A Prairie Home Companion from American Public Media

Special Guests
Saturday, December 10, 2005

Boys of the Lough

The Irish Times described the Boys of the Lough's music as "full of guts and technical brilliance." We'd be hard-pressed to find someone who disagrees. The group, which has helped to keep the centuries-old music of Ireland and Scotland close to its roots, was formed in 1967. Since then, the band has made more than 60 U.S. tours, in addition to their performances in Europe, Asia and Australia. Dave Richardson (mandolin, cittern, English concertina, button accordion) joined up in 1973, abandoning his research studies in molecular evolution to devote his time to playing Celtic traditional music. He is from Northumberland, the border country between England and Scotland, where he grew up in Wallsend-on-Tyne. Cathal McConnell (flute, whistles) hails from County Fermanagh, in Northern Ireland. By the time he was 18, he was an All-Ireland Champion on both flute and whistle. He is one of the founding members of the group. Kevin Henderson (fiddle) is native of the Shetland Islands, where he started winning prizes for his fiddle playing when he was only 12. He first performed with the Boys of the Lough in 2002. Brendan Begley (button accordion, melodeon) comes from the Dingle Peninsula in County Kerry. He has been part of the band since the 1980s. Malcolm Stitt (guitar) grew up in Fort William in the Scottish Highlands. He moved to Glasgow to study recording and production, but soon found himself playing music full time. He joined the band in 1997. The Boys of the Lough's latest album-their twentieth-is aptly titled Twenty. It is on Lough Records.

The Hopeful Gospel Quartet

As the Hopeful Gospel Quartet (Garrison Keillor, Robin and Linda Williams, and Carol Elizabeth Jones) explains it, the group "began its career backstage at Prairie Home shows, when we stood waiting for the balloon to go up and sang to pass the time and found out that we all like gospel songs and that they sound wonderful in a stairwell." Now, countless gigs (and a couple of personnel changes) later, they are still finding great four-part harmonies in stairwells and on stages across the country.

Singing the music they love-be it bluegrass, folk, old-time, or acoustic country-Robin and Linda Williams have carved out a three-decade career that has taken them from Carnegie Hall to the Hollywood Bowl. They've have written dozens of terrific songs, ones that have been covered by the likes of Emmylou Harris, Tom T. Hall, Tim & Mollie O'Brien, Mary Chapin Carpenter, Kathy Mattea, and The Seldom Scene. Robin and Linda's latest CDs are Deeper Waters and The First Christmas Gift, both on Red House Records.

Carol Elizabeth Jones (the newest Hopeful) hails from the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia. She has made her mark as a singer of traditional mountain music and as a writer of new songs in the old tradition. She has recorded several acclaimed albums of original material. Ridin' Along (Yodel-Ay-Hee Records), released this year, is a collection of classic country and bluegrass duets with Laurel Bliss.

Erica Rhodes

When Erica Rhodes first appeared on A Prairie Home Companion, the young actress had to stand on a box in order to share a mic with the other performers. Since then, she has grown up, studied at Boston University's College of Fine Arts and the Deena Levy Theatre Studio, and is currently enrolled at the Atlantic Theater Conservatory in New York. She toured with the children's theater company TheatreWorks/USA in a production of Ramona Quimby, and on television, she has appeared on Film Fakers (AMC). Recently, she and some acting colleagues started a theater group. It will launch in February when they present a series of one-act plays at The Next Stage in Manhattan's West Village.

Andy Stein

Violinist and saxophonist Andy Stein was a regular member of Guy's All-Star Shoe Band on A Prairie Home Companion from 1989 to 2001. He collaborated with Garrison Keillor to create the opera Mr. and Mrs. Olson. He has appeared on Saturday Night Live and Late Night with David Letterman, and has performed with such artists as Itzhak Perlman, Eric Clapton, Smashing Pumpkins, Billy Joel, Tony Bennett, Ray Charles, Bob Dylan, and many others.