So Fine and True
hosted by Garrison Keillor
Show #1563August 13, 2016
From Koussevitzky Music Shed at Tanglewood | Lenox, MA
0:00 | 01:58:59
Chris Thile
Sara Watkins
Jearlyn and Jevetta Steele
Christine DiGiallonardo
This week: another season finale rebroadcast, as we look back to July 2011 and a show at the Koussevitzky Music Shed at Tanglewood, the gem of the Berkshires up in Lenox, Massachusetts. Our future host Chris Thile and his Nickel Creek bandmate Sara Watkins team up for the Everly Brothers' "You're the One I Love," and then show off a few tricks individually, Chris on the Bill Monroe classic "Rabbit in the Log," and Sara on Ron Wood's "Mystifies Me." Plus: Jearlyn and Jevetta Steele blow the roof off the Shed with "This Will Be an Everlasting Love," Christine DiGiallonardo adds her voice to a few songs and duets with Garrison, Dusty and Lefty stumble upon a Singer Songwriter competition held in a bathroom (the acoustics are really good!), and the gents of The Guy's All-Star Shoe Band deliver an instrumental take on "Columbia, the Gem of the Ocean." In Lake Wobegon: Memories of the winter Great Aunt Cooter went berserk can help keep you cool during a summer heatwave.
Read notes from Sara Watkins and Fred Newman about this week's rebroadcast
Sara Watkins:
This show was so much fun to be a part of. I remember teaching this Everly Brothers song "You're The One I Love" to Chris Thile backstage. I always love singing with Chris and it was really fun to dig in on this one with him. Another song I sang that day is one my friend Benmont Tench showed me years ago - a Ron Wood song called "Mystifies Me."Fred Newman:
Normally, one thinks of the sound of a venue in terms of how well the audience hears the performers. But as a sound guy and comedy performer, I pay great attention to how well we, the performers, can hear the audience - it so affects our timing. The audience paces us. We instinctively ride the laughter, pausing ever so slightly to let it cascade and build. Tanglewood is unique to us, with an explosive audience laugh that erupts immediately from the audience of 3,000 or so that hug the stage under the metal shed followed by a delayed roll of a louder laugh that builds and washes up from a crowd of 10,000+ that spreads over the broad, open-air lawn. It's an amazing sound, like no other we encounter. It feels like the crash of a great ocean wave, followed by a deep, thunderous rush of wind, all made of laughter. When I first was on stage there 15 years ago, I was told to "surf the crash, not the roar." It's a complete surfer's rush to play in those warm oceans of laughter at Tanglewood.
Chris Thile
Chris Thile made his first appearance on A Prairie Home Companion in 1996. He was 15 and had already been playing mandolin for a decade. He'd also started Nickel Creek with Sara and Sean Watkins, and released his first solo recording, 1994's Leading Off. This Grammy winner now collaborates with many musicians in myriad styles and leads acoustic quintet Punch Brothers. Thile's solo albums include Bach: Sonatas and Partitas, Vol. 1 (Nonesuch).Sara Watkins
Singer-songwriter and fiddle player Sara Watkins - along with her brother Sean and mandolinist Chris Thile - was a founding member of the Grammy-winning progressive bluegrass group Nickel Creek. In 2015, Sara and Sean released their "family-band-of-sorts project," Watkins Family Hour, and then embarked on a tour that included stops at Conan, NPR's Tiny Desk Concert, and the Newport Folk Festival. Sara's latest recording: Young in All the Wrong Ways (New West Records).Jearlyn Steele
Growing up in Indiana, Jearlyn Steele sang with her siblings as The Steele Children. One by one, they moved to Minnesota and started singing together again. Now music is the family business. Jearlyn has recorded and performed with Prince, George Clinton, Mavis Staples, and others. She also hosts Steele Talkin', a Sunday-night radio show that originates on WCCO in Minneapolis. Her most recent solo CD is Jearlyn Steele Sings Songs from A Prairie Home Companion.Jevetta Steele
Growing up in Indiana, Jearlyn and Jevetta Steele sang with their siblings as The Steele Children. One by one, they moved to Minnesota and started singing together again. Now music is the family business. Jevetta's performance of "Calling You," from the film Baghdad Cafe, was nominated for an Academy Award. Her solo albums include 2006's My Heart.Christine DiGiallonardo
New York-based vocalist Christine DiGiallonardo is at home singing in early-music chamber ensembles as well as jazz and rock bands. She performs solo and with her sisters, Daniela and Nadia, as The DiGiallonardo Sisters, and her voice can be heard on commercial jingles for Aquafresh, Mr. Clean, Playtex, and Febreze. Her theater credits include Carousel (Live From Lincoln Center), Lady, Be Good! (City Center Encores!), The Sound of Music (Carnegie Hall), and My Fair Lady (Avery Fisher Hall).Garrison Keillor
Garrison Keillor was born in 1942 in Anoka, Minnesota. He went to work for Minnesota Public Radio in 1969, and on July 6, 1974, he hosted the first broadcast of A Prairie Home Companion in St. Paul. He is the host of The Writer's Almanac and the editor of the Good Poems series of anthologies from Viking.The Guy's All-Star Shoe Band - July 2, 2011
The Guy's All-Star Shoe Band is led by A Prairie Home Companion music director Richard Dworsky. Keyboard player, composer and improviser in any style, he also writes all the script themes and underscores. His latest CD is So Near and Dear to Me. Chet Atkins called Pat Donohue (guitar) one of the greatest fingerpickers in the world today. And he writes songs too - recorded by Suzy Bogguss, Kenny Rogers, and others. Nobody's Fault (Bluesky Records) is the most recent of Pat's 10 albums. Gary Raynor (bass) has performed with the Count Basie band and Sammy Davis Jr., with whom he toured for several years. He was first call for dozens of touring Broadway shows, including the first presentation of The Lion King. Gary teaches at the McNally Smith College of Music in St. Paul. Peter Johnson (percussion) has played klezmer music with Doc Severinsen and jazz with Dave Brubeck. He was a drummer for The Manhattan Transfer and for Gene Pitney. He has toured the world, but he always comes back to home base: Saint Paul. Richard Kriehn is principal second violin for the Washington/Idaho Symphony. But it's not all classical all the time; he is equally at home playing bluegrass fiddle and mandolin. He was a member of the Nashville Mandolin Ensemble and the bluegrass group 1946.Tim Russell
One minute he's mild-mannered Tim Russell; the next he's George Bush or Julia Child or Barack Obama. We've yet to stump this man of many voices. Says fellow APHC actor Sue Scott, "He does a better Ira Glass than Ira Glass." A well-known Twin Cities radio personality and voice actor, Tim appeared in the Robert Altman film A Prairie Home Companion and the Coen brothers' A Serious Man. Tim has also been reviewing films professionally for over 10 years.Sue Scott
On APHC, Sue Scott plays everything from ditzy teenagers to Guy Noir stunners to leathery crones who've smoked one pack of Camel straights too many. The Tucson, Arizona, native is well known for her extensive commercial and voice-over work on radio and television, as well as stage and movie roles, including the part of "Donna" in Robert Altman's A Prairie Home Companion.Fred Newman
Sound effects man Fred Newman is an actor, writer, musician, and sound designer for film and TV. Turns out, no one is more surprised than Fred that he's made a career out of doing what he used to do behind the teacher's back -crossing his eyes, making sounds, and doing voices. He readily admits that, growing up, he was unceremoniously removed from several classrooms, "once by my bottom lip."