Tonight at the Les Schwab Amphitheater, Garrison Keillor and the entire Prairie Home Companion gang will be recording a show live.
Tickets are still available at the gate for this show, which begins tonight at 7pm.
If you can, make it down there for this, and here's why.
Garrison Keillor is a sort of storytelling god and his voice makes we want to smile and/or sit in a rocking chair. Back when I was in college, I made my income by driving a bus. Not a school bus or a city bus, but a college bus. Actually, it wasn't really a bus, but rather a large van that most people called a bus.
I'd drive around the west side of Los Angeles, picking up and dropping off my fellow students at destinations of their choosing. Most of this entailed transporting drunk people to places where they could become even more drunk.
But when I pulled weekend afternoon shifts, I'd play A Prairie Home Companion at a moderate volume, hoping my passengers, like me, would be mesmerized by Keillor's soothing stories of Lutheran picnics and Lake Wobegon. I hoped they'd begin to think of Keillor like a surrogate grandpa. I know I did.
This didn't happen. They almost always asked me to change the station, but I rarely did, citing a non-existent university-instituted bylaw requiring all school vehicles to exclusively play public radio.
So yeah, that's why I love me some Garrison Keillor, and you should too. I'm sure he'll say some witty things about Bend. Actually, I guarantee it. Again, tickets are still available at the gate!
