Garrison Keillor – The Christmas Companion With Garrison Keillor

The Christmas Companion: Stories, Songs, and Sketches from A Prairie Home Companion with Garrison Keillor CD is basically the play at home version of Prairie Home Companion, the NPR fan-favourite radio show that features Guy Noir, News From Lake Wobegon ), funny sketches, funny songs, classic songs, and great fun all around.

The advantage to The Christmas Companion with Garrison Keillor is you get two comedy Cds and two solid hours of Xmas related material without the annoying and occasionally repetitive bits that make Prairie Home Companion feel a bit long in the tooth sometimes. This is a brand new HighBridge Audio release, not the long-awaited re-release on CD of the older News From Lake Wobegon tapes.

Culled from some sixteen years of Prairie Home Companion Christmas shows, The Christmas Companion is the greatest hits of those shows. Christmas standards include Dance Of The Sugar Plum Fairies, A Child Is Born in Bethlehem, Count Your Blessings, Away In A Manger sung by Renee Fleming, soprano, and a piano version of Silent Night played by Butch Thompson that will remind some of A Charlie Brown Christmas on CD 1. CD 2 has the very beautiful Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas sung by Diana Krall, The Christ Child’s Lullaby, Ave Maria with Renee Fleming again, and an audience sing-along of Silent Night. Neat and much lesser known Christmas classic is the performance of Blind Lemon Jefferson’s Christmas Eve Morning Blues, the country western Christmas Time is Coming by Ricky Skaggs, and Sarah Jessica Parker singing The Christmas Song.

No Prairie Home Companion or Garrison Keillor comedy CD would be complete without musical comedy bits. The Christmas Companion features annual favorite The Twelve Days of Christmas sung by Keillor with the very funny audio support of Rich Dworsky. Original Xmas tunes include Wise Men Blues, the choral The Carolers At My Door, and In The Bleak Midwinter.

Comedy fans will most certainly enjoy the two News From Lake Wobegon (Lake Woebegone), one on each CD. The first Christmas comedy CD contains The Christmas Fire, the December 2000 story of the fire at the Magendanze’s Christmas decoration emporium home. This story will warm the hearts of those whose neighbors seem to want to our-Roseanne Roseanne when it comes to Xmas decorations. Four Christmases, on CD 2 is the 2001 Christmas News From Lake Wobegon and is a country mice vs city mice funny Christmas tale and reminiscences of Christmases past where Keillor gives a shorter, autobiographical version of stories he told in the past about various citizens of Lake Wobegon.

Other comedy sketches on The Christmas Companion With Garrison Keillor include a Guy Noir story, a melancholic and very funny Bebopareebop Rhubarb Pie about what happens when you max out your credit cards before you get around to buying a present for your mother so that you have to get a job as Santa’s elf. A charming and original seasonal comedy skit is Green, where Garrison Keillor and Pat Donohue do a Simon and Garfunkel imitation song as background to the story of a guy feeling blue at Christmas, and Santa, an modern interview with the jolly old elf.

The Christmas Companion With Garrison Keillor is most definitely a great gift for any of the many fans of Prairie Home Companion. It of those CDs you can play in the car during the season. Click here for our Garrison Keillor page

The Christmas Companion
Stories, Songs, and Sketches from A Prairie Home Companion
Garrison Keillor
2 CDs
Highbridge Audio 2010

Track List:

The Christmas Companion, Vol. 1

Wise Men Blues
Bebopareebop Rhubarb Pie
Dance Of The Sugar Plum Fairies
A Child Is Born in Bethlehem
Count Your Blessings
Away In A Manger (Renee Fleming)
The Twelve Days of Christmas (Garrison Keillor and Tom Keith)
Christmas Eve Morning Blues
Guy Noir
Christmastime (Just In Time)
The Christmas Fire (News From Lake Wobegon)
Silent Night (Butch Thompson, piano solo)

The Christmas Companion, Vol. 2

Christmas Time’s A-Coming (Ricky Skaggs)
Twas The Night Before Christmas
Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas (Diana Krall)
Santa
The Christmas Song (Sarah Jessica Parker)
The Christ Child’s Lullaby
The Carolers At My Door
Green
December Waltz
In The Bleak Midwinter
Ave Maria (Renee Fleming)
Four Christmases (News From Lake Wobegon)
Let It Snow
Silent Night

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