A Prairie Home Companion with Garrison Keillor

Will Farley

Last month, Will Farley took top honors at the 2009 Poetry Out Loud National Recitation Contest, an arts education program and competition sponsored by the National Endowment for the Arts and the Poetry Foundation. He advanced from a competitive field of some 300,000 students who participated across the country. A senior — and class president — at Washington-Lee High School in Arlington, Virginia, Will plans to enter Bucknell University in the fall. He credits Poetry Out Loud with making public speaking a lot easier. And, he adds, "It's shown me that there are poems out there for everyone."

Greg Brown

Greg Brown's mother played electric guitar, his grandfather played banjo, and his father was a Holy Roller preacher in the Hacklebarney section of Iowa, where the Gospel and music are a way of life. Brown’s first professional singing job came at age 18 in New York City, running hootenannies (folksinger get-togethers) at the legendary Gerdes Folk City. After a year, Brown moved west to Los Angeles and Las Vegas, where he was a ghostwriter for Buck Ram, founder of the Platters. Tired of the fast-paced life, Brown traveled with a band for a few years, and even quit playing for a while before he moved back to Iowa and began writing songs and playing in midwestern clubs and coffeehouses. Brown’s songwriting has been lauded by many, and his songs have been performed by Willie Nelson, Carlos Santana, Michael Johnson, Shawn Colvin, and Mary Chapin Carpenter. He has also recorded more than a dozen albums, including his 1986 release, "Songs of Innocence and of Experience," when he put aside his own songwriting to set poems of William Blake to music. "One Big Town," recorded in 1989, earned Brown three and a half stars in Rolling Stone, chart-topping status in AAA and The Gavin Report’s Americana rankings and Brown’s first Indie Award from NAIRD (National Association of Independent Record Distributors). "The Poet Game," his 1994 CD, received another Indie award from NAIRD. His critically acclaimed 1996 release, "Further In," was a finalist for the same award. Rolling Stone’s four-star review of "Further In" called Brown “a wickedly sharp observer of the human condition.” 1997’s "Slant 6 Mind" (Red House Records) earned Brown his second Grammy nomination. His latest CD, "One Night" (Red House), is a re-release of a 1983 live performance originally on Minneapolis’ Coffeehouse Extemporé Records

Meta Weiss

Meta Weiss has studied cello since age four and has been on stage almost that long. By the time she was seven, she was performing with several orchestras. Her first solo concert – in the Crocker Mansion in Hillsborough, California – came at the age of 10, when her performance included the Bach Suite No. III, Beethoven Sonata No. 2 in G minor, and Paganini Variations on One String. Now 20, Weiss is a student at the Shepherd School of Music at Rice University where she performs regularly with the Shepherd School Symphony and Chamber Orchestras. Her recent engagements include a recording session and concert in New York City with jazz singer Tammy Brown and guitarist Stanley Jordan.

Robert Bly

Robert Bly was just named Minnesota's poet laureate — the first to be so honored. He was born on a farm in Madison, Minnesota, in 1926, and has lived in the area for much of his life. After his graduation from Harvard, he devoted his life to poetry. In 1958, he launched a poetry magazine called The Fifties. (It was renamed as each new decade dawned.) He is the author of numerous poetry collections — including his most recent, Eating the Honey of Words: New and Selected Poems (HarperCollins) — in addition to anthologies, translations and works of nonfiction. In 1967, Bly won the National Book Award for The Light Around the Body.

Brad Paisley

Brad Paisley grew up in Glen Dale, West Virginia. When he was about 8, his grandfather gave him a guitar and taught him how to play. Brad says, "His advice to me was, 'Anything that's going wrong in your life, you can pick this guitar up and it'll go away.'" Paisley soon began singing in church and at civic meetings for the Lion's Club and the Elks. At 12, he wrote his first song, "Born on Christmas Day." His junior high school principal heard it and asked him to perform it at the next Rotary Club meeting. The program director for WWVA in Wheeling was in the audience and asked Brad to appear on Jamboree USA. Brad was a hit and became a regular on the program for eight years, working as an opening act for people like Roy Clark and Little Jimmy Dickens. While enrolled at Belmont College in Nashville, Brad served a college internship at ASCAP. His co-workers there were so impressed with Brad's songs that they set up an appointment with talent scouts at EMI Music Publishing. A week after graduation, Paisley signed a songwriting deal with the company. And after his work on demo recordings caught the attention of Arista Records' A&R Department, he landed his first recording deal. In 2000, Brad won the Country Music Association's Horizon Award and the Academy of Country Music's prize for best new male vocalist. The following year, he received his first Grammy Award nomination. In 2001, he was inducted into Grand Ole Opry. Brad's most recent CD is called Time Well Wasted (Arista Nashville).

Elvis Costello

In 1977, a young London pub-rocker named Declan McManus signed with Stiff Records, changed his name to Elvis Costello, and recorded his first album, the Nick Lowe-produced My Aim Is True. It won the Rolling Stone Critics Poll for best album. Rock critic Greil Marcus wrote that Costello “emerged ... as one of the unquestioned originals of modern pop music.” Three decades later, Costello still is. As a solo artist and with his band, the Attractions, he has turned out a string of groundbreaking recordings. In 2003, he was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Elvis Costello’s latest CD, Secret, Profane and Sugarcane (Hear Music), is scheduled for release in June.

Nick Lowe

Singer, songwriter, guitarist, producer Nick Lowe has certainly left his stamp on popular music, starting with his stint with the pub-rock band Brinsley Schwarz, a strong influence on 1970s punk music, and during his years with Rockpile. His songs include "Cruel to Be Kind" and "(What's So Funny 'Bout) Peace, Love and Understanding," which, in addition to being covered by dozens of other artists and appearing on the soundtrack to The Bodyguard, is still an anti-war anthem after three decades. Labour of Lust, The Impossible Bird and The Convincer are among his acclaimed albums. His latest recording, At My Age (Redeye Distribution), is described by the Village Voice as having "a benevolent, whimsical, grandfatherly air that's both sincere and devilishly devious."

Nellie McKay

She started out wanting to be a jazz musician. Now when singer, songwriter, actor, stand-up comedian and activist Nellie McKay sits down at the piano or picks up the ukulele, you're likely hear some blend of jazz, pop, hip-hop, cabaret or vaudeville. The London-born, New York-based performer — who spent her teenage years in the Poconos — has found quite a following with her quirky musical approach. She's nothing if not outspoken, and the causes she holds dear — animal rights, for instance — are apt to turn up in her unpredictable song lyrics. Her 2004 debut CD was called Get Away from Me — a play on the title of Norah Jones' Come Away with Me. Her latest recording is Obligatory Villagers (Hungry Mouse).

Maxine Kumin

Former U.S. — and New Hampshire — Poet Laureate Maxine Kumin grew up in the Germantown area of Philadelphia and was educated at Radcliffe. She is the author of 16 books of poems — most recently, Still to Mow (W. W. Norton & Company) — in addition to novels, collections of essays, children's books, and the memoir Inside the Halo and Beyond: Anatomy of a Recovery, which chronicles her recovery after a near-fatal carriage-driving accident. For Up Country, her 1972 poetry collection, she was awarded the Pulitzer Prize, only one of numerous honors she has received over the years. Maxine Kumin and her husband of more than six decades, Victor Kumin, make their home on a farm in Warner, New Hampshire.

Iris Dement

Iris Dement was born in Paragould, Arkansas, the last of 14 children in her family. Her parents were farmers, but in 1964, after hitting hard times, they sold their farm and moved west to California. DeMent's parents passed on to her their love of music: her mom sang around the house and at church, and as a young man her dad played fiddle at dances around Arkansas. Her older sisters formed a gospel group called The DeMent Sisters and eventually recorded an album. Iris DeMent began writing songs at 25, and while living in Kansas City, she taught herself to play the guitar. Her songs draw directly upon her own life and the people within it. She says of her parents: "They have been the most important people in my life. I probably care about music the way I do because of them." Eventually, DeMent moved to Nashville, where her performances led to a recording contract with Rounder/Philo Records. In 1993, DeMent moved to Kansas City, Missouri. That same year, DeMent's first Philo album, Infamous Angel, was re-released by Warner Bros. Records. DeMent teamed up with producer Randy Scruggs for her most recent recording, The Way I Should (1996, Warner Bros. Records), which features guest appearances by Mark Knopfler, Delbert McClinton, and banjo great Earl Scruggs.