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Special Guests Geoff Muldaur was a major participant in the great folk music revival of the early '60s as a founding member of the Jim Kweskin Jug Band. His reputation as a master vocalist in a variety of folk and blues styles was gained through recordings he made with the Jug Band and others, as well as live performances. In the '80s, Muldaur took a break from the stage for a working sabbatical, during which he produced albums for saxman Lenny Pickett and the Borneo Horns, and the Richard Greene String Quartet. He also composed for film and television, garnering an Emmy for the score of It Happened Right Here. Muldaur's recording Brazil provided both the inspiration and the title music for Terry Gilliam's widely acclaimed 1985 cult film of the same name. Recent performances have included tours of Europe and Japan, as well as appearances at The Newport Folk Festival, Carnegie Hall, the Kennedy Center, the Strictly For Hunger show in New York with Taj Mahal, Joan Baez, and James Taylor, and the Revelations of Tradition concert at Wolf Trap to commemorate the reissue of Harry Smith's Anthology of American Folk Music. His latest CD, The Secret Handshake (HighTone), features guests such as Hal Ketchum, Lenny Pickett, Amos Garrett, Jenni Muldaur, and many others. Dave Van Ronk is a musician whose versatility defies pigeon-holing. As a teenager in Brooklyn, he played tenor banjo in a group called the Brute Force Jazz Band before switching to guitar and developing a style that combined blues, jazz and folk music. After moving to Greenwich Village, he was encouraged by Odetta to pursue music as a profession. From his start in the folk boom of the 1960s, to jug band music and cabaret theater, from ragtime guitar arrangements of Jelly Roll Morton, to covers of Tom Waits and Paul Simon tunes, he's done it all. Now, after nearly 40 years, he is doing the best work of his career, as his Grammy nomination for his latest CD, From...Another Time and Place, and his 1997 ASCAP Lifetime Achievement Award confirm. With two dozen albums to his credit, the gravelly-voiced guitarist has a vast repertoire of over 300 songs from which to choose. Still a resident of Greenwich Village, Van Ronk teaches guitar and tours steadily, playing everywhere from intimate clubs to international festivals.
Gillian Welch was raised in West Los Angeles, where 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. The two moved to Nashville and became songwriting and performing partners, both embracing the same style of traditional country and bluegrass. It was a two-guitar, two-voice match that could have been made in the southern mountains. After playing open-mike nights for a while, Welch and Rawlings got their big break when performer-producer T-Bone Burnett heard them open for Peter Rowan. Burnett produced their Grammy-nominated 1996 debut album, Revival (Almo Sounds), which received rave reviews from various media. The songs on their latest CD, Hell Among The Yearlings, are darker and more aggressive than those on Revival, and the sound is sparse, with Welch and Rawlings playing all the instruments (with the exception of producer Burnett's keyboard contributions on “Whiskey Girl”). Welch has performed their music on television shows such as Sessions At West 54th, Austin City Limits, and the BBC's Country Night - Live From Nashville, as well as on A Prairie Home Companion, All Things Considered, and Grand Ole Opry radio shows.
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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).
