A Prairie Home Companion with Garrison Keillor

Traditional music fans are abuzz about the Carolina Chocolate Drops, a group of young African-American string band musicians that have come to together to play the fiddle and banjo music of Carolina's Piedmont. Rhiannon Giddens (banjo), who grew up in the Piedmont area, is an Oberlin Conservatory of music grad who fell in love with old-time music. Justin Robinson (fiddle), from a musical family — his mother is an opera singer and cellist, his sister a classical pianist, and his grandfather a harmonica player — played classical violin when he was a kid, but traditional music recently won him over. Born and raised in Phoenix, Arizona, Dom Flemons (harmonica, jug, guitar) has immersed himself in the sounds of yesterday — blues, country and string band traditions — and he branches out into early jazz, rock and original material, too. Sule Greg Wilson (percussion) studied drumming back in his Washington, D.C., school days. He is well versed in folkways from Bolivia to Belfast, Cape Town to the Crescent City, and he has performed with musicians from Nigerian percussionist Babatunde Olatunji to banjoist Tony Trischka to Malian Jali Cheikh Hamala Diabate. Together, these four are taking the string band scene by storm. The Carolina Chocolate Drops' CD, Dona Got a Ramblin' Mind (Music Maker), was released last year.

The New York Times Book Review has called Roy Blount Jr. "one of America's wittiest writers." He certainly is. 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 Feet on the Street: Rambles around New Orleans (Crown), I Am the Cat, Don't Forget That (HarperCollins), Be Sweet (Knopf) and most recently, 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. Recently named president of the Authors Guild and elected to the Fellowship of Southern Writers, he is also a usage consultant to The American Heritage Dictionary. 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.

Jearlyn Steele

A native of Indiana, Jearlyn Steele first sang with her siblings (as The Steele Children) in churches, concert halls and on radio and television. After Jearlyn left home and moved to Minnesota, one by one the rest of the Steele kids followed, and they started singing together again as The Steeles. Now music is the family business. Fans still remember their participation in The Gospel at Colonus at the Guthrie Theater and on Broadway. Jearlyn has voiced many local and national commercials, and she has recorded with top acts including George Clinton and Prince. Her most recent CD is titled Steele Praising Hymn. She is the entertainment reporter for Twin Cities Public Television's public-affairs program, Almanac, and she hosts Steele Talkin', a Sunday-night radio show that originates on WCCO in Minneapolis and is heard in some 30 states nationwide.

Calvin Trillin

Kansas City native Calvin Trillin has been called "perhaps the finest reporter in America." Trillin left Kansas City after high school, went to Yale, spent time in the Army, and then became a writer for Time magazine. In 1963, he became a staff writer for The New Yorker magazine, where he spent 15 years. He then spent seven years writing a column for The Nation, then a decade writing a syndicated column before returning to Time in 1996. Trillin continues to write a comic verse for each weekly edition of The Nation. He has published 19 books, several of which are collections of his columns, and three of which were books on eating: these three were, in 1994, compiled into a single volume, The Tummy Trilogy. His 1996 book, Messages From My Father (Farrar, Straus, and Giroux) is a memoir of Trillin's childhood in Kansas City as the son of a grocer-restaurant owner. His latest book is Family Man, also published by Farrar, Straus, and Giroux.

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.