Talking Harvest Blues from 2002

featuring Stephanie Davis, Stuart Duncan, and Jerry Douglas

Oct 23, 2024

The final 50th Anniversary salute to the old show will be held in Atlanta, Georgia, on November 8th. We’ve got the full cast, the Guy’s All-Star Shoe Band led by Rich Dworsky, plus vocalists Heather Masse and Christine DiGiallonardo. We hope you can join us for a refreshing three-hour show that will take your mind off current events and the election. Join us at the Atlanta Symphony Hall. Ticket information

And don’t forget, you can pick up a compilation of highlights from the 50th Anniversary events. We have assembled a two-CD collection featuring over three hours of moments from the shows. Preorder now at a discount!

Listen to the October 26, 2002, show

Live from St. Paul, Minnesota, with dobro and steel guitarist Jerry Douglas, singer-songwriter Stephanie Davis, and fiddler Stuart Duncan.

Highlights include talk about Paul Wellstone; Jerry Douglas and Stuart Duncan sitting in with the band on several tunes, including “Beautiful Life” and “Whatever Floats Your Boat”; Stephanie Davis crooning “Talkin’ Harvest Blues” and “Give a Little Back’; plus Guy Noir, Catchup, English Majors, and the latest News from Lake Wobegon. Listen to the show.

In a circa 1900 one-room homestead cabin — a building on her ranch in south-central Montana — Stephanie Davis composed and recorded songs that reflected her life in Big Sky Country, where her family lived for four generations. Back when, she spent a couple of years in Nashville too, writing songs for the likes of Garth Brooks, Roger Whittaker, Martina McBride, and Shelby Lynne. She still writes and records, now from her home in Austin, Texas.

These days, when someone mentions a Dobro, Jerry Douglas immediately comes to mind. Little wonder. The 14-time Grammy winner and Country Music Association’s Musician of the Year can be heard on more than a thousand albums, including discs by Garth Brooks, Paul Simon, James Taylor, Vince Gill, and Ray Charles. Born in Warren, Ohio, Douglas developed an early interest in bluegrass. His father, a steelworker, played music, and Jerry took up the mandolin at age five. He switched to Dobro when he was 11, after seeing a Flatt & Scruggs concert featuring Dobro master Josh Graves. Before he was out of his teens, he had joined the Country Gentlemen. He has been a member of other groundbreaking bands like J.D. Crowe & the New South, Alison Krauss & Union Station, and The Earls of Leicester — and he has a thriving career as a solo artist as well. The New York Times called Douglas “Dobro’s matchless contemporary master.”

Multi-instrumentalist Stuart Duncan took up fiddle at age seven. Since then, he has chalked up a career that includes two Grammys, a slew of Academy of Country Music Awards, and being named the International Bluegrass Music Association's Fiddle Player of the Year nine times. He was a founding member of the Nashville Bluegrass Band and is perennially one of Nashville's most sought-after session musicians, performing on thousands of recordings.

Cheerfulness by Garrison Keillor

In Cheerfulness, veteran radio host and author Garrison Keillor reflects on a simple virtue that can help us in this stressful and sometimes gloomy era. Drawing on personal anecdotes from his young adulthood into his eighties, Keillor sheds light on the immense good that can come from a deliberate work ethic and a buoyant demeanor. “Adopting cheerfulness as a strategy does not mean closing your eyes to evil,” he tells us; “it means resisting our drift toward compulsive dread and despond.” Funny, poignant, thought-provoking, and whimsical, this is a book that will inspire you to choose cheerfulness in your daily life. Get the book.

Also available, a downloadable version of the book read by the author. Get some “cheerful” advice directly from Garrison himself! Get the download.

A collection of eight different cards with envelopes are available with short passages from the book, so that you can send a bit of cheer to your friends and relatives. Get the book and cards and a discount will be taken off in the shopping cart. Get the cards.

The Best of Guy Noir (5-CD collection)

A bounty of cases waiting to be solved by America’s favorite private detective. The collector’s edition gathers every previously released Guy Noir episode and includes a full CD of never-before-available capers. Get the CDs or download.

50th Anniversary Mug

Handcrafted by artisans from Deneen Pottery to mark Garrison Keillor’s final year as host of radio’s A Prairie Home Companion, these stoneware mugs are stunningly beautiful and one of a kind. Each mug is molded in pieces and then assembled and fired. The medallion features the house that sits at the back of the stage during most live performances. Each mug holds 14 ounces. Get the mug. Available in black and red.