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Special Guests
Saturday, November 25, 2006
Sam Bush
Sam Bush got hooked early on. He was just 11 when he got his first mandolin. By the time he was 17, he had won the title of National Junior Fiddle Champion for three years in a row and had made his recording debut, Poor Richard's Almanac. Two years later, in 1971, he founded New Grass Revival, a band that pushed bluegrass into new territory by incorporating styles like rock, pop, reggae and jazz. In the late '80s, he formed the supergroup Strength in Numbers with Jerry Douglas, Bela Fleck, Mark O'Connor and Edgar Meyer, and he went on to lead Emmylou Harris' Grammy-winning Nash Ramblers for five years. In addition to contributing to dozens of other musicians' projects, Sam Bush has recorded a number of solo albums, including Late As Usual, Glamour and Grits, Ice Caps: Peaks of Telluride, King of My World, and his latest, Laps In Seven (Sugar Hill Records).
Buddy Emmons
As a kid, pedal-steel giant Buddy Emmons wanted to be a boxer. Then he got his first steel. It was, he recalls, "a Supro six-string lap model with a finish George Harrison once described as mother-of-plastic." No problem. Eleven-year-old Buddy pressed on, and seven years later he had joined Little Jimmy Dickens' Country Boys. Now, in a career that has spanned almost six decades, Emmons has toured with the likes of Ernest Tubb, George Jones and the Everly Brothers, recorded dozens of his own albums, and done thousands of recording sessions for artists as varied as Rosemary Clooney, Gram Parsons, k.d. lang, Willie Nelson, Linda Ronstadt and Ray Charles. In the mid-'50s, Emmons and fellow steel player Shot Jackson designed and manufactured the Sho-Bud pedal steel guitar. Buddy left Sho-Bud in 1963 to start his own business, the Emmons Guitar Company. In 1981, Emmons was inducted into the Steel Guitar Hall of Fame.
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A national holiday in Lake Wobegon is always gaudy and joyful. But what is going on between Clint Bunsen and Miss Liberty?
Everyone is here—Pastor Ingqvist, the Sons of Knute, Sister Arvonne of Our Lady of Perpetual Responsibility and her ocarina band, the Norwegian bachelor farmers, Dorothy and the Chatterbox Café, Wally in the Sidetrack Tap—as crowds converge on the little town to celebrate American independence, even as the chairman of the event broods on the great question of the day: Shall we struggle on valiantly here or shall we burst the bonds and find beautiful life in the golden west?
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Scripts and bits from A Prairie Home Companion celebrate the secret society of men and women who possess excellent spelling and punctuation skills. (You know who you are.)
Selections include "The Six-Minute Hamlet," a tribute to Emily Dickinson, a Guy Noir adventure that exposes an MFA scam, a riveting "Professional Organization of English Majors" drama, and guests Billy Collins, Robert Bly, Roy Blount Jr., and Calvin Trillin.
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