Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: TUESDAY, February 15, 1994 TAG: 9402150272
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: By JOE KENNEDY STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
As a crew went to work outside the windows, the door opened. In walked the tall, dark-haired writer and performer. He explained to his anxious colleagues that he had been up until 2:30 that morning, working on his screenplay at his log house on 80 acres of Wisconsin woodland east of Minneapolis.
He had turned off his fax machine. That's why no one could reach him.
Somehow, the image of Keillor grinding away at home on the night before a tour doesn't jibe with the laid-back aura of his radio show. As Keillor's activities in Roanoke demonstrated, he keeps up a mad pace writing monologues and bits for the Saturday night broadcasts, writing his comic novels and magazine pieces and working on that screenplay.
Keillor's tour ends this weekend after hitting Roanoke and Spartanburg, S.C., for two performances each, as well as Durham, Greensboro, Myrtle Beach, Charleston and Orlando. The Saturday night shows, in Spartanburg and Orlando, were scheduled as national broadcasts. The shows at the Roanoke Civic Center were recorded for possible use later, though their fate has yet to be decided.
In Roanoke, Keillor also spoke to the Kiwanis Club last Wednesday at lunchtime and then spent more than two hours signing books at Books Strings & Things on the Roanoke City Market.
Civic officials could not wait for Keillor to take the stage. They hoped that he would mention the city prominently and that the show would later be aired all over. On the first count, Keillor did not disappoint. At the opening show, he disclosed that he and his cast were staying at ``The Roanoke Hotel'' - he meant the Hotel Roanoke - noting, ``We seem to be the only people there.''
The hotel is closed for renovations.
The sellout crowd whooped again when he referred to the hotel as the site of the famed Cafe Boeuf, the high-toned eatery in one of his running skits. The next night, he drew laughs when he mentioned the presence of asbestos in the food - a reference to the expensive asbestos removal process that is part of the hotel project.
The show featured songs from the Hopeful Gospel Quartet (Keillor, Kate MacKenzie and Robin and Linda Williams of Augusta County), piano pieces by Butch Thompson and string music from Jay Ungar and Molly Mason, including a Bill Monroe fiddle tune called ``Roanoke.''
A high point each night was Keillor's narration of Robert E. Lee's surrender to Gen. Ulysses S. Grant at Appomattox in 1865. The writing was rich and packed with obscure details. Ungar's sweetly sad fiddle accompanied him with a medley of old-time songs, including Ungar's composition, ``Ashokan Farewell,'' written years ago but used more recently as the theme for the acclaimed PBS series ``The Civil War.'' The combination reduced many in the audience to tears.
About 10 days before the first show, a writer from Los Angeles called Steve Mills, the manager of WVTF-FM, the region's public radio station, which carries Keillor's program. He asked that information about Roanoke be sent to him so he could work it up for the shows.
Mills scoured downtown and obtained materials from the convention and visitors bureau and the Roanoke Valley History Museum, and he referred the writer to James ``Bud'' Robertson, Alumni Distinguished Professor of History at Virginia Tech. Robertson has written several books about the Civil War.
Russ Ringsak, the troupe's truck driver and writer, also investigated the downtown area on the day of the show and typed notes into a laptop computer for Keillor's inspection.
``He's the writer, there's no mistaking that,'' Ringsak, a Willie Nelson look-alike, said. ``Very little of what I write is used verbatim.''
Tuesday night Keillor was in top form for his well-known monologue, ``The News from Lake Wobegon,'' the fictitious town of his youth. He started by calling the Roanoke area ``paradise'' and credited ``divine beneficence'' for his presence here. In Minnesota, ``Nature makes two or three serious attempts to kill you'' at this time of year, he said. His main message came from a description of a family gathering he'd been to where everyone acted stiffer than they had as kids, until the very end, when they gathered around and sang songs - the one thing his family does well. Keillor encouraged his listeners to shake off their grown-up inhibitions, at least around each other, saying, ``You've got to give your best to the people you're close to, and you know who they are.''
After the show, Keillor said Roanoke's mountains impressed him.
``It's different from other mountainous areas I know, like Montana. This part of Virginia looks like it has the most hospitable mountains I've seen. It strikes a compromise between nature and society.''
In Norway, the mountains are less verdant and a living is harder to scratch out. That's why Norwegians emigrated to Minnesota, ``where they were all unhappy forever.'' It might be possible to move from Minnesota to Roanoke and be happy, he said, but not the other way around.
At a reception after the first show, Roanoke Mayor David Bowers introduced the entertainer with remarks that were longer and less funny than they should have been. Then he presented Keillor with a small crystal star as a symbol of the city.
Keillor took it and said, ``You are going to bankrupt the city doing this,'' and, ``I will put this in my museum someday and charge you to look at it.''
The next day, Keillor drew an unusually large crowd to the Kiwanis meeting at the Radisson-Patrick Henry Hotel. Bowers presented him with the key to the city of Roanoke. Keillor said he hoped it didn't carry any tax obligations.
In his speech he related a time in his childhood when he told a joke to his older brother who was eating a peanut butter sandwich.
``He had a mouthful of sandwich, and slowly, as he laughed, it extruded out of his nostrils,'' he said. ``I set that as my goal in life. That's why our show is broadcast at the dinner hour.'' He launched into a long story about a family dinner when he was young at his Aunt Eleanor's house, where tables were crowded and tensions were high. His Uncle Carl, as usual, went overboard on the blessing, reaching his crescendo as Keillor's 8-year-old cousin, ``under terrible stress, just leaned forward and deposited her breakfast on the table. She just did it in three longs and a short. ... It has a great effect on you when your eyes are shut and you can hear it. It's the power of radio.''
He noted that he went into radio partly to impress a woman in his class at college - the reason men do most of the things they do, he opined, and probably the reason someone started the Kiwanis Club.
Keillor spoke approvingly of moonshining, calling it the one form of lawlessness ``that most people sort of in their hearts support.'' He said the Civil War was the most-recorded war in history, with accounts produced in diaries, letters and journals. Those who lived through it ``had a duty to say what they had seen,'' he said. We don't feel that duty today, ``and I think we're missing a great deal, a fundamental part of the good life. ...To me, this is what makes culture. It's not books, TV or radio. It's what you do for each other.''
Mid-way through his talk, his producer, Christine Tschida, lamented that she hadn't arranged to tape it.
Keillor elected to walk from the hotel to Books Strings & Things. Wearing a suit and his trademark red socks - and with a smidgen of red sock peeking from a hole in the side of his right shoe - he moved briskly and asked questions about the market area. At the bookstore, he ignored a table and chair set up for his use and stood and chatted briefly with those in the long line of fans bearing books, tape cassettes and compact disc boxes they wanted him to sign.
He asked a man in a worn, faded leather jacket if he'd fallen off his horse and gotten dragged along the ground. He greeted a man he'd met earlier with, ``Good to see you. I always remember men with two-tone beards.'' To a woman lawyer who held out ``A Book of Guys,'' his latest work, he said, ``You need to find out about guys,'' and asked if her experiences with them had been good or bad overall.When someone asked about the key to the city, still hanging around his neck, he said, ``I'm able to go out in this city and get whatever I want. ... I'm not held back by the normal limits of behavior.''
His session was supposed to end at 3. He stayed until past 4, and then browsed a bit before going to his room at the Holiday Inn-Civic Center.
More than half of Keillor's show Wednesday was new material. His monologue, not quite as dark as the previous night's, met with a steady stream of laughs. The audience gave him his second-straight standing ovation (or third, if you count the Kiwanis meeting), and people came to the front of the stage for autographs when it was over.
In his dressing room, Keillor said Roanokers impressed him with their warmth and hospitality. But, he said, ``I don't think I got to see what I wanted to see. That's the conflict between being a performer and being a writer.'' As a performer, his duty is to be seen. As a writer, his job is to see without being observed. On the road, he gets ``too much of one and not enough of the other.''
He said yet again that he'd like to bring the show back for a real, Saturday night broadcast, and he repeated what he had told people wherever he went: that Roanoke is ``an optimum size city for people to live in,'' with many of the advantages of urban life and not so many of the disadvantages.
Ringsak knocked on his door and poked his head in to say the cast and crew were about to be driven to the Charcoal Steak House. Keillor stood up and got ready to go. The bus would leave for Spartanburg at 11 the next morning, in the early stages of an ice storm.
He looked exhausted, but the tour had just begun.
by CNB