Special Guests

Special Guests
Saturday, January 24, 1998

BeauSoleil's name (French for "good sun") is taken from a particularly fertile region of Nova Scotia, settled in the 17th century by French people who fled to New Orleans when asked to declare their allegiance to the French or the English. These settlers are credited for the beginnings of Cajun (Acadian) music, which began as the settlers' old French songs mixed with the Louisiana country music. The leader of BeauSoleil, Michael Doucet, grew up when the traditional Cajun culture was on the decline, and so he played rock'n'roll and New Orleans-style swamp pop in high school before playing French music in an improvisational group called Coteau. Coteau, described as the "Cajun Grateful Dead," was invited to play a festival in France, and Doucet returned to the States with a newfound appreciation for his own culture. Upon his return, Doucet received a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts and spent years tracking down the artists who had written and sung on the first Cajun records. In 1977, Doucet and BeauSoleil had their American debut album, The Spirit of Cajun Music. Since then, BeauSoleil has been a frequent guest on A Prairie Home Companion. BeauSoleil has received other nationwide attention, including seven Grammy nominations and critical acclaim for more than a dozen albums. The six members of BeauSoleil are: Michael Doucet (vocals, fiddle), David Doucet (guitar, vocals), Jimmy Breaux (Acadian accordion), Al Tharp (bass, banjo, fiddle, vocals), Billy Ware (percussion), and Tommy Alesi (drums). Their newest album is the Grammy-nominated L'Amour ou la Folie (Love or Folly), on Rhino Records.

Peter Ostroushko is regarded as one of the finest mandolin and fiddle players in acoustic music, and he's well-known to A Prairie Home Companion listeners as a frequent guest performer and as the former musical director for the program. Raised amidst Northeast Minneapolis' Ukrainian community, young Ostroushko taught himself to play the piano, mandolin, guitar, and eventually fiddle, banjo, bass, and other string instruments. In the '70s, Ostroushko's first recording session was an uncredited mandolin set on Bob Dylan's Blood on the Tracks. Ostroushko has since played on more than 100 other albums. His success has earned him a large following within North America's Ukrainian community-one town even held a parade in his honor. Ostroushko has an eclectic list of accomplishments: he's collaborated with many local musicians and with national greats such as Emmylou Harris and Chet Atkins; he's played ukelele with the Minnesota Orchestra under the direction of Sir Neville Mariner, barked like a dog on The David Letterman Show, and appeared on Mr. Roger's Neighborhood. The title track for his recording, Heart of the Heartland (Red House), was recently featured as the theme for Meriwether Lewis in Ken Burns' film, Lewis and Clark. The Heart of the Heartland CD as a whole received wide acclaim, including a review in Billboard magazine that compared Ostroushko to Aaron Copland. Heart of the Heartland also brought Ostroushko a N.A.I.R.D. Indie Award, the independent music industry's highest honor. His latest recording is Pilgrims on the Heart Road (Red House). At 8 p.m. tonight, the Cedar Cultural Centre in Minneapolis presents Peter Ostroushko & Friends. Along with Ostroushko, the group is: Dean Magraw (guitar), Bruce Kurnow (harmonica), Jim Jacobson (cello), and Marc Anderson (percussion).

A decade ago, Ian Frazier received a warm welcome for his debut book, Dating Your Mom, when Newsweek magazine estimated that Frazier might be "the best master of gentle laid-back befuddlement since [Robert] Benchley." The next year, his second book, Nobody Better, Better Than Nobody, received rave reviews that compared Frazier to some of humor's heavyhitters: Twain, Thurber, and Waugh. Then in 1989, Frazier made his nonfiction debut with Great Plains, which became a bestseller. The New York Times Book Review said that Frazier, "with wit and style, writes about tumbleweeds, Bonnie and Clyde, the weather, cafe conversation, tepees, [and] MX missiles." As research for Great Plains, he drove 25,000 miles, spanning and crisscrossing the region between Montana and Texas. An Ohio native, Frazier attended Harvard, where he wrote for the Lampoon and earned national attention with their parody of Cosmo, featuring Henry Kissinger as centerfold. Frazier was graduated from Harvard in 1973 and within a year became a staffer at The New Yorker, where his pieces appeared for two decades. A few years ago, he played a Brooklyn resident in the films Smoke and Blue in the Face, Wayne Wang's and Paul Auster's offbeat movies about a neighborhood cigar store. His latest book is Coyote v. Acme (Farrar, Straus & Giroux), a collection of humorous essays.