A Prairie Home Companion with Garrison Keillor

Hot Club of Cowtown

You can't keep a good band down. Hot Club of Cowtown, the Austin, Texas-based hot jazz/Western swing trio that formed in the mid-1990s is back after a two-year hiatus — and they are still wowing fans wherever they go. Fiddler Elana James, guitarist Whit Smith and bassist Jake Erwin have taken their music worldwide and even did a U.S. State Department-sponsored tour of the Caucasus, including Armenia, Georgia and Azerbaijan (the first American band to tour there). A retrospective album, The Best of the Hot Club of Cowtown (Shout! Factory Records), is just out, and a new studio CD of original material is slated for release in early 2009.

Elvin Bishop

Growing up in Tulsa in the 1950s, guitarist Elvin Bishop could — if the conditions were just right — pick up Nashville radio station WLAC. He was captivated by the piercing harmonica sounds of Jimmy Reed coming over the airwaves. The blues cast a spell on him — one that has never lifted. He went off to college in Chicago and became a founding member of the Paul Butterfield Blues Band. In 1968, he went solo, moved to the San Francisco area, and now after 45 years of playing the blues and twenty-some albums to his credit, he has just released The Blues Rolls On (Delta Groove Music).

Listen to dobro and steel guitar ace Cindy Cashdollar sitting in with the likes of Asleep at the Wheel, Bob Dylan, Merle Haggard, Willie Nelson, Leon Redbone and Dolly Parton, or on her own CD, Slide Show (Silver Shot Records), and it's not surprising that she's raking in Grammy Awards — five, at last count. She was inducted into the Texas Western Swing Hall of Fame in 2003. Born and raised in Woodstock, New York, Cashdollar (yes, that's her real name) now makes her home in Austin, Texas.

John Németh

Rising blues star John Németh — who makes his home in the San Francisco Bay area — started out in Boise, Idaho, singing in church. Now his vocals are steeped in the tradition of B.B. King, Ray Charles and Junior Parker. He is also a harmonica player of riveting intensity and virtuosity, and his decade-long career has found him performing at music festivals in the U.S., Europe, Canada and Asia. Németh's 2007 debut album is Magic Touch (Blind Pig).

Monica Taylor

Singer/songwriter Monica Taylor is a "red dirt girl," who grew up in the small community of Perkins, Oklahoma, near Stillwater. At Oklahoma State University, she honed her skills playing bluegrass and country music. After living in Colorado for a few years, she returned to the Sooner State. She was part of the band Wayfaring Strangers, and for a decade she worked with Patrick Williams as a duo called the Farm Couple. Her latest collaboration is the Cherokee Maidens, three women who sing Western swing repertoire. Monica's album Cimarron Valley Girl came out in 2006, and a new recording is in the works.

Guy's All-Star Shoe Band

The Guy's All-Star Shoe Band is led by A Prairie Home Companion music director Richard Dworsky. A keyboard master with an arsenal of ideas, he has worked with artists from Al Jarreau to Kristin Chenoweth to the Hopeful Gospel Quartet. His latest CD is So Near and Dear to Me (Prairie Home Productions).

Chet Atkins called Pat Donohue (guitar) one of the greatest finger pickers in the world today. And he writes songs too — recorded by Suzy Bogguss, Kenny Rogers and others. Freewayman (Bluesky Records) is the most recent of Pat's nine albums.

Gary Raynor (bass) has performed with the Count Basie band, Sammy Davis Jr. — with whom he toured for several years — and the Minnesota Klezmer Band. He teaches jazz bass at the McNally Smith College of Music in St. Paul.

J.T. Bates started playing drums when he was seven. By the time he was 15, he was sitting in with his dad's big band. Since then, he has backed up countless musicians, as well as working with his own bands — Fat Kid Wednesdays and Poor Line Condition.