Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: MONDAY, February 7, 1994 TAG: 9402080001
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: By JOE KENNEDY STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
Nearly 20 years ago, he traveled to tiny Hiltons, in Scott County, to interview Janette Carter of the Carter Family. He planned to write a magazine story about the family's role in the development of country music.
``That was, I believe, in '75,'' Keillor said the other day over his car phone in Minnesota, ``because Maybelle was still alive and I interviewed her in Nashville.''
He spoke to Janette and a passel of other Carters, but he never wrote the piece. His explanation is vintage Keillor, delivered with the rhythms and the sagacity for which he is now famous.
``I wasn't sure I had the whole story,'' he said, ``and it's such an interesting story, that family. They have a wonderful myth, and I like the myth of the Carter Family, but I also like the real story, except I could only guess at it.
``I think they're more interested in talking about the distant-faced past than the more recent, more interesting, too interesting past. I understand that completely, but having sniffed out that there was more to tell, I was not satisfied with retailing the beautiful myth of the Carter Family.''
If he ever writes the story - and he still wants to - he'll have to find another editor, he said. The initial one has moved on. He didn't believe Keillor's excuse, anyway.
``Editors never do,'' the writer said. ``He thought it was indolence.''
During that period, Keillor, inspired by the live Saturday night broadcasts of the Grand Ole Opry in Nashville, was beginning his own quaint radio show from St. Paul, Minn. He called it ``A Prairie Home Companion,'' and he filled it with skits, comedy songs, eclectic musicians and singers and a monologue called ``The News from Lake Wobegon'' - a fictitious place where, as he is forever saying, ``All the women are strong, all the men are good-looking and all the children are above average.''
The program was everything that radio used to be and is no longer, and it was an award-winning hit. And still is. It's carried by more than 265 public radio stations each Saturday night from 6 to 8 (and rebroadcast in Roanoke from noon-2 on Sundays). Keillor, with six books in print, including ``Lake Wobegon Days,'' is a certified star and even, much as he may dislike it, a celebrity.
Keillor will come to the Roanoke Civic Center auditorium for shows Tuesday and Wednesday at 7:30 p.m. The shows are sellouts - 4,950 people will settle in to see him and his entertainers, having paid $21 and $24 for their tickets. This comes as no surprise, for Keillor and The Hopeful Gospel Quartet sold out Burruss Hall at Virginia Tech in Blacksburg in July 1992. Not even the lack of air-conditioning could dampen people's enthusiasm that night, though the people were dampened considerably.
Keillor's Roanoke shows will be taped and the better elements combined for a national broadcast, probably in the summer, when his troupe is on hiatus, Keillor said.
He will be accompanied, again, by Robin and Linda Williams from Augusta County and by Kate McKenzie. Together the four make up the Hopeful quartet. Other Keillor standbys, including Jay Ungar and Molly Mason, musician Butch Thompson and sound-effects man Tom Keith, also will perform.
In a sense, Keillor's Roanoke appearances are a homecoming, for he has been a staple of Saturday night programming over WVTF (89.1 FM), the public radio outlet in the region, for many years.
Among his fans is David Bowers, Roanoke's mayor, who proudly notes that Roanoke was chosen as the tour's kickoff point, and given two shows, to boot. Other stops include Spartanburg, S.C., Durham and Greensboro, N.C., Myrtle Beach and Charleston, S.C., and Orlando, Fla.
Bowers, said Steve Mills, the WVTF station manager, had encouraged him to bring Keillor in even before this opportunity arose.
``I'm always thinking of ways of promoting our city,'' the mayor said. Keillor often takes his show on the road, and he when does, he frequently talks about the cities he visits. Richmond has gotten the national limelight that way, and so has Birmingham, Ala., to name only two spots.
Keillor talks about lots of things, actually, and while most are interesting, they are not all funny. He is a humorist, not a comedian, a social commentator, not a clown. One recent Saturday night, his monologue involved a man under financial pressure who stole money from the high school sports concession fund. When the money got lost, he had to borrow the same sum from his father. He narrowly avoided exposure.
It was a typical Keillor tale, riveting and with a moral at the end, though with fewer laughs than most.
``It was a story meant to illustrate, I think, an interesting point,'' he said. ``The point was that to reform a sinner it may be better for him to almost get caught, but escape, rather than be caught and punished, because in our punishment of other people there is so much of our own cruelty.''
When we punish people we sometimes destroy them, he said. ``We don't mind destroying strangers, because they are an abstraction to us - the criminal element, the drug dealer, the felon, all manner of criminals. But we do not want to destroy our neighbors and relatives. We want to find a way of reforming the thief and the liar and the person who is consumed with anger or covetousness, and allow him to live a life.''
That distinction, he said, is one of the weaknesses of our legal system, especially in small towns, ``where the law is selectively enforced.''
The current political groundswell for tougher sentencing and building more prisons is sincere, he said, ``but we only mean it against people whom we do not know. Very few of us would ever send one of our own to prison.''
Bowers said he hopes the visit will give Keillor ``an opportunity to tell the rest of the world or nation about what a wonderful, beautiful and interesting place we live in.''
Keillor will get a glimpse of the city when he addresses the Roanoke Kiwanis Club Wednesday at the Radisson-Patrick Henry Hotel. The meeting is open to members and their guests. He will sign books at Books, Strings and Things on the Roanoke City Market from 2 to 3 that afternoon. That's a coup for store owner Richard Walters, who said he persuaded Keillor, in part, by telling him about Guy's Restaurant in downtown Roanoke. Keillor's radio shows frequently include commercials for fictitious enterprises, including Guy's Shoes.
If time allows, the mayor would love to take the bespectacled writer and radio star on a tour of Roanoke's high points, or at least to the Mill Mountain Star. But time may be a problem. Keillor will arrive in town Tuesday and go directly to the civic center for a rehearsal.
``Sometimes, when you're on the road, all you get to see is what anybody else would see on the road, which is hotels and backstages,'' Keillor said. ``And you find out if a town has a decent restaurant that's open after 11 o'clock at night or not ... Boise, Idaho, does not. New York is a city where one can count on getting a pretty good meal at any time of the day or night. It may not be with the people you'd most want to be with.''
Roanoke, he said, ``is almost entirely a blank to me.''
After his interviews in Hiltons, ``I traveled through there .... on a Greyhound bus going from Maces Spring on the tip of the shoe to Washington, D.C. I believe I traveled pretty much the length of Virginia - but it was at night, on a bus.''
He had no idea he would one day sell out two shows in the Roanoke Civic Center. Nor does that fact overwhelm him now.
``You play in halls that are small enough,'' he said, ``and you'll sell out.''
Garrison Keillor`s two shows at the Roanoke Civic Center - Tuesday and Wednesday at 7:30 p.m. - are sellouts. You'll be able to hear them later on public radio.
Keywords:
PROFILE
by CNB