Doors 7:00 Show 8:00

Keillor & Company is an evening of stand-up, storytelling, audience song, and poetry starring Garrison Keillor and
featuring pianist Dan Chouinard, vocalist Prudence Johnson and musician Dean Magraw coming to the Uptown
Theater on Wednesday, February 8, 2023. Tickets go on sale this Friday 11/4 at 10:00 a.m. at Ticketmaster.com
and the Uptown Theater Box Office.
There are sung sonnets, limericks and musical jokes, and the thread that runs through it is the beauty of growing
old. Despite the inconvenience, old age brings the contentment of LESS IS MORE. Your mistakes and big ambitions
are behind you, nothing left to prove, and small things give you great pleasure because that’s what’s left. (“I was
unhappy in college because it was a requirement for an intellectual, but then I went into show business and
discovered that people won’t pay to be made unhappy, their kids will do it for free.) There is the News from Lake
Wobegon, a town booming with new entrepreneurs, makers of artisanal firewood and gourmet meatloaf, breeders
of composting worms, and dogs trained to do childcare. But some things endure, such as the formation of the Living
Flag on Main Street, citizens in tight formation wearing red, white or blue caps, and Mr. Keillor among them,
standing close to old neighbors, Myrtle Krebsbach (“Truckstop”) and Julie Christensen (“Bruno, The Fishing Dog”)
and Clint Bunsen. And an a cappella sing-along with the audience singing from memory an odd medley of patriotic
songs, pop standards, hymns, and ending with the national anthem.
Dan Chouinard is a St. Paul-based honky-tonk pianist, concert soloist and accompanist, street accordionist, sing-along enabler, Italian and French teacher, and bicycling vagabond. He’s been writer and host of a number of live historywith-music shows broadcast on Minnesota Public Radio and Twin Cities Public Television. He played on a dozen live broadcasts of A Prairie Home Companion plus a half dozen APHC cruises, and served as rehearsal pianist
for Meryl Streep, Lily Tomlin, and Lindsay Lohan on the 2005 movie. He’s featured on a number of recordings with APHC regulars Peter Ostroushko (RIP),
Prudence Johnson, and Maria Jette.
Prudence Johnson’s long and happy career as a singer, writer, and teacher has landed her on the musical theater stage, in two feature films (A River Runs Through It, A Prairie Home Companion), on a national radio show (several long stints on A Prairie Home Companion), and on concert stages across North America and occasionally Europe. She has released more than a dozen recordings, including albums dedicated to the music of Hoagy Carmichael and
Greg Brown, and a collection of international lullabies.
Composer/ arranger/ producer/ guitarist Dean Magraw performed and recorded extensively with the Ukrainian American virtuoso Peter Ostroushko over several decades. Magraw fine-tuned his passionate “Heavy Meadow” Musical style(s) from years of performing and recording with some of the finest
musicians in the North America, Europe, and Japan.
“Dean Magraw… so liquid, lyrical and effortless it’s like listening to a dancer.” -Steve Tibbetts
“Dean Magraw’s guitar playing transcends, transports and lifts the soul to a higher level as he weaves, cajoles and entices every note from his
instrument… Just as important are the silences with which he knits his music… these can only come with being at one with one’s art….” -Mairéad Ní Mhaonaigh (Altan)