Then, of course, it is imperative that you do so-and we are fortunate indeed to tag along and share in the final chapter of the most fascinating and compelling characters ever conjured from the most vivid imagination of America’s greatest storyteller! “You can’t go home again unless you’re Garrison Keillor and home is Lake Wobegon.

But at the same time, he’s got our number that way he’s always had it. Keillor’s speaking to us with encouragement and empathy about the American life. He is restored by the humor and grace of his old girlfriend Arlene and a visit from his wife, Giselle, who arrives from New York for a big love scene in an old lake cabin. Meanwhile, the author flies in to give eulogies at the funerals of five classmates, including a couple whom he disliked, and he finds a wave of narcissism crashing on the rocks of Lutheran stoicism.

Lake Wobegon is having a boom year thanks to millennial entrepreneurship-AuntMildred’s.com Gourmet Meatloaf, for example, or Universal Fire, makers of artisanal firewood seasoned with sea salt. **Available in Hardcover, Audiobook, and eReader formats** In Garrison Keillor’s newest novel, Boom Town, we return to Lake Wobegon, famous from decades of monologues on the classic radio show A Prairie Home Companion. The Village Voice described Butch’s music as “beguiling piano Americana from an interpreter who knows that Bix was more than an impressionist and Fats was more than a buffoon.” He also joined the touring company of the off-Broadway hit Jelly Roll! The Music and the Man, playing several runs with that show in New York and other cities through 1997. He served as a development consultant on the 1992 Broadway hit Jelly’s Last Jam, which starred Gregory Hines. If Garrison was going to sing, I usually couldn’t go wrong with E major.”īy the late ’90s, Thompson was known as a leading authority on early jazz. Sometimes I’d go onstage without remembering what key something was in. More than once I remember saying I couldn’t get there by showtime, and being told to show up as soon as I could. Margaret or somebody would call me and ask if I was busy on Saturday. By 1980, the show was nationally syndicated, and the Butch Thompson Trio was the house band, a position the group held for the next six years.įrom the early days on APHC, Butch remembers, “It was pretty casual back then. In 1974, he joined the staff as the house pianist of public radio’s A Prairie Home Companion. He picked up the clarinet in high school and led his first jazz group, “Shirt Thompson and His Sleeves,” as a senior.Īfter high school, he joined the Hall Brothers New Orleans Jazz Band of Minneapolis, and at 18 made his first visit to New Orleans, where he became one of the few non-New Orleanians to perform at Preservation Hall during the 1960s and ’70s. Croix, a small Minnesota river town, Butch Thompson was playing Christmas carols on his mother’s upright piano by age three, and began formal lessons at six.

'Do you think you crossed the line in any way in that relationship?' Mason asked.Born and raised in Marine-on-St.

Keillor told Mason, 'I would have been grateful if an angry person had walked up to me and said, 'This is what you did to me. In a new statement to CBS News, her attorney said, 'Our client disputed assertions that there was a mutual attraction or consent.' Every time I said 'no' or tried to avoid him, I feared I was saying 'no' to my future.' She replied that 'the image of us lying together is sweet.''īefore a settlement was reached, the woman told the Associated Press through her attorney that Keillor was her 'mentor and employer,' adding, 'He had power over me. Later, he imagined them naked in bed in his hotel room. 'In one,' they reported, 'he imagined them having sex on an airplane. In his defense, the married Keillor shared hundreds of emails with the woman with the newspaper. But Minnesota Public Radio found a pattern of improper behavior after the woman, a researcher for the show, accused Keillor of 'dozens of sexually inappropriate incidents.' She also accused him of three instances of unwanted touching, according to the Minneapolis Star Tribune.

Garrison keillor