A Unique Visit to Prairie Home Companion
It is truly a unique experience to perform on A Prairie Home Companion. The show is unique in setting, content and style. We performed in Vienna, Va., with the extraordinary Garrison Keillor and the entire cast. The music styles ranged from opera to bluegrass, along with humor, monologue and skits about politics, graduation and the arrival of summer. A highlight for me was Garrison's song about "Bad Jokes." This was hilarious. And I totally related to the skit about his mother, and how she shamed him into a visit. He even mentioned this when he introduced us, and how I am the mother of two daughters. The night's other musical guest was Raul Melo, a tenor from the Metropolitan Opera. He was incredible.
We performed six songs, all from the new album, Good Thing Going, with the exception of "Ashes of Mount Augustine." They included "Bluegrass Saturday Night," "I Will See You Again," "Hit Parade of Love," "Good Thing Going" and a duet with Garrison on "The Water Is Wide." We joined The Shoe Band for the finale, where Hunter and Andy played twin fiddles on "Liberty."
The program can change at any second. The Rage and I sat on stage, poised and ready to play when called upon. Songs and skits were changed mid-show. And this is no exception for Saturday night's broadcast. The rehearsal show was performed before an audience of 8000 people, and the next night included the rest of the world via the internet and local and satellite radio stations.
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Rick says:
I listened to the entire program and it was a great installment of Prairie Home Companion by any measure. Its also helps that the broadcast sound quality of the program is top shelf, unlike WSM Online for the Opry that sounds like an old transistor radio because of the low bitrate feed. Rhonda and the band were excellent, but Raul Melo stole the show with his opera singing, a style I don’t normally care for!
A couple months back Prairie Home Companion had a musical talent contest for young-un’s in their 20’s and former Sony-BMG country artist Ashley Monroe was one of the contestants. The quality and variety of music the contestants performed on that show would put most American Idol finalists to shame. That show features some wonderful music…..