(7 of 8)
It was in 1974, after he traveled to Nashville to write a piece for The New Yorker on the Grand Ole Opry, that he hit on the notion for the live evening show that shortly became A Prairie Home Companion. Years later the great country guitarist Chet Atkins heard from his agent, who said that "somebody in St. Paul wants you to work on a radio show for $300." Atkins was not thrilled, but then his daughter mentioned Keillor's show, and so did another musician. "I decided to tune in," he says. "That man's voice just mesmerizes people. I called my agent and told him to book me." Their first meeting was not electric. "He was backstage wearing a ball cap and casual clothes," Atkins goes on, "and I told him right off how much I enjoyed his show. He just looked at me and then walked away. You can't compliment him, as I learned. He's quiet, very introverted and shy. I am too. Maybe that's why we became friends."
Keillor learned to harmonize when he was a boy singing hymns with his family, and he does a lot of singing on the show. Butch Thompson, who plays clarinet and barroom piano, and Peter Ostroushko, who plays fiddle, guitar and mandolin, are regulars on the show, and Atkins, Emmylou Harris, Scottish Folk Singer Jean Redpath, Fiddler Johnny Gimble and a great many others are irregulars. Keillor's tastes are dizzyingly eclectic, though he cherishes what he calls "an irrational distaste for banjos and a normal dislike of operatic sopranos."
Until last year, Keillor wrote almost the entire show, parody songs, phony commercials and all. Now Writer Howard Mohr pitches in on the Raw Bits and the Minnesota Language Systems ads, which peddle cassettes that teach visitors to answer "You bet" for approval, and "That's different" for confusion or doubt, like real Minnesot'ns. But the wondrous, spooky monologues that carry the show are Keillor's. He works without a net. On Wednesday or Thursday he will have started to think seriously about the piece, and by Saturday, most weeks, he will have written out a fairly complete narrative. If he has been rushed, he may have only a few sentences of notes, but he carries no paper onstage. He does not memorize what he has written, though he knows most of the distance he wants to travel. "I think in telling a story, a person is supposed to be carried away," he says. Part of the process, he admits, involves "learning to talk until you think of something to say, which is something that I and others in the ministerial profession sometimes do." Out of curiosity, he follows where the unexpected turns in his stories take him. "You get tired of being afraid of embarrassing yourself," he says. "And so rather than draw back and going in a direction you're sure of, I think as a person gets older, you get reckless. I think you're supposed to get reckless."