A Prairie Home Companion with Garrison Keillor

Stephanie Davis

Stephanie Davis is a fourth-generation Montanan who spent several years fine-tuning her singing and songwriting skills in Nashville, and having her songs recorded by artists like Garth Brooks, Roger Whittaker, Martina McBride and Shelby Lynn. Davis not only sings and writes music, she also plays multiple instruments and has released two self-produced albums, River of No Return and I'm Pullin' Through, on her own label, Recluse Records. Davis has worked with her friend Garth Brooks and his touring band on several occasions and in 1994 she opened all of his shows for the year. Davis often appears at festivals, cowboy poetry gatherings and concerts throughout the west and later this year she will be touring in Chile and Ireland. Davis has plans to release another album later this year and is currently working on an illustrated story-poem book called The Icy Blue Norther.

Wylie Gustafson

Wylie Gustafson is a rancher and horseman from Dusty, Washington (population 11, at best). And when he's not tending to livestock on his Cross Three Ranch, he's serving up western swing, classic country, cowboy, and folk music — all with a healthy helping of his infectious energy — to enthusiastic audiences nationwide. With his band, Wylie & the Wild West, he has performed at the Grand Old Opry, the Kennedy Center, the National Folk Festival, the Lincoln Center, MerleFest, the National Cowboy Poetry Gathering, Japan's Country Gold Festival, Euro Disney, and state fairs from Ohio to Alaska. His latest album is LIVE! at the Tractor (Cross Three Records). A new CD, Bucking Horse Moon (Dualtone/Western Jubilee), is due for release in November.

Tish Hinojosa

Tish Hinojosa is based in Austin, but she grew up in San Antonio, Texas, as the youngest of 13 children. Through her 10 older sisters, Hinojosa heard the music of the '60s - Aretha Franklin, the Byrds, Bob Dylan, and the Beatles. Her Spanish-speaking parents, on the other hand, listened to Mexican radio and conjunto music. Hinojosa started out her musical career singing jingles for a Spanish-language radio station. After moves to New Mexico and to Nashville, her debut album, Homeland (1989 A&M Records), was released. Her 1992 recording, Culture Swing (A&M Records), earned the title of Folk Album of the Year by The National Association of Independent Record Distributors and Manufacturers. Her songs have been recorded by Linda Ronstadt and her vocals are heard with Joan Baez, Nancy Griffith, and Lucinda Williams. In 1996, Hinojosa recorded a children's bilingual album, Cada Niño/Every Child (Rounder Records). She has also performed and spoken on behalf of many progressive causes. She's been a spokesperson for the National Latino Children's agenda and for the National Association of Bilingual Education and she has performed for the National Women's Caucus, for the national conferences of the United Farmworkers of America and at events for immigrant and undocumented workers' rights. Hinojosa wins the hearts of critics wherever she performs and was deemed a "first class songwriter" by the Chicago Tribune. Her latest work, Sign of Truth (Rounder Records) was released in 2000.

Joe Ely and Joel Guzmán

Joe Ely left West Texas as a teenager in the late '60 and put on miles like a trucker. As he puts it, "I followed Woody Guthrie west and the blues guys down south; was on the West Coast during all the big hippie days." After living in Europe for a while, he returned to Texas. "I always knew the best musicians were in Lubbock," he says. Accordionist Joel Guzmán was performing with his father's band before he had even started school — "El Pequeño Gigante" ("The Little Giant") they called him. Now an in-demand instrumentalist, singer and producer, he is known for fusing traditional Mexican music with other genres. Live Cactus! — a new CD by Ely and Guzmán — was released this spring on Rack 'Em Records.

Janet Sorenson

She runs a sugar beet operation with her husband near Fisher, Minnesota, a town of 413 persons just southeast of Moorhead. The harvest began last Friday and they will be hauling beets day and night through October. In all the work of running a farm she has still found time to sing, play the church organ, teach piano lessons, and win the national yodeling championship. The first woman ever to achieve that honor, at the Jimmie Rodgers National Yodeling Championship in Avoca, Iowa; twenty contestants, and 15,000 people there to see them. She has also been a featured entertainer seven times at the annual Norsk Hostefest in Minot, North Dakota, the "largest Scandinavian gathering in the world." The Oak Ridge Boys invited her and her husband to come to Nashville for a show, which they did, and they had a good time.

Chris Thile

Chris Thile made his first appearance on A Prairie Home Companion in 1996. He was 15, had already been playing mandolin for 10 years, and had released his first solo album, Leading Off, a couple of years before. In the mid-1990s, he formed Nickel Creek with Sara Watkins on violin and Sean Watkins on guitar. The Grammy Award-winning trio called a hiatus last fall, and Chris now leads the band Punch Brothers. The group's debut recording, Punch, was recently released on Nonesuch Records and includes Chris's four-movement, 40-minute suite for bluegrass instruments, "The Blind Leaving the Blind."

Robin & Linda Williams

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, the Grand Ole Opry to Austin City Limits, Music City Tonight to Mountain Stage. 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, Mary Black, Kathy Mattea, and The Seldom Scene. Robin and Linda's first album came out on a small Minnesota-based record label in 1975, the same year they debuted on A Prairie Home Companion. Recent recordings include Deeper Waters and The First Christmas Gift, both on Red House Records.

After receiving his bachelor's degree in English and science, Wisconsin native Paul Zarzyski heeded Horace Greeley's advice to "go west young man" and earned his M.F.A. degree in creative writing from the University of Montana in the early '70s. At the same time, he took up a second, more lucrative, vocation-bareback bronc riding on the professional rodeo circuit. After more than twelve years of riding, his rodeo days are behind him and he makes his living through his poetry. Collections of his work include The Makeup of Ice (University of Georgia Press, 1984) and Blue Collar Light (Red Wing Press, 1998). All This Way for the Short Ride (Museum of New Mexico Press, 1996) was awarded The Western Heritage Award for Poetry from the National Cowboy Hall of Fame in Oklahoma City. His poems have also appeared in numerous journals and magazines, including London's Independent, Delta Airlines' Sky Magazine, Northern Lights, and Big Sky Journal. More recently, he has been included in several anthologies, including Poetry of the American West (Columbia University Press), Maverick Western Verse (Peregrine-Smith), and Between Earth & Sky: Poets of the Cowboy West (W.W. Norton). A recording of sixteen of his poems, Words Growing Wild (JRP Records), was produced in 1998 and features musical accompaniment by Duane Eddy, John Hartford, Rich O'Brien, and others. The Great American History Theater of St. Paul, Minnesota, arranged some of his poetry into the second act of a two-act play called Small Town Triumphs & Cowboy Colors. Zarzyski has been a featured performer at the Elko Cowboy Poetry Gathering for the past dozen years and has recited at the Library of Congress. Since the early '80s, he has travelled throughout the U.S., as well as Australia and England, sharing his poetry through readings and workshops. Zarzyski now lives west of Great Falls, Montana.