A Prairie Home Companion with Garrison Keillor

Patty Loveless

Patty Loveless spent her very early years in eastern Kentucky, but before she hit her teens, the family had moved to Louisville. As a kid, she listened to the Grand Ole Opry on the radio. She wrote songs and sang with various ones of her six siblings. After high school, she headed for Nashville and became a member of the Wilburn Brothers band. She released her first solo recording in 1987 and now has 19 albums to her credit. These days, Patty and her husband, producer Emery Gordy Jr., make their home in Georgia — in a small town northwest of Atlanta. Her latest CD, Sleepless Nights: The Traditional Country Soul of Patty Loveless (Saguaro Road Records), has received a Grammy nomination for Best Country Album.

Brigid Kaelin

Louisville's own Brigid Kaelin is a songwriter, accordionist, pianist, and master of the musical saw. She spent several years in New York earning a degree from New York University, during which time she sang with an Irish band and dabbled as a cabaret performer. After college, she worked as a television producer at the documentary division of CBS. But she missed home and family, so she returned to Kentucky and began singing in bars around her hometown. Now known for clever lyrics and sense of humor, she has toured the world performing her own brand of original music. Her recordings include her debut album, Keep Your Secrets, and West 28th Street, a reference to one of the four breweries that once operated in Louisville.

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 masterful keyboard player, composer and improviser in any style, he writes all the script themes and underscores, and he has accompanied guests from James Taylor to Renée Fleming. His latest CD is So Near and Dear to Me.

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.

Peter Johnson (percussion) has played klezmer music with Doc Severinsen and jazz with Dave Brubeck. He was a drummer for The Manhattan Transfer and for Gene Pitney. He has toured the world, but he always comes back to home base: Saint Paul.

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 has performed with artists such as Itzhak Perlman, Eric Clapton, Smashing Pumpkins, Billy Joel, Tony Bennett, Ray Charles and Bob Dylan.

The Louisville Palace

When Louisville's Palace Theater opened on Saturday, September 1, 1928, the Courier Journal wrote: "Enter and view with astonishment the magnificence that the hand of man has wrought. The more you look, the more you will see." Located on Fourth Street between Broadway and Chestnut, it was designed style by famed theater architect John Eberson. And some eight decades later, patrons are still dazzled by the Spanish Baroque-style Palace, from the foyer's barrel-vault with its medallions of faces of famous men — Dante, Beethoven, and even Eberson himself — to the theater's midnight blue ceiling twinkling with stars. The premiere featured a program by Jan Garber's stage band, an audience sing-along led by organist Haden Read at the 1,000-pipe Wurlitzer organ, and a showing of the silent film Excess Baggage, starring William Haines. Since then, millions have enjoyed movies, live entertainment, corporate functions, and holiday gatherings in this architectural treasure.