A Prairie Home Companion: May 1, 2004

Special Guests
Saturday, May 1, 2004

Born and raised in San Francisco, musical humorist Kacey Jones has worked as a singer, songwriter, musician, recording artist, producer, and publisher. The former founder and leader of cult comedy group Ethel and the Shameless Hussies, Jones won award nominations and a contract with MCA records. She had produced tracks for Delbert McClinton, Tom Waits, Dwight Yoakam, Lyle Lovett, and Willie Nelson. Affiliated with the society of Sweet Potato Queens, she holds the official title of "Royal Minstrel to the Sweet Potato Queens' Court" and her current release is called The Sweet Potato Queens' Big-Ass Box of Music.

Raised in the Ukrainian community of Northeast Minneapolis, Peter Ostroushko grew up listening to his shoe-maker father play traditional Ukrainian songs and taught himself to play the piano, mandolin, guitar, fiddle, banjo, bass, and other string instruments. He is well-known to APHC listeners both as a frequent guest performer and as the former musical director. He also performs orchestral works and has appeared with both The Saint Paul Chamber and Minnesota orchestras, among others. During the '70s, Ostroushko worked as a session musician in Nashville. His first recording session was an uncredited mandolin set on Bob Dylan's Blood on the Tracks. He has followed that with work on more than 100 albums with artists like Jethro Burns, Emmylou Harris, Willie Nelson, Chet Atkins, and Johnny Gimble. His debut solo album, Sluz Duz Music (Rounder Records) was released in 1982. Subsequent albums include Blue Mesa and Pilgrims on the Heart Road (both on Red House), and Down the Streets of My Old Neighborhood (Rounder). The title track from Heart of the Heartland (Red House) was the theme for Meriwether Lewis in Ken Burns' film, Lewis and Clark, and has earned Ostroushko comparisons not only to the great composer Aaron Copland but also to photographer Ansel Adams. The album also earned a N.A.I.R.D. Indie Award, the highest honor from the independent music recording industry. His newest CD, Sacred Heart (Red House), was released in April of 2000.

Alison Krauss's first album was released when she was sixteen years old. Since then she has won fourteen Grammy awards. She joined the cast of the Grand Ole Opry in 1993, and has toured with the band Union Station since her teens, and their most recent release is the double CD Live, recorded at the Palace Theater in Louisville, Kentucky. She contributed performances to the hit soundtrack of the film O Brother, Where Art Thou? and participated in the accompanying concert tour. She is joined tonight by Union Station bandmates Dan Tyminski, who provided the singing voice of George Clooney in O Brother, and banjo player/guitarist/songwriter Ron Block.

Buddy Emmons began playing the pedal steel guitar in 1948 at age 11. He joined Little Jimmy Dickens's Country Boys seven years later. At age 20, he built a steel guitar from scratch with Shot Jackson, and later gave his name to a steel guitar company. During the 1960s, he spent five years playing with Ray Price and his Cherokee Cowboys. He has recorded with George Jones, Roger Miller, Willie Nelson, and many others, and was a member of the Everly Brothers' touring band in the 1990s.

Johnny Gimble is considered the "King of Swing Fiddle." He first performed on the radio in 1938 at age 13. in 1949 he joined Bob Wills & His Texas Playboys and was a member of that group for most of the fifties. Artists he has recorded with include Merle Hagard, Waylon Jennings, Loretta Lynn, Willie Nelson, and many others. He was also a member of the Million Dollar Band on television's Hee Haw. He has been named the Country Music Association's Instrumentalist of the Year several times, and the Academy of Country Music named him Fiddler of the Year nine times. He continues to work as a musician and also hosts a summer music camp in Taos, NM, called Swing Week.

Vocalist and yodeler Katey Bellville debuted on A Prairie Home Companion in January of 2001.

Hillbilly band BR549 takes its name from Junior Samples's phone number on Hee Haw. The group began playing in the mid-1990s on Nashville's Lower Broadway, and released their first EP on Arista records in 1996. BR549's current lineup is Chuck Mead (vocals, guitar), Don Herron (fiddle, guitar, steel guitar), Shaw Wilson (drums, vocals), Geoff Firebaugh (bass), and Chris Scruggs (vocals, guitar). Their most recent release is entitled Tangled in the Pines.