Posted on: Friday, January 21, 2005
Lake Wobegon celebrates its radio anniversary on DVD
By Frazier Moore
Associated Press
A key to storytelling is a sense of place.
Ann Heisenfelt • Associated Press But radio can create a sense of place that's all the more vivid for its absence of visual form. Just ask fans of "A Prairie Home Companion," which for 30 years has transported them to the realer-than-real haven of Lake Wobegon, Minn., courtesy of host Garrison Keillor, its enduring bard.
No plasma screen is needed to enjoy the hi-def experience Keillor invokes live for two hours every weekend on nearly 600 public radio stations.
But among 4 million "Prairie Home Companion" listeners, quite a number by now might be reasonably interested in putting a face to Keillor's euphonious voice, and getting a look at how he and his troupe stage this music-and-humor show each week.
Offering such a glimpse is "The 30th Broadcast Season Celebration" DVD, which captures in video the show's anniversary edition last summer in St. Paul's Fitzgerald Theater, home of the "Prairie Home Companion" (prairiehome.publicradio.org).
Keillor would be pleased if you ordered this DVD — though, to be honest, he hasn't seen it.
"Except some baseball, I haven't watched television in 20 years," he explains. "Anything that's visual is really fixed in time. But the audio medium is very, very fluid," he muses over fried eggs, corned beef hash and home fries in a Manhattan coffee shop one recent morning.
"In late middle age, which is where I am now," says the 62-year-old Keillor in his unhurried cadence, "you start coming around to the certain burden of what you've done before. But in radio, no. You are perpetually young. You are perpetually starting over new, in radio. I don't know what I'm talking about, but these are really good potatoes."
Raised in Anoka, Minn., a small town outside Minneapolis, he embodies heartland reserve, even while shrewdly amused by it in others.
Already a staffer at Minnesota Public Radio, Keillor unveiled "A Prairie Home Companion" in 1974. The format and folksy flavor were inspired by "Grand Ole Opry" radiocasts of yore.
And "the news from Lake Wobegon," each show's 20-minute monologue, melds currency with timelessness as Keillor channels the likes of Thornton Wilder and Mark Twain.
It is compiled during the week leading up to each broadcast, Keillor says, from things he thinks about or stumbles across. Then, come airtime, he shines his observations through the prism of Lake Wobegon, where, as he always mentions, "all the women are strong, all the men are good-looking, and all the children are above average."
TV viewers know this, whether they're visiting placid Mayberry or the debauchery of Wisteria Lane.
Garrison Keillor, host of "A Prairie Home Companion," lives in St. Paul, Minn., where he finds inspiration for his imaginary Lake Wobegon.
