Excerpt
SUMMARY: "A Prairie Home Companion" has always been synonymous with one man: Garrison Keillor. Since his departure, the live variety radio program transitioned to a new host. But 35-year-old Chris Thile isn't actually new -- he's been performing on the show since he was 15 and listening since early childhood. Jeffrey Brown reports on how the iconic program is changing -- and how it's remaining the same.
CHRIS THILE, A Prairie Home Companion: You know, I suspect we're going to have some fun this evening.
(CHEERING AND APPLAUSE)
JEFFREY BROWN (NewsHour): The new “A Prairie Home Companion,” still at the beautiful Fitzgerald Theater in downtown St. Paul, Minnesota, still a two-hour variety show presented live on public radio, but now led by 35-year-old Chris Thile.
CHRIS THILE: I'm obsessed with the good things that people make to give to one another. This show is a place, has been one of America's most consistent sources of good things for 40 years. And I feel like it's imperative that it continue.
JEFFREY BROWN: Since its founding in 1974, of course, “A Prairie Home Companion” has been synonymous with one man, Garrison Keillor. He hosted it, wrote it, embodied it with a sense of the people and place he knew in his bones.
GARRISON KEILLOR, A Prairie Home Companion: That's the news from Lake Wobegon, where all the women are strong, all the men are good-looking.
JEFFREY BROWN: Two years ago on this very stage, Keillor told me of the magic of radio and storytelling.
GARRISON KEILLOR: I think there's — there's a lot of power in listening to one person talking to you. And — and this should never be underestimated.
JEFFREY BROWN: It was Keillor who hand-picked his successor, one who'd been performing on the show since age 15 and had listened to it even earlier.
CHRIS THILE: Some of my earliest memories are of hearing Garrison Keillor's voice in our living room, at a point when I…
JEFFREY BROWN: Really?
CHRIS THILE: Yes, when I couldn't even tell the difference between his voice and my father's voice. It's like an authoritative — this authoritative, paternal sound coming from the radio.
JEFFREY BROWN: Chris Thile, who grew up in Southern California, was a child prodigy on the mandolin. With groups like Nickel Creek and the Punch Brothers, he grew into a leader of a new generation of bluegrass-based, genre-bending musicians.
He can seemingly do anything with his instrument. I first spoke to Thile three years ago when he recorded an album of 'Bach Partitas.'
CHRIS THILE: The fugal pieces where they're all about precision, and these second voices come in and then there's a third voice.
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