A Prairie Home Companion from American Public Media

Special Guests
Saturday, October 8, 2005

Larry Sparks and the Lonesome Ramblers

Larry Sparks grew up the youngest of nine children in a family where everyone took an interest in music. He started playing guitar when he was only 5; at 16, he was hired to play with the Stanley Brothers. He formed Larry Sparks and the Lonesome Ramblers in 1969, and began a recording career that has established Sparks as one of the top names in bluegrass music. Currently, Sparks is up for the Country Music Association's 2005 Male Vocalist of the Year, and he has received five nominations for this year's International Bluegrass Music Awards: Male Vocalist of the Year, Guitar Player of the Year, Album of the Year, and Recorded Event of the Year, as well as Song of the Year for "Georgia Peaches" a duet with Andy Griggs on Sparks' most recent CD, Larry Sparks 40 (Rebel Records). The group is: Larry Sparks (guitar and vocals), Scott Napier (mandolin), Josh McMurray (banjo), and Matthew Madden (bass).

Prudence Johnson

Her 25-year career in music has taken her from nightclubs and honky-tonks to Carnegie Hall, from the theater stage to the Silver Screen (Robert Redford's A River Runs Through It), from the Midwest to the Middle East. She is a regularly featured guest on Garrison Keillor's A Prairie Home Companion, heard across the country on public radio stations. Her ten album releases include Little Dreamer, a collection of international lullabies, Moon Country, which features the music of Hoagy Carmichael, and S'Gershwin, a collaboration with pianist Dan Chouinard. She recently collaborated with four Minnesota composers to create A Girl Named Vincent, a presentation of the poetry of Edna St. Vincent Millay set to music, to be released on CD this year. She is a 2001 recipient of the McKnight Artists Fellowship for Performing Musicians and enjoys a steady schedule of concert appearances across the country.

John Niemann

He got started in music at the right time and place, and for the right reasons; he was in high school and there were girls there. He began with Leo Fender's gift to the world, the electric bass, and started a rock and roll band. In college he discovered acoustic music on the West Bank in Minneapolis and learned the guitar, fiddle and mandolin, eventually finding himself playing a 1920s Gibson mandocello in Peter Ostroushko's band, the Mando Boys. He played kick-butt fiddle for seven years in the Stoney Lonesome bluegrass band, did a number of guitar gigs with various honkytonk bands around the cities, and for three years was in "the house band at a place called Billy Bob's, or something," at Riverplace. After years spent as a road musician and working in construction, he has settled into the relatively quiet St. Paul life of a finish carpenter. He keeps his music honed with jam sessions in the basement.