RADIO REVIEW: A Prairie Home Companion at Tanglewood

Submitted by Seth Rogovoy on June 27, 2010 - 5:07pm

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TANGLEWOOD
A Prairie Home Companion with Garrison Keillor
June 26, 2010

Review by Nichole Dupont

Garrison Keillor at Tanglewood [photo by Hilary Scott/courtesy BSO]

There’s something about a man in red sneakers. Especially if he’s an impressive six-foot-five, sixty-eight years old, and flanked by gorgeous, crystalline-voiced women singing love ballads. It’s just another day in the life of radio icon Garrison Keillor, who, despite the threatening sky and drizzle, came round once again to charm the Tanglewood audience Saturday night for the 125^th live broadcast of A Prairie Home Companion.

Keillor, who was wearing a cool white linen suit, red tie, and, of course, his signature red sneakers, was joined by the red-headed Twin Cities songstress, Andra Suchy. The two made an odd yet handsome pair strolling and singing down the aisle of the Koussevitsky Music Shed and greeting lawn spectators with snarky comments (“You have to suffer to really appreciate the show”) intermingled with the fine strains of the Righteous Brothers’ “Unchained Melody.”

Keillor’s cowboy baritone rang out pure through the misty night, complemented by Suchy’s wispy soprano; a rose wrapped ‘round a briar. Suchy, with a flower perched romantically above one ear, wasn’t the only pretty lady to accompany Keillor at Tanglewood. Hilary Thavis, the Italian-born (to Minnesotan parents, as Keillor noted many times) lead vocalist for the blues band Gaia Groove, also lent her powerful voice to the broadcast. The diminutive, almost mousy Thavis, clad in a bright sundress, strapped out classic blues chords set to modern issues, singing “Facebook Blues,” an original piece about suspicious wall posts, as well as “Many Loves,” a number set to Allen Ginsberg’s poem of the same title. The audience craned, nearly tearful, as Thavis crooned about “many loves I never found” and “many loves have said goodbye.”

It wasn’t all melancholy at Tanglewood. The Guy’s All-Star Shoe Band livened the stage with some mean guitar-picking and rollicking piano numbers reminiscent of Jerry Lee Lewis and the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band. These classic folksy tunes were interspersed with Keillor’s signature humor, as he and Tim Russell, the “man of many voices,” had the audience rolling with a skit entitled simply “The End of Men.” In it, they bemoaned the demise of male power and creativity in an era where women have quickly and viciously taken over this arena.

“We had Beethoven and Mozart, and Shakespeare,” Keillor said, his voiced tinged with nostalgia. “We’ve had a good run.”

As a testament to his words, Ruth Moody, Nicky Mehta, and Heather Masse of the Winnipeg-based, all-woman folk band The Wailin’ Jennys, captured the show with their intuitive, angelic a cappella strains, among them a surfing song, “Ocean Park Angel,” performed with Keillor, and the African-American spiritual “Motherless Child.”

Of course, there was news of Pastor Liv, from Lake Wobegon, whose mysterious power of healing was put into question by the townsfolk; Pastor Liv, who tamed bears and dogs and whose murky past included winning a fart contest at seminary school under “extenuating circumstances.”

Garrison Keillor messing around with sound effects engineer Fred Newman at Tanglewood [photo by Hilary Scott/courtesy BSO]

And there were the trials and tribulations of Guy Noir, private eye, who was asked to investigate the true origins of the grandson of Edith Wharton and Henry James, a supposed heir apparent who threatened to take The Mount and convert it into a dirt bike racing school. The “unreliable narrative” of these wild stories, the ones we’ve come to adore, was set to the incredible and necessarily sporadic voice talents of sound-effects man and Keillor’s wing man, Fred Newman.

As the music quieted and all of the jokes and stories were told, as sound board lights died and crickets took over the acoustics, as families, still giggling, packed up their coolers and umbrellas and lovers strolled barefoot through the Maze, Keillor and his audience were finally convinced that summer and love had arrived in the Berkshires.

Berkshire Living editorial assistant Nichole Dupont is a regular reviewer for BerkshireLive.

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