List $29.95

Written by Garrison Keillor - Edited by Marcia Pankake - Unabridged Fiction - 1 HARDCOVER BOOK - 156 pages

Publisher, HighBridge Audio (August 1999)

On July 6, 1974, in a small concert hall at Macalester College, A Prairie Home Companion debuted as a live radio show in front of an auspicious audience of about twelve Minnesotans. The host and writer, Garrison Keillor, came out in a white suit and hat and sang the theme song, "Look who's coming through that door, I think we've met somewhere before," accompanied by the twin guitars of his pals Bill Hinkley and Judy Larson. And so began one of the longer runs in radio. It "was about as awful as a show could possibly be, and we have the tapes to prove it," recalls host Garrison Keillor. Thankfully, the show improved considerably over the years and today over two-and-a-half million listeners tune in each week to hear that friendly, familiar mix of music, humor and storytelling.

This commonplace book presents a selection of scripts, songs, poems, passages from monologues, and photographs. Learn how guests are booked, how the stage is set, what Tom Keith uses to make his sound effects, how the engineers work, and who selects the greetings that are read on the air. Guy Noir is here, Dusty and Lefty, Bob the Young Artist, and Gloria, plus duct tape, rhubarb pie, a drama about dying flies, an ode to plumbers, and a tale about a warm spring Sunday in Lake Wobegon when the organist stepped on a bass pedal during a sermon on Job.

The dictionary defines a "commonplace book" as a notebook in which one records quotations, poems, extracts, and memorabilia. In this, A Prairie Home Companion's 25th year, Keillor and friends have compiled a commonplace book of amusing facts, recollections, scripts, behind-the-scenes photos, recipes, commercials--a whole alphabet of fun from "Autoharp" to "Zenith." Heavily illustrated with over 100 photos, plus new, previously unpublished material by Garrison Keillor, it all adds up to a complete picture of a much-loved part of popular culture and one of America's favorite radio programs.