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... 1974 Variety Hall Theater, St Paul MN 1985 Neil Blaisdale Auditorium, Honolulu HI 1988 St Paul's Episcopal Church, Paterson NJ 1991 5th Avenue Public Library, New York NY 1993 Heinz Hall, Pittsburgh PA 1996 Town Hall, New York NY 1997 , Dallas TX 1997 , Houston TX 2005 , New York NY 2010 Hershey Theater, Hershey PA 2011 Count Basie Theater, Red Bank NJ 2013 Music Hall at Fair Park, Dallas TX 2016 Performing Arts Center, San Luis Obispo CA 2016 Classical Academy, San Luis Obispo CA 2017 Strand Theatre, York PA
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...
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: - 2850 show/appearance dates - 1241 participants - 5804 song performances - 1544 newspaper articles - 384 'News' reports- 107 of which are full transcriptions