Thile's First Prairie Home Companion

[BradKlein]

Anais Mitchell will be performing on the coming show - fresh off a break-out extended run of her folk-opera, Hadestown. It's a retelling of the Orpheus and Eurydice story. More than 10 years in the making, but the signature song in the production gained a strange currency due to the place of the immigration debates in this year's elections.

[Steve Ostrander]

I didn't hear the show but I applaud CT for taking it on. Keillor is a tough act to follow, but I think CT was a great choice. Change is inevitable, some will like it, some won't. I wish him great success.

[fatt-dad]

I didn't watch it or listen to it, but that doesn't stop me from having an opinion. This is, after all, the internet!

Garrison Keiller somehow bothered me - I mean just the lilt of his voice. I'm a fan-boy of Chris Thile! I do need to get the pod-cast and get hip on this big change!

I also want an octave mandolin!

f-d

[Tobin]

The old show under GK was decent, but seemed to cater to folks who remembered the 'good old days' of radio. Today's entertainment market is very, very tough to exist within, and I think they made a wise choice in changing it before it had the chance to become completely obsolete. Taking a young star who is a true musician and entertainer, and letting him rejuvenate the show and build the appeal to a wider (younger) audience made a lot of sense, from a business standpoint.

And I think it's a good career move for Chris Thile as well. Not that his career needed any boosting, but this will give him a much broader resume and allow him to build a wider network of musicians by being in a fixed location/venue, rather than randomly touring and playing with others on the road. If he plays this right, he could make PHC the proving ground for a lot of up-and-coming bands, and use his influence to do much more for the music scene. This has all the makings of something wonderful for the music genres that often get ignored. I think his personality type and energy will do a lot for music and musicians.

The big down side is that a lot of his creativity will now be directed towards the show. I don't know if he will have time for touring, writing new music, or doing anything else that is outside of the show.

[Timbofood]

I will sit back and if I catch the show on Saturday evening, sip a glass of something and be open minded about the direction, if it's Sunday, I will do the same with a nice hot cup of coffee.
Time marches on, things must change or they die.
Mr. Keillor built an entire city, complete with business people, out if his imagination, it's a style thing. Should Mr. Thile choose to change the style of the show it is his prerogative not anyone else's. If he is up to the task and can develop the following a which the originator of the show did, more power to him. If he does that (with or without my taste entering the equation) I say Huzzah!
If the widespread community chooses the opposite the show may wither and die, C'est la vie. One show is really too early to say which way the show is going to go, be patient, give the guy a chance to get his broadcasting legs, performance, he understands well.
Oh crud, did I just start the "What is REAL radio entertainment?" Controversy? Sorry folks, it just happened.

[farmerjones]

Oh crud, did I just start the "What is REAL radio entertainment?" Controversy? Sorry folks, it just happened.

What's a radio?

Where's the Devil's Advocate emogi?

[Polecat]

I enjoyed the show. I discovered PHC about 1995 on the American Forces Network here in Germany - never having known the sort of radio show it was obviously a tongue-in-cheek tribute to (I grew up in England on the BBC), I appreciated Keillor's gentle humour, and although his singing isn't to everyones' taste, I liked the way he would "have a go", no matter the genre or star status of the guest he was singing with. Chris Thile is a different kettle of fish - as a musician and singer he knocks spots off old Garrison (and more or less everybody in the house band, too), as a presenter he has a long way to go, but it was obvious in the show that he knows that himself, and isn't afraid to acknowledge it, whilst at the same time remaining highly professional. I respect that.
As regards the "business standpoint", I personally don't care - any form of performance is like sex; if you do it for love it can be fantastic, if you do it for money it's bound to be disappointing.

[JEStanek]

I'm 47 and enjoyed PHC for decades and enjoy GK's writing and show. I'm not a a super faithful listener but, am excited for the new direction.

Jamie

[mandolinstew]

I'm 64 and the "good old days of radio"were freeform fm and firesign theater.You would have to be in your eightys to remember Jack Benny and Amos and Andy(That Rochester was a pisser)

[CarlM]

The young were never his core audience, but above a certain age most everyone discovered him.

I first heard him on radio in the late 1970s. It was college FM stations so most of the audience was young then. It's hard to remember but I may have been also. I remember my wife's father hearing it in the mid 1980s and becoming a constant listener. He was of the generation that remembered the old radio shows. Most of that generation is gone now.

as a musician and singer he knocks spots off old Garrison (and more or less everybody in the house band, too

His new house band is supposed to include Paul Kowert (Punch Brothers bassist), Chris Eldridge, Brittany Haas, Sarah Jarosz and Aoife O'Donovan as well as a drummer named Ted Poor. They are keeping Rich Dworsky. That group can keep up musically with Chris. I would pay to see that band in concert.

Garrison did the right thing. He spent a couple of years trying different guest hosts and working this succession out. He is not getting younger. The alternatives were to retire and shut it down, keep going till he had a heart attack and ended it or kind of let it fade away and try to find someone in a hurry to sort of keep it going under the gun when he became incapable. This way he can hang around and enjoy watching it grow into something new again. If there are problems they can call on him for help. I hope they can do some sketches and comedy as well as the music but some of Garrison's bits were getting stale. It's not easy coming up with good new stuff every week. Thile has as good a chance as anyone at making it work.

[allenhopkins]

I'm 64 and the "good old days of radio"were freeform fm and firesign theater.You would have to be in your eightys to remember Jack Benny and Amos and Andy(That Rochester was a pisser)

Well, I'm 73, and can remember radio "shows": Great Gildersleeve, Fibber McGee & Molly, Straight Arrow, Lone Ranger, Sky King, Don McNeil's Breakfast Club, Stan Freberg, and above all, Bob & Ray. Sat in my Mom's kitchen while she listened to a flurry of 15-minute soap operas on afternoon radio.

The people who made those shows took advantage of what most of us see as a disadvantage: you can't see what's happening on the radio, so with well-produced sounds and precise description, you use imagination to create the scene in your mind. I'll never forget my disappointment with the Sky King TV show; on the radio, he had two planes, the propellor-driven Songbird and a jet called the Flying Arrow, but on TV he only had his Cessna. Only radio could give Sky King a jet plane.

Keillor and his crew exploited the same situation, and you could get private eyes and cowboys, space stations and submarines, night clubs and mythical Minnesota towns. All it took was a bit of imagination, some suspension of disbelief. and a taste for determinedly whimsical humor. Not everyone has that taste, as previous posts prove, but enough people do to give Prairie Home Companion one of the longest runs in public radio, and a unique place as an old-style "variety show" in an age of "reality" TV and vid-based music.

One thing I'm glad they're retaining is the live audience. I think that audience reaction is an integral part of the formula that made PHC work, and will, I hope, make it persist into the future.

I wish Chris T all the luck in the world. IMHO, the success of PHC over the years proved that there are people out there still susceptible to the appeal of the "radio show," not all old f-rts like me. Will the show survive without the skits, sound effects, and Keillor's distinct voice? Time, as always, will tell.

[Timbofood]

Stan Freberg was a GENIUS!
His "St. George and the Dragonnet" was/is one of the funniest bits ever written!

"I'm charging you with a 4-12."
"What's a 4-12"
"Overacting"

As you say Allen, "Time will tell"