Garrison Keillor filled HF Strand; Cathy: There’s none like him

By Cathy DeDe, Chronicle Managing Editor

Every seat was sold for Garrison Keillor’s appearance at The Strand Theatre in Hudson Falls last Wednesday, March 25 — delayed from November because of illness.

At 83, Mr. Keillor, creator and star of the old, longtime public radio variety show A Prairie Home Companion, is much the same as ever — still lanky as Lurch, still in red Saucony sneakers, red socks and tie to match; rumpled jeans and a jacket handing off bent shoulders, eyes behind thick glasses, in a face that’s aged — well, about as well as it could, he might himself say.

He’s still a wonder: Slyly funny, erudite, quoting Shakespeare and the Bible at length, drawing out a long tale with himself as butt of the subtle joke. All comes at a loping pace. He’s seemingly bemused, clever but plays distracted, as if he’ll lose the train of thought even as his narrative twists elegantly forward.

You have to pay attention to catch the smile in that grump of a face.

He led the audience in church hymns and “America the Beautiful,” his familiar baritone nearly intact on “Let It Be Me,” “Goodnight Ladies,” “How Great Thou Art,” a medley of Beatles and rock and roll and non-P.C. lullabies.

He has opinions.

He blamed Henry David Thoreau — and rock and rollers’ embrace of the guitar over the piano — for what he considers the curse of American individualism.

He said “It’s all due to Thoreau, who encouraged people to march to their own drummer. I believe in marching bands.”

But also, “We have changed how we treat our fellow people,” for the better, he said, over his lifetime. “I can remember children who were ostracized because they were slow. Now we call them special needs, and we help them.”

“The fact of New York City,” where he lives today, “is you care about each other. You have to. You’re all pedestrians.”

“Christianity isn’t about cathedrals. It’s about stories,” Mr. Keillor said, calling this “Jesus’s only art,” and revisiting the Prodigal Son.

He turned bawdy with a hilarious if deeply rude poem about sperm.

“I thought a lot about death when I was young,” Mr. Keillor said. “When you are 83, death is not a tragedy. It is an obligation.”

“I miss the past. I don’t live in the past,” he said.

“I used to be a big shot,” he said, telling a rollicky tale about locking himself out of a guest cabin at a seminar in the woods, himself naked in a hot tub, forced after several cold hours to run up the road for help, covered only with a blue plastic tarp he’d found in the yard.

The stories, the English-major wit delivered at laconic pace: 100 percent intact. Well before he was alert enough to realize he was paying attention, he was a chronicler of his life, the details and pleasures of his now-fading generation, the light and dark of everyday and extraordinary existence. He has fun sharing it.

Not all is cherry pie, not all is even decent, even about Mr. Keillor, who largely left public life after an investigation by Minnesota Public Radio News said he “fostered a work environment that left some women feeling mistreated, sexualized or belittled,” National Public Radio reported in 2018.

Still undeniable is how he savors the gatherings of people, the words and stories, the music, life itself. There’s not another one like him. It’s complicated, and it felt like a privilege to be in the room.

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