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 many more 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... 1985 Orpheum Theater, St Paul MN 1991 Lamb's Theater, New York NY 1998 Weidner Center, Green Bay WI 2002 Fitzgerald Theater, St Paul MN 2003 Bushnell Center for the Performing Arts, Hartford CT 2006 Morsani Hall, Tampa FL 2014 Mark Twain House & Museum, Hartford CT
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. This archive does not knowingly include re-broadcast or compilation shows- only original shows on the date performed.
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...
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!
So far, we've documented: - 2826 shows/appearances - 1053 participants - 4063 song performances - 1543 newspaper articles - 369 'News' reports- 72 of which are full transcriptions