|
Special Guests Gillian Welch was raised in West Los Angeles-her parents wrote music for The Carol Burnett Show. She graduated from the University of California Santa Cruz with a degree in photography before switching to music and enrolling at the Berklee College of Music in Boston. At Berklee, she met David Rawlings, who played in bands with her; eventually the two moved to Nashville and became songwriting and performing partners. It was a two-guitar, two-voice match that could have been made in the southern mountains: Welch and Rawlings embrace the same style of traditional country and bluegrass. After playing open-mike nights for awhile, Welch and Rawlings got their big break when performer-producer T-Bone Burnett heard them open for Peter Rowan. Their Grammy-nominated debut album, Revival (Almo Sounds) was produced by Burnett and has been raved about by media as various as Rolling Stone, Time magazine, The Los Angeles Times, CMJ New Music Monthly, USA Today, and even country-music's hometown paper, the Nashville Banner, who says "Welch sings with the soul and inflection of a woman whose roots reach into the Anglo-Irsh song traditions of the Appalachian mountains. Listening to her vocals, she could be the Carter Family's long-lost niece." As Welch says, "It's almost like I'm from Kentucky--but I'm not." Kate MacKenzie has been a favorite guest of A Prairie Home Companion since 1981. For many years, she was lead singer of Stoney Lonesome, with whom she recorded six bluegrass albums, toured Japan and North America, and was featured in the public television series, Showcase. With the Hopeful Gospel Quartet, MacKenzie has recorded a live album from Carnegie Hall, performed at folk festivals in Scotland and Denmark, and performed on PBS' Austin City Limits. Her work with A Prairie Home Companion has included coast-to-coast tours, farewell and reunion shows, 20 Disney Channel television broadcasts, the 1993 Book of Guys tour, and a recurring dramatic role as Sheila, the Christian Jungle girl (wild, yet pure). Her first solo album, Let Them Talk (Red House Records), was on the National Bluegrass Charts for 10 months. MacKenzie's success with Let Them Talk was noted in The New York Times, which grouped MacKenzie in "the new wave of strong female voices." A new recording, Age of Innocence (Red House), was released last fall. Clarinetist/pianist Butch Thompson is well-remembered for his 12-year run as the house pianist on A Prairie Home Companion, dating back to the show's second broadcast in July 1974. In 1978, The Butch Thompson Trio was formed for the show and remained the house band until 1986. As a soloist, Thompson has long been regarded as a leading traditional jazz musician. Thompson's interest in jazz began during his childhood in the river village of Marine-on-St. Croix, Minnesota, where he discovered the piano at age three, began formal study at six, and had an early interest in boogie woogie. As a teenager, he led his first band (Shirt Thompson and his Sleeves), and played his first professional engagements on both piano and clarinet. While an undergraduate at the University of Minnesota in 1962, he joined the Hall Brothers New Orleans Jazz Band on clarinet and began a series of pilgrimages to New Orleans, where he studied with clarinetist George Lewis and became one of the few non-Orleanians to guest occasionally at Preservation Hall during the '60s and '70s. By the early '70s, his recordings on both instruments were noticed abroad, and he toured Europe and Australia. This spring, he toured Egypt, where he made a special performance with the Cairo Symphony and played solo concerts in Cairo and Alexandria. Next month, he will premiere an arrangement of his composition Ecuadorean Memories with the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra. Thompson's first recording, Butch Thompson Plays Jelly Roll Morton Piano Solos, has been re-issued as a Biograph CD. Among his recent recordings is a session featuring trumpeters Doc Cheatham and Nicholas Payton, to be released on the Verve label later this month. Next month, Daring/Rounder Records will release the next recording-called Lincoln Avenue Express-in Thompson's critically acclaimed solo series. |
|
|
|
|
An Interview with Heather Masse
In a 2009 interview, Heather Masse tells us about her earliest influences, auditioning in a women's bathroom, and a few memorable moments from A Prairie Home Companion.
Old Sweet Songs: A Prairie Home Companion 1974-1976
Lovingly selected from the earliest archives of A Prairie Home Companion, this heirloom collection represents the music from earliest years of the now legendary show: 1974–1976. With songs and tunes from jazz pianist Butch Thompson, mandolin maestro Peter Ostroushko, Dakota Dave Hull and the first house band, The Powdermilk Biscuit Band (Adam Granger, Bob Douglas and Mary DuShane).
