Garrison Keillor

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Garrison Keillor
Born	August 7, 1942 Anoka, Minnesota

Garrison Keillor (born Gary Edward Keillor on August 7, 1942) is an American author, humorist, columnist, musician, satirist, and radio personality.

He is best known as host of the American Public Media show A Prairie Home Companion (also known as Garrison Keillor's Radio Show on BBC 7 and in Ireland).

1 Biography and personal life
2 Career
- 2.1 Radio
- 2.2 Writing
3 Awards and other recognition
4 Keillor in popular culture
5 Bibliography
6 References
7 External links

[edit] Biography and personal life

Keillor was born in Anoka, Minnesota, and raised in a family belonging to the Plymouth Brethren, a fundamentalist Christian denomination he has since left. He is six feet, four inches (1.93 m) tall and is of Norwegian and Scottish ancestry. Keillor is a member of the Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party. He currently is an Episcopalian,[1] but has been a Lutheran; he often uses his religious roots in his material. He graduated from the University of Minnesota with a bachelor's degree in English in 1966. While there, he began his broadcasting career on the student-operated radio station known today as Radio K.

Keillor has been married three times:

To Mary Guntzel, from 1965 to 1976. The couple has one son, Jason.
To Ulla Skaerved, from 1985 to 1990.
His current wife, violinist Jenny Lind Nilsson, whom he married in 1995. They have one daughter, Maia.

Although he maintains an apartment in New York City, the Keillors make their home in St. Paul, Minnesota.

[edit] Career

[edit] Radio

Keillor began his radio career in 1969 with Minnesota Public Radio. He was given the morning drive time slot, 6 am to 9 am, which the station called "A Prairie Home Companion". Keillor worked as a host of the show and was also a writer for The New Yorker.

After writing an article about the Grand Ole Opry, Keillor got an idea to create a live radio show. This show was also called "A Prairie Home Companion", and centered on the doings in the fictional town of Lake Wobegon, based in part on Keillor's own hometown of Anoka. Among the features of the show is the weekly News from Lake Wobegon, a place "where all the women are strong, the men are good looking, and all the children are above average." Sponsored by the fictitious Ketchup Advisory Board that touted the well-known "mellowing agents" of ketchup, the show featured performances, comic and vaudeville acts in the style of an "old time" radio show. The first show was in 1974, and the program became successful. It ran until 1987, when Keillor decided to end it; he worked on other projects, including another live radio program, "The American Radio Company", for several years. In 1993 he began producing programs again under the "Prairie Home Companion" title, and has done so since. [2]

Keillor is also the host of "The Writer's Almanac" which, like "A Prairie Home Companion," is produced and distributed by American Public Media.

[edit] Writing

Keillor has written many magazine and newspaper articles, and nearly a dozen books for adults as well as children. In addition to his time as a writer for The New Yorker, he has also written for The Atlantic Monthly, and Salon.com. Keillor is the host of The Writer's Almanac, a five-minute program which is broadcast daily on some public radio stations in the United States.

He also authored an advice column on Salon.com, titled "Mr. Blue". Following a heart operation, he resigned on September 4, 2001 in an article entitled "Every dog has his day":

Illness offers the chance to think long thoughts about the future (praying that we yet have one, dear God), and so I have, and so this is the last column of Mr. Blue, under my authorship, for Salon. Over the years, Mr. Blue's strongest advice has come down on the side of freedom in our personal lives, freedom from crushing obligation and overwork and family expectations and the freedom to walk our own walk and be who we are. And some of the best letters have been addressed to younger readers trapped in jobs like steel suits, advising them to bust loose and go off and have an adventure. Some of the advisees have written back to inform Mr. Blue that the advice was taken and that the adventure changed their lives. This was gratifying. So now I am simply taking my own advice. Cut back on obligations: Promote a certain elegant looseness in life. Simple as that. Winter and spring, I almost capsized from work, and in the summer I had a week in St. Mary's Hospital to sit and think, and that's the result. Every dog has his day and I've had mine and given whatever advice was mine to give (and a little more). It was exhilarating to get the chance to be useful, which is always an issue for a writer (What good does fiction do?), and Mr. Blue was a way to be useful. Nothing human is beneath a writer's attention; the basic questions about how to attract a lover and what to do with one once you get one and how to deal with disappointment in marriage are the stuff that fiction is made from, so why not try to speak directly? And so I did. And now it's time to move on.

In June 2005, Keillor started a syndicated newspaper column, which Salon.com runs. The column is an opinion piece, and Keillor expresses opinions that underscore his beliefs; although he does not clearly identify as either conservative or liberal, he has in recent years been critical of conservative politics, and the current administration. [3]

Keillor was also the scriptwriter for the 2006 movie version of A Prairie Home Companion, which was directed by Robert Altman. (Keillor also appears in the movie.)

[edit] Awards and other recognition

In 1994, Keillor was inducted into the Radio Hall of Fame. [4]

[edit] Keillor in popular culture

Keillor is the voiceover artist for Honda UK's "the Power of Dreams" campaign. The campaign's most memorable advert is the 2003 Honda Accord commercial entitled "Cog". The two minute television ad features a complex system of car parts that react with each other to create a chain reaction similar to a Rube Goldberg or Heath Robinson cartoon. The commercial ends with Keillor asking, "Isn't it nice when things just work?" [5] Since then, Keillor has voiced the tagline for most if not all Honda UK advertisements, and even sang the voiceover in the 2004 Honda Diesel commercial entitled "Grrr". His most recent advert was a reworking of an existing commercial with digitally added England flags to tie in with the World Cup. Keillor's tagline was "Come on England, keep the dream alive".
His style, particularly his speaking voice, is often the subject of parody. The Simpsons parodies Keillor in an episode where Homer is shown watching a Keillor-like monologist on television, and upon hitting the set, exclaiming "Stupid TV! Be more funny!", which has become one of The Simpsons' oft-quoted catchphrases. [6] In practice, Keillor rarely reads his monologue directly from the script, but the monotonous intonation and style of dress caricature Keillor successfully. One Boston radio critic likens Keillor and his "down comforter voice" to "a hypnotist intoning, 'You are getting sleepy now'", while noting that Keillor does play to listeners' intelligence. [7]
In the UK, his commercials have been parodied especially his song (for Honda): "Hate something, Change something, Make something better" (clip available below).
Keillor was featured in the Streaming Venue Songs of the band They Might Be Giants, supposedly inspiring John Flansburgh and John Linnell with "Midwestern Pledge Drive Funk" songs he had written, like "When Doves Cry," "Powdermilk Biscuit Rain," and "Factory's A-Closin' in the Quaint Fictional Lutheran Town."
Keillor lent his voice to an animated version of the Norse god Odin in an episode of the Disney animated series "Hercules." His role as the chief god was no doubt influenced by the fact that he often references his Norwegian ancestry, as well as many residents in the Midwest. William H. Macy (of Fargo fame) also voiced two warriors in Vahalla with Minnesotan accents.