the jokes with your family or friends! Almost every season, it was a show that most listeners looked forward to. Get the book.
“It’s been cold there but even more than cold, it’s been windy so it’s been rearranging that big snow we got this last week, moving it around.” Old men have been sitting in front of the Chatterbox Café, ice-fishing or shoveling. People go to church for Ash Wednesday and Father Wilmer is ill with the flu. As an aside for Valentine’s Day, the host tells the story about how his parents fell in love during a train robbery. Get A Year in Lake Wobegon, featuring 12 News from Lake Wobegon stories (from 2014 to 2016), including this February classic. Get the three-CD set.
Listening to these old shows feels like coming home after a long journey. Thank you for keeping the spirit alive — a true comfort in these noisy times.