A Prairie Home Companion with Garrison Keillor

Roy Blount, Jr.

The New York Times Book Review has called Roy Blount Jr. "one of America's wittiest writers." Readers of his articles in The Oxford American, Sports Illustrated, Esquire, Vanity Fair, GQ, National Geographic, Rolling Stone and The New York Times could tell you that. So could fans of his 20 books, including the most recent, Long Time Leaving: Dispatches from Up South (Knopf). He has been honored as a Literary Lion by the New York Public Library and a Literary Light by the Boston Public Library. On radio, he is a panelist on NPR's news quiz show, Wait Wait ... Don't Tell Me. Born in Indianapolis and raised in Decatur, Georgia, Blount makes his home in western Massachusetts and Manhattan.

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.

Dan "Daddy Squeeze" Newton has been wowing audiences with offbeat accordion music ever since he won the Nebraska State Accordion Contest back in the 1980s. In the 20 years since he moved to Minnesota, he has become an acclaimed fixture on the music scene, both in the Twin Cities and beyond. A singer, composer and producer, he heads up a bunch of different groups, including the incomparable Café Accordion Orchestra, which specializes in vintage swing, Latin, polka, gypsy swing and French musette. Café Accordion's latest recording, Cinema, is an album of songs from the movies.

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.