has a fondness for the quaint, what he’d call “Lutheran” side of life. In his radio show featured on NPR every Saturday evening, you won’t hear any foul language, or explicit sex and violence, really. In a running skit called Guy Noir, for example, the main character and his friend Pete shoot each other, but with mouth-made “pshew” sound effects and finger guns, you’d imagine.
But imagine no more. Through the magic of bus travel, Keillor and company stopped by Red Rocks Amphitheater for a leg of “A Prairie Home Companion’s” Radio Romance Tour with designs on sentimental duets and stories of lovers’ quarrels, communions and conniptions. In his storytelling, much of Keillor’s charm lies in the seemingly effortless humor he weaves in and the relaxed, lazy river way he tells his tales. E.g., last night, a story about a young farmer trying to find inspiration for his writing drifted into an eddy of tangent on the corn he eats for dinner, so singularly sweet and crunchy, and then dislodged, floating into how his parents met, where the meat of the story resided.
It’s hilarious and fascinating enough to hear it, but to see Keillor in his white and blue striped seersucker suit walk up and down the aisles of Red Rocks while he spins his yarn makes it all that much more engrossing. It had the feel of a summer camp jamboree—especially at intermission, when Keillor led the 4,000-odd folks in attendance in American songbook classics like “Home On The Range” and “America The Beautiful.” “Maybe that’s enough spirituals for one night,” Keillor reflected after a rendition of “We Shall Overcome.” “Wouldn’t want to scare the agnostics away.”
Through the show’s three-and-a-half hours, Keillor took on all the classic segments of P.H.C., like “Guy Noir” and “News from Lake Woebegone” with the help of singer (and decent actress, as it happens) Aoife O’Donovan, typically as the love interest, and sound effects man Fred Newman. Keillor and Newman told a zany tale of how Newman came to be what Keillor proudly called “the top sound effects man on public radio,” which is hard to argue with considering 1) he’s the only one most NPR listeners are aware of and 2) just how uncanny his impressions can be. For Keillor, half the fun was in throwing Newman the most obtuse concepts for sound bites he could imagine, essentially trying to throw wrenches in his works. Among them: a whale singing Barry White songs, a squirrel imitating a gerbil imitating a passenger thrown overboard a ship and the sound of corn growing.
The music was no less essential than the storytelling, either. Named after one of the show’s fictional sponsors, The Guy’s All-Star Shoe Band backed Keillor through his , solos and duets with the sensational O’Donovan. Keillor made no bones about O’Donovan being the better singer of the two, but he hit his notes well enough and made a suitable partner for O’Donovan’s gorgeous soprano. Highlights among the many included Randy Newman’s “I’ll Be Home,” Iris Dement’s “Our Town” and Keillor’s silly but sweet “.”
‘s Radio Romance Tour warped Thursday’s audience to a peaceful Sunday evening and made the massive Red Rocks Amphitheater feel like a porch. What could be quainter than a live, radio variety show in 2013? Very little. With Keillor’s calmative voice and knack for storytelling as well as an incredible supporting cast, it was hard to imagine you could have spent the time with more entertaining folks—inside or outside of radio.
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Dylan Owens is Reverb’s indie and bluegrass blogger. You can read more from him in Relix magazine and the comment sections of WORLDSTARHIPHOP.
