A Prairie Home Companion is a national treasure- an important body of work that will have a lasting impact on generations to come. We are committed to providing a free, comprehensive archive of the show and its related brethren. More accurately, this is an archive of Garrison's shows and appearances- reaching beyond a PHC.
The official Prairie Home site and GarrisonKeillor.com are both excellent references. The official site, however, lacks a few important things: It a) has no detailed, native search engine, b) has very little information on the first 20+ years of the show, and c) does not appear to go beyond the scope of broadcast shows. Garrison's site contains additional shows, but has no search engine and can be quite a challenge (impossible?) to chronologically navigate. Our goal is to fill in the gaps, improve navigation, and make searching easier and more powerful.
Today in history... 1976 , 1993 Town Hall, New York NY 1999 Fitzgerald Theater , St Paul MN 2004 Fitzgerald Theater, St Paul MN 2009 Town Hall, New York NY 2010 Paramount Theatre, Seattle WA 2011 Ulster Performing Arts Center, Kingston NY 2015 Carson Center, Paducah KY
Many (most?) of Garrison's shows were never broadcast and go under names other than PHC - The American Radio Company of the Air, Lake Wobegon Revisited, Lake Wobegon Loyalty Days, Symphony shows, Summer Love Tour, The Story of Guys, The Sweet Corn Show, Annual Pre-Millennium Tour, Rhubarb Tour, book readings, etc. This site documents these shows as well as they are often similar in format to a PHC. We also document PHC rebroadcasts, delayed broadcasts, compilation and studio shows.
With our comprehensive search engine, you can look at the data in many different ways and ask: -How many times was the show in city? state? venue? -How often and when was song/sketch/artist featured on the show? -What songs has artist sung on the show and when? -My favorite resident of Lake Wobegon is this person. Show me all the times she was talked about. and much more...
So far, we've documented: - 2894 show/appearance dates - 1277 participants - 6280 song performances - 1544 newspaper articles - 391 'News' reports- 141 of which are full transcriptions
Click the Shows link on the menu, find the show you attended, and tell us all about it at the bottom of the page using your Facebook profile.
The sheer volume of data associated with these shows is staggering and we've got a lot of archiving yet to do! You can help by listening to shows and documenting them here as you listen. Or by converting existing analog paper into digital gold by helping with data entry. All you need is a login. Send us an email, convince us you're a faithful Wobegonian (it helps to have an existing editor vouch for you), and we'll hook you up with all the details!