A PRAIRIE HOME COMPANION Stops Tonight at the Wharton Center

Garrison Keillor will be embarking on what may be his most ambitious tour to date - 30 cities in 36 days - a coast-to-coast, sea to shining sea bus tour to celebrate his popular radio show A Prairie Home Companion's 41st anniversary. The show will stop tonight, July 30, 2015 at 7:30 p.m. at Wharton Center's Cobb Great Hall.

Tickets to The America the Beautiful Tour are on sale now and are available at the official source to purchase Wharton Center tickets online, whartoncenter.com, at the Auto-Owners Insurance Ticket Office at Wharton Center, or by calling 1-800-WHARTON. From $35.00, plus applicable fees.

The show will be 2 1/2 hours of Sweet Harmony with Garrison Keillor and Sarah Jarosz, Piano Master Richard Dworsky and Fred Newman World's Greatest SFX Man & The Radio Rhubarb Band with Fiddling Richard Kriehn & Chris Siebold Boy Guitarist, Guy Noir, Private Eye & News from Lake Wobegon & Audience Chorale & Poetry Declamation & Other Classics from 41 Years of Radio History. - Garrison Keillor

Garrison Keillor was born in 1942 in Anoka, Minnesota, and began his radio career as a freshman at the University of Minnesota. He went to work for Minnesota Public Radio in 1969, and on July 6, 1974, he hosted the first broadcast of A Prairie Home Companion. Today, some 4 million listeners on more than 600 public radio stations tune in to the show each week. His many books include Lake Wobegon Days, The Book of Guys, and Guy Noir and the Straight Skinny (Viking), and most recently, The Keillor Reader (Viking). He is the host of the daily program The Writer's Almanac and the editor of several anthologies of poetry. In 2006, Keillor played himself in the movie adaptation of his show, a film directed by Robert Altman. In 2007, he opened an independent bookstore, Common Good Books, in St. Paul.

Sarah Jarosz's debut album, Song Up In Her Head, was released in 2009 - at just about the same time she was graduating from high school. She went from cap and gown to a round of summer music festivals, then pulled up stakes in Wimberley, Texas, to enroll in the New England Conservatory of Music. Since earning a degree in Contemporary Improvisation, this singer, songwriter, and multi-instrumentalist (mandolin, octave mandolin, guitar, and banjo) makes her home in New York City. Build Me Up From Bones (Sugar Hill) is her most recent recording.

Sound-effects man Fred Newman is an actor, writer, musician, and sound designer for film and TV. He is author of the book (and CD/CD-ROM) MouthSounds. Fred admits that, growing up, he was unceremoniously removed from several classrooms, "once by my bottom lip."

Richard Dworsky & The Radio Rhubarb Band is an all-purpose roots quintet covering blues, jug band, primitive jazz, good timey, R&B, swing, and hillbilly, with occasional ventures into classical, romantic, French cafe?, music hall, surfer, spa, and Scandihoovian. The band is: Richard Dworsky (music director, keyboards), Richard Kriehn (fiddle, mandolin), Chris Siebold (guitar), Bernie Dresel (percussion) and Larry Kohut (bass).

Visit www.prairiehome.org for more information.

To post a comment, you must register and login.