A Prairie Home Companion with Garrison Keillor

Becky Schlegel took piano lessons all through her childhood. She sang in choir and, while still in junior high, she joined her mother's professional country band, The Country Benders. Then a college friend gave Becky Schlegel three Reno and Smiley albums, and the die was cast: She became addicted to bluegrass music. She left South Dakota, her home state, and moved to Minnesota. That was a dozen years ago, and since then, Becky has become a big favorite in the Upper Midwest's bluegrass, country and acoustic rock scenes. Becky formed the band True Blue in 1997. The following year, they released their debut CD, This Lonesome Song, which was nominated for 1998 Bluegrass Recording of the Year by the Minnesota Music Academy. The group then won Minnesota's Bluegrass Band of the Year award for 2000. Becky's second CD, Red Leaf, came out in 2001. That year, Becky was awarded Bluegrass/Old-Time Artist of the Year at the Minnesota Music Awards. She repeated the honor in 2002, 2003 and 2004. Becky's most recent CD is 2005's Drifter Like Me. A new album, For All the World to See (Lilly Ray Records), is scheduled for release later this summer. Brian Fesler is Becky's accompanist.

From the time he was a kid in Belleville, Illinois, Wilco frontman Jeff Tweedy was consumed with music. He spent hours on end at the home of his schoolmate Jay Farrar, whose whole family was musically inclined. By the late 1980s, Farrar and Tweedy had started the seminal alt-country band Uncle Tupelo. After the group split up in 1994, the two went their separate ways. Soon after, Jeff and Uncle Tupelo bassist John Stirratt formed Wilco. Over the past dozen years, this Chicago-based rock band has recorded a half-dozen albums, including two-time Grammy-winning A Ghost is Born. There have also been groundbreaking collaborations like Mermaid Avenue and Mermaid Avenue Vol. II — previously unheard lyrics of Woody Guthrie set to music written and performed by Billy Bragg and Wilco. The band's seventh CD, Sky Blue Sky (Nonesuch), is due for release this month. "Wilco is the most consistently interesting American band on the scene today," one reviewer recently wrote. Their legions of fans no doubt concur. Wilco is: Jeff Tweedy (guitar, vocals), Nels Cline (guitar), Pat Sansone (keyboards, guitar), Mike Jorgensen (keyboards), John Stirratt (bass), and Glenn Kotche (percussion).

Andy Stein (violin, saxophone) definitely has far-flung musical leanings, He collaborated with Garrison Keillor to create the opera Mr. and Mrs. Olson, and he's performed with artists such as Itzhak Perlman, Eric Clapton, Smashing Pumpkins, Billy Joel, Tony Bennett, Ray Charles and Bob Dylan.