People still need him. People still feed him. And yes, writer-humorist-radio personality Garrison Keillor is still a very busy man at age 64.

On any given Saturday evening, 4 million public-radio listeners worldwide sidle up to their squawk boxes for Keillor's homespun, warm-and-fuzzy tales of the residents of fictional Lake Wobegon, Minn., on "A Prairie Home Companion," broadcast live from his St. Paul, Minn., hometown. He hosts another radio weekly, "The Writer's Almanac," composes a weekly syndicated column and is the author of more than a dozen books. Earlier this year, Keillor won critical praise for writing the screenplay for and playing thespian in director Robert Altman's all-star cinematic imagining of "A Prairie Home Companion." Keillor also regularly travels cross-country for on-the-road broadcasts of "Prairie Home" and countless lectures.

Difficult to pin down for an interview, Keillor phoned Monday just hours away from one of those lectures — at Bethany College in Lindsborg, Kansas.

"It's a little Swedish community out in country that's as flat as your kitchen table," he said, dryly, having just arrived in town. "I'm gonna talk to you and then I'm gonna iron a shirt and go off and give a speech."

Keillor and company will offer a double dose of the 32-year-old "A Prairie Home Companion" radio weekly at the Blaisdell Concert Hall on Saturday. The first edition will be a 12:45 p.m. show broadcast live worldwide (except in Hawai'i, later in the day). A 7:30 p.m. show, with different material, will be taped for broadcast in January.

Hawai'i musicians Puamana, Na Pali, Owana Salazar and Danny Carvalho will offer a live, slack-key-themed spin to the show's traditional rootsy Americana tunes. Also joining Keillor on stage will be "Prairie Home" cast members Sue Scott and Tim Russell, sound effects master Fred Newman, the All-Star Shoe Band and mandolinist Peter Ostroushko.

His honeyed radio baritone more curmudgeonly gruff than trademark folksy during much of our chat — I imagined deep canyons of frustration carving the humorist's forehead following several questions aimed toward eliciting some actual humor — the intellectual in Keillor didn't easily cozy up to small talk.

Q. How involved are you in selecting the local acts for your traveling broadcasts of "A Prairie Home Companion"?

A. Well, I'm as involved as I can be. (Sound engineer and talent researcher) Sam Hudson ... makes the actual contacts.

(Slack-key guitarist) Carlos Andrade's band (Na Pali) has been on the show before and I really love their music. ... And then we have this kid ... a slack-key guitarist, (Danny) Carvalho.

I just really love the music. We had Ledward Ka'apana on our show in St. Paul once and that was great. But you really have to go to Hawai'i to get this music. That's why we're going. ...

The (music on the) show is a matter of personal taste. But my personal taste is pretty broad. I don't really carry a brief for any particular kind of music. I like all sorts of things.

Q. What kind of music won't you waste your time with, personally?

A. Rap (and) hip-hop, I think, is just really stupid lyrics put to really ugly music.

And so one forms a bias and that saves you a lot of time. But beyond that, I'm really open to just about anything. I think you know it when you hear it.

All of the (genre) labels are interesting up to a point. The label "Hawaiian" doesn't capture ... what Carlos Andrade does.

Any music that is soulful goes beyond labels. It's not like pork or lentils. You just can't order it by category.

You can't order a half-a-pound of bluegrass.

Q. What kind of music do you listen to just to unwind — the rootsy Americana that is the hallmark of "A Prairie Home Companion"?

A. I sit and read if I want to unwind.

I tend not to listen to music. Sometimes I will. But mostly I listen to classical music.

I listen to the Chopin piano etudes. I listen to a Mozart mass. I might listen to Bach — the two- and three-part inventions.

Q. You've come out swinging against President Bush or, as you call him in your more-recent prose, "the Current Occupant." Are you excited by the potential for change out of this week's elections?

A. I wouldn't say I'm excited. I think there are enormous changes that are waiting to be made.

I think that this Congress is absolutely the most corrupt Congress in my lifetime. And if it doesn't get overturned, then I just don't know what happens to the country.

We're stuck in this war that we got into for all sorts of rather thin reasons, and now we're just stuck. ... We're destroying a lot of lives of young people. And we're doing great damage to our military while we have greater need of them elsewhere. ...

There has to be some kind of brake put on this president because he's so clearly a thoughtless person who is simply sitting on a policy that is a disaster. ... I'm hopeful. But the cards are somewhat stacked against change in this country. And so it'll take a great deal to turn this around.

Q. Is the secret to being so prolific not stopping to recognize how prolific you really are?

A. No. The secret is that you don't watch television and you don't use alcohol and you get up early in the morning and you go to work. (Television) is an enormous waste of time. It uses up your life. It becomes ... a comforting habit. And people who watch a lot of television don't accomplish that much.

Reach Derek Paiva at dpaiva@honoluluadvertiser.com.