Garrison Keillor looks at life after ‘Prairie Home Companion’

In the fictional town of Lake Wobegon, all the women are strong, the men good looking, and the children above average.

Certainly, the fictional town would be proud of native son Garrison Keillor, who has forged an above-average career as creator and host of A Prairie Home Companion.

Keillor retired from his radio role last year, ceding his hosting duties to singer and bluegrass mandolin virtuoso Chris Thile — who picked up where the Anoka, Minnesota, native left off, albeit a tad more tunefully. But that doesn’t mean Keillor was done spinning tales and sharing songs with adoring fans.

On Aug. 7 — Keillor’s 75th birthday — the veteran storyteller hit the road with The Prairie Home Love and Comedy Tour 2017, a 28-city journey he vows will be his last.

His first stop was the next day, at the Fox Cities Performing Arts Center in Appleton.

Keillor will bring his tour to Madison’s Breese Stevens Field Sept. 2. He’ll also appear Nov. 3 at Milwaukee’s Pabst Theater with a show titled Just Passing Through.

WiG caught up with Keillor while he was on his Appleton-bound tour bus, from which he took time to answer a few questions.

Wisconsin Gazette: If you had to describe life after Prairie Home Companion in a word or phrase, what would that be?

Garrison Keillor: At home, with legal pad and pen and cup of black coffee.

The new tour seems very much like a PHC episode, only maybe a little looser. What can audiences expect?

We’ll do a cowboy drama, advertise the Ketchup Advisory Board and put Fred Newman to the test doing difficult sound effects. Of course, there will be the “News from Lake Wobegon.” We’ll do a standing intermission, using the audience as a choir. And duets — a dozen or so, with Heather Masse. And I get to talk about being 75, which I never got to do before.

A Prairie Home Companion was based on your experiences growing up in Minnesota. How did you decide what elements were unique to the state and what elements spoke to a universal human understanding?

Writing, like hunting or fishing, is a venture into the dark. You know a little about what not to do and not enough about what might work. You take your chances and when you get skunked you blame it on the weather and try again.

Can you explain why the show resonated so clearly with so many people?

It was a live show and the radio listener can sense that immediately. The audience can tell a live show from a rerun, without being told. And they can recognize when people are reading a script and when they’re talking off the tops of their heads. I did live spontaneous radio and I think people respond to that.

What were your favorite parts of PHC? Any least favorite parts?

I love singing duets with tall women, taking the harmony part and being the high baritone support to that beautiful contralto.

The hard part of doing the show was turning down people who wanted to be on it. I hate saying no, so I say “Maybe,” which, of course, is worse. You need to look the person in the eye and say, “I’m sorry but you’re not right for the show that we do, which maybe would be better with you on it, but then I wouldn’t be on it, and I’m older than you, so I get to stay.”

After spending the past 42 years enmeshed in the doings of Lake Wobegon, what life lessons did the experience teach you?

You get over your fear of being foolish, making mistakes, embarrassing yourself. You are out to serve the greater good — the cause of public radio, of live radio, of storytelling — and in the line of service you are willing to be a fool.

The person I was at 23 would’ve scorned the person I was at 43 and beyond, and I simply don’t care.

What do you hope to accomplish artistically with the current tour?

I want to do one good last tour so I can walk away into retirement with a good conscience. I hope the audience is well-entertained, amused, maybe moved.

I know you’re a lifelong Democrat. What is your assessment of the current presidential administration and what do you think its long-term impact will be on the nation and its people?

That’s an essay question for which I should be allowed 2,000 words and be paid $1,000. I’m on tour right now, living day-to-day and not about to take up major issues. My major issue this month is forcing myself to take a daily 30-minute brisk walk.

Speaking of life lessons, what would you like to teach the current president and how do you think he — and all the rest of us — might benefit from the lesson?

Be prepared — the old Scout motto. Don’t go camping unless you know about deer ticks, poison ivy and bears. Don’t water-ski if you don’t know how to swim. Don’t jump off the barn roof with a pair of water wings on your arms.

Do you have a personal philosophy?

I used to have a philosophy back when I read Thoreau and Emerson and then Camus, but now I seem to live with a philosophy of hope. Dogged hope, known in the Midwest as the It-Could-Be-Worse school of thinking. We have an ego-crazed fool for a president, but I believe that we will be basically OK, depending on how you interpret “basically.”

On stage

Garrison Keillor’s The Prairie Home Love and Comedy Tour 2017 will stop Sept. 2 at Breese Stevens Field, 917 E. Mifflin St., Madison, for a 6:45 p.m. show. General admission to the lawn area is $45, and blankets and lawn chairs are permitted. The “picnic table experience,” with tables situated close to the stage, is $123 each. For information, visit ticketmaster.com.

Garrison Keillor’s Just Passing Through show arrives Nov. 3 at the Pabst Theater, 144 E. Wells St., Milwaukee, for a 7 p.m. performance. Tickets are $49.50 to $125. For more information, go to event.etix.com.