MOORHEAD -- It was a quiet week in Lake Wobegone. And it was a quiet crowd Wednesday night that gathered at Trollwood Performing Arts School to listen to Lake Wobegone's most famous resident.
Garrison Keillor brought his folksy humor and harmonies to the south Moorhead location for a stop on his "Prairie Home Companion Summer Love Tour."
On the first cool night of September, Keillor and his company of musicians kept the crowd laughing warmly.
Dressed in a white linen suit, red tie and matching trademark red shoes, Keillor walked onto the stage.
"It's good to be here with you on the prairie," Keillor said as an introduction. "It's good to be here on the high bank of the wrong-way Red River."
ADVERTISEMENT
He worked the last line into his first tune, a humorous variation of "Home on the Range," with musical guest Sara Watkins joining him on fiddle.
Ever the showman, Keillor immediately broke through the theater's imaginary fourth wall, strolling into the crowd singing the tune. Many fans took pictures of the writer.
The estimated 2,000 ticket-holders were fascinated with the writer's stories and songs.
Fans also took a shine to Watkins, a member of the bluegrass trio Nickel Creek. Her lilting voice soared above Keillor's deep tone on "Dear Someone."
Other standards of the public radio show were included as well, like a skit about English majors and the vocal sound effects of Fred Newman, all of which drew laughs, as did digs at Ralph Nader as a romantic and the benefits of the bench seat.
"The people who built that car made it with more than transportation in mind," Keillor said.
Keillor acknowledged the radio show's namesake, Moorhead's Prairie Home Cemetery just a few miles away, with a history of being the final resting place for pioneering Norwegians.
"And here we are on the verge of fall, and fall leads us in one direction, and we need not think about it. I'm sorry I brought it up," he said. "There are storytellers in Lake Wobegone. I'm not the only one, but I am the most truthful."
ADVERTISEMENT
Keillor again walked up and down the aisles for his signature "news from Lake Wobegone."
The Forum of Fargo-Moorhead and the Herald are Forum Communications Co. newspapers.
