Audience, Garrison Keillor.
Battle Hymn of the Republic ( Garrison Keillor , Audience ) Rock My Soul in the Bosom of Abraham” ( Garrison Keillor , Audience ) You are my sunshine ( Garrison Keillor , Audience ) I Saw Her Standing There ( Garrison Keillor , Audience )
[undocumented]
I did a solo show in Richmond, Virginia, last weekend, at a supper club called Tin Pan, a very nice joint with good food, where Leo Kottke and Judy Collins and all sorts of quality people have played, which has a little stage in one corner and then rows and rows of tables and a big kitchen, and scoping out the place a couple hours early, I decided I was going to do the show from the floor, walking around with a hand-held microphone. Why be formal and stand on a stage? So I ate fish and chips backstage (very good) and finished an hour before showtime and (what the heck) decided to wander into the club and meet and greet, and it was fun. I ran into a gang of retired Methodist ministers and a lot of northerners and some people who’d been on PHC cruises and it was very sweet and amiable, an old man meeting strangers who considered me a close friend.
The show was fun, I’ll say that much. Unscripted, disorganized, maybe ragged, but it kept moving and jumping along, from bits of song to recited verse to some reminiscence of childhood, some regret at my busy decades of ambitious endeavor, my pleasure at being 82, all ambition faded away, a man on the road amusing himself. I got them to sing some songs, even “The Battle Hymn of the Republic” and they knew the words, even the second verse (“I have seen him in the watchfires of a hundred circling camps, they have builded him an altar in the evening dews and damps, I have read his righteous sentence by the dim and flaring lamps”) and some hymns, old love songs, “You Are My Sunshine,” “I Saw Her Standing There,” and I closed the show with “Rock My Soul in the Bosom of Abraham” and they were clapping along and we sang an “Amen” chorus, and I took a bow and it was done.
I stood outside after, a pleasant spring evening, and shook hands with people as they left — numerous people remarked it was like a minister after church — and I was touched by the feeling, especially among the women. They’d been touched by that performance, oddly (I thought) moved by it, and it dawned on me as I shook hands, people saying, “I’ve been listening to you since 1980” and “I wish my mother were here, she loved you” and “I grew up with you” and “My dad used to record all your shows” — it dawned on me that they were saying goodbye. I’m 82, they figured this was the last time.
I’m a Midwesterner and I was brought up to be modest and not think too highly of yourself. I have a bad habit, when people compliment me, of brushing it away. My wife has called me on this: she said, “When people say they love you, don’t argue with them, it’s insulting.” She’s dead right but the habit is hard to break. It’s in my nature to be critical of my own work and figure out how to make it better, to keep looking forward. But I was moved by the love of those people in Richmond. I’m glad I got to shake all those hands. I am grateful for the life they gave me. I’m also intending to continue and make the work worthy of their appreciation.