A Prairie Home Companion: April 2, 2005

Special Guests
Saturday, April 2, 2005

Sam Bush

A person deciding to acquire every album that mandolin virtuoso Sam Bush has recorded on would have to clear enough wall space to make room for over 285 works. The collection would include a remarkable and tasteful variety, from the Amazing Rhythm Aces and Bashful Brother Oswald to Bela Fleck and Lyle Lovett; Leon Russell, Alison Krause, Emmylou Harris, John Prine, Doc Watson, Ricky Skaggs, and a host of other heavyweights. It would also include five titles under his own name and a dozen with the bluegrass revolutionaries New Grass Revival.

He was raised on a farm outside of Bowling Green, Kentucky, and took up the mandolin and fiddle at about 11 years old. By the time he graduated high school in Weiser, Idaho, he had earned three national junior fiddle championships. He and a friend went to Roanoke, Virginia in 1965 for one of the first bluegrass festivals; he didn’t know it would someday lead to three Grammys, nor that Emmylou Harris would someday say, “Sam Bush’s hero is Ozzie Smith. My hero is Sam Bush.”

Maude Maggart

(Accompanied by Lanny Meyers) Maude Maggart's cabaret career got started at The Gardenia Room in Los Angeles. It was here that she began to explore the world of America popular song, a hallmark of her cabaret act today. Her latest release is With Sweet Despair on the SMAX label. You can see Maude perform live in the Oak Room at the Algonquin Hotel every Monday through June.

Prudence Johnson

Prudence Johnson's 25 year career in music has taken her from nightclubs and honky-tonks to Carnegie Hall, from the theater stage to the Silver Screen (Robert Redford's A River Runs Through It), from the Midwest to the Middle East. Her 10 album releases include Little Dreamer, a collection of international lullabies, Moon Country, which features the music of Hoagy Carmichael, and S'Gershwin, a collaboration with pianist Dan Chouinard. She recently collaborated with four Minnesota composers to create A Girl Named Vincent, a presentation of the poetry of Edna St. Vincent Millay set to music, to be released on CD this year. She is a 2001 recipient of the McKnight Artists Fellowship for Performing Musicians and enjoys a steady schedule of concert appearances across the country.

Andy Stein

Violinist and saxophonist Andy Stein was a regular member of Guy's All-Star Shoe Band on A Prairie Home Companion from 1989 to 2001. He collaborated with Garrison Keillor to create the opera Mr. and Mrs. Olson. He has appeared on Saturday Night Live and Late Night with David Letterman, and has performed with such artists as Itzhak Perlman, Eric Clapton, Smashing Pumpkins, Billy Joel, Tony Bennett, Ray Charles, Bob Dylan, and many others.