Can this charming new host convince millennials to love “A Prairie Home Companion”?

[dixiegrrrrl]

On July 1, Garrison Keillor said goodbye on his final broadcast of the radio variety show A Prairie Home Companion.
Fans bemoaned the loss of the avuncular host, who had for 42 years regaled them with characters like Guy Noir, cheery ads for powder-milk biscuits, and the imagined inhabitants of a fictional Midwestern town, “where all the women are strong, all the men good-looking, and all the children above-average.”

With Keillor’s retirement, Lake Wobegon may go the way of Atlantis, but that doesn’t mean the show is over. “It feels like something ends and something else is about to happen,” Keillor told his audience during his denouement. That something is 35-year-old Chris Thile, a multiple Grammy-winning mandolin prodigy and leader of the insanely talented Punch Brothers, whom Keillor has anointed as his predecessor.

Thile first made waves with Nickel Creek, the new-grass band he co-founded in his home-state of California at age 12. Since then, he has appeared dozens of times as a musical guest on Keillor’s program, collaborated with virtuosos such as Béla Fleck and Yo-Yo Ma, and in 2012 was awarded a MacArthur Foundation Fellowship (a.k.a “genius grant”).

“I suspect you’ll still be hearing about powder milk biscuits, and potentially be soothed by a piece of rhubarb pie, because we just can’t help ourselves.”

https://medium.com/mother-jones/can-this-charming-new-host-convince-millennials-to-love-a-prairie-home-companion-a0527aa29ca3#.enq0pzr7z

[irisblue]

1. powder milk biscuits!

and the lake street dive band was good.

[Fla Dem]

2. Never was a PHC fan.

I know he's an icon to some, but Garrison Keillor always creeped me out. It was that soft melodious way he talked. For some reason, it just made my skin crawl.

[Orrex]

3. I hated PHC.

It was the epitome of smug Liberal faux-intellectualism. The musical guests were frequently excellent, if you could hear them over Keillor's utterly dreadful singing, but the "comedy" skits were pure awfulness.

And i like Keillor. His writing is terrific, and I always enjoy The Writer's Almanac, but I cringe to hear him on PHC.


I would actually rather listen to Limbaugh or Hannity than PHC, because at least those two rightwing assholes don't make me feel embarrassed to be a Liberal.

[dixiegrrrrl]

5. We were fans for many years.

I am glad he was on radio, because his looks gave me the shudders, for some reason.

And I listened to him while I lived in the rainy Pac. NW, so weekends with the radio always felt cozy.

[hermetic]

4. I enjoyed it

Thile was just so exuberant about being there, I couldn't help but smile. I'll be listening to it again.

[astral]

6. I used to love that show.

I loved his storytelling, the skits, the musical guests, but I do agree I could really do without hearing HIM sing. This was before the years of internet, and I would not have heard 'that kind of music' if it were not for PHC.

It had its place in my history, but I did not keep on listening as the years went by, it wasn't THAT good. If the new leader lets the show twist and grow a little it could be a success. Maybe a segment on current events problems-solutions talk that lets young people in.