A Prairie Home Companion with Garrison Keillor

Geoff Muldaur

GEOFF MULDAUR, a founding member of the Jim Kweskin Jug Band, gained a reputation as a master vocalist in a variety of folk and blues styles 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 and produced albums for saxman Lenny Pickett and the Borneo Horns, and the Richard Greene String Quartet. He also composed for film and television, earning an Emmy for the score of It Happened Right Here. His latest CD is Password (High Tone). Performing with Muldaur tonight is guitarist Amos Garrett.

Canadian guitarist and blues-based rock and roll musician AMOS GARRETT has recorded with numerous musicians, including Stevie Wonder, Bonnie Raitt, and Emmylou Harris. One of his most remarkable albums (which won a Canadian Juno Award in 1989) was a collaboration with Texas Tornado Doug Sahm and Gene Taylor called The Return Of The Formerly Brothers (Stony Plain). His newest release, Off The Floor Live (Stony Plain), was recorded live at Edmonton's Sidetrack.

Butch Thompson

Minnesota native BUTCH THOMPSON is remembered well for his 12­year 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 was the house band until 1986. By the early '70s, his recordings on both clarinet and piano were noticed abroad, and he toured Europe and Australia. Thompson's first recording, Butch Thompson Plays Jelly Roll Morton Piano Solos, has been re-issued as a Biograph CD, and he has released nine CDs in his solo series, Thompson Plays Joplin (Daring/Rounder Records).

DUKE HEITGER started playing the trumpet professionally at the age of twelve with his father's band in Toledo, Ohio. He moved to New Orleans in 1991, and has since played at jazz festivals across the U.S., as well as in Europe and New Zealand. He has also been a member of some of the leading jazz bands in the music world, including Banu Gibson, Jacques Gauthe's Creole Rice JB, and others. He currently leads the Steamboat Stompers jazz trio, which plays daily on the steamboat Natchez. With them, he released Duke Heitger's Steamboat Stompers (GHB). His newest CD, Rhythm is Our Business (Fantasy), was released in May of 2000.

LOUIS JENKINS, a poet from Duluth, Minnesota, has had his poems published in many literary magazines and anthologies. His poetry collections include An Almost Human Gesture (Eighties Press and Ally Press), Nice Fish: New and Selected Prose Poems (Holy Cow! Press), which was the winner of the Minnesota Book Award, and his latest, The Winter Road (Holy Cow! Press). Two of Jenkins' prose poems were published in The Best American Poetry 1999 (Scribner), and an audio reading of his Any Way in the World (Thousands Press) was released in November of 2000.