This August, a coast-to-coast concert tour takes on the everlasting theme of romantic love.

Join host Garrison Keillor, Nickel Creek’s Sara Watkins, the Guy’s All-Star Shoe Band, and sound-effects man Fred Newman for tender duets and ballads, poetry (Poe, Shakespeare, Anonymous), stories of passion and marriage, and Mr. Keillor’s intermission walk through the audience for the sing-along of “Unchained Melody” and “Can’t Help Falling in Love with You.” All this and favorite elements of A Prairie Home Companion — Guy Noir, Dusty and Lefty, the News from Lake Wobegon — during an entertaining date night for all ages.

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Notes from the Road

September 13, 2010

The Last Day of Summer Love

PHC staffer Ella Schovanec is on the Summer Love tour with Garrison, Sara Watkins, Fred Newman and The Guy's All-Star Shoe Band and will update us periodically from the road.

Our last stop, Charlottesville, Virginia, brought us back to the bowl of The Blue Ridge Mountains. Thomas Jefferson built his essay in architecture here: Monticello. He planted over a thousand kinds of fruit trees, experimented with hundreds of vegetable varieties, read five books at a time, and wrote The Declaration of Independence. It makes you feel shiftless in comparison. And while I was touring the hills, our cast and crew were working on their own masterpiece.

In my opinion, they saved the best show for last. Robin and Linda Williams, our resident Virginians, were right at home here and the crowd was crazy for them. Sara Watkins and Richard Kriehn nearly brought down the house with their dueling fiddles. And for the first time this tour, Rich Dworsky sang the Ketchup Advisory Board song, "Life is flowing, like ketchup on bean curds..."

After the show, Fred Newman described the tour as the best kind of summer camp, and it was all that and more.

Our Summer Love tour came to an end, but just like summer gives way to fall, we'll be back broadcasting from St. Paul for the street dance on September 25th. See you there.