"One little thing can revive a guy, and that is a piece of rhubarb pie..."

"One little thing can revive a guy, and that is a piece of rhubarb pie/ Serve it up, nice and hot/ Maybe things aren't as bad as you thought. Momma's little baby loves rhubarb rhubarb, Be-Bop-A Re-Bop Rhubarb Pie..."

We went to Red Rocks last night to see Garrison Keillor with The Prairie Home Companion on their Rhubarb tour. The show was scheduled to begin at 7:30. We arrived in the parking lot around 6:30 to have our picnic dinner and proceed to hike up to the amphitheater around 7:10. I say hike, because it is seriously a hike up the mountain and then up many, many stairs. Red Rocks is almost an 1,000 feet gain in elevation from Denver so you can feel it-at least I can! We arrive in our seats around 7:30 and the show started at 7:35. We had 4th row seats. Isn't that awesome! It turned out to be a beautiful night and you could see the stars up above.


Although, the amphitheater was not completely full there were tons of people there.

Garrison Keillor came out and performed an opening song and a song about Colorado.

He was shortly joined by the very talented Pat Donahue.

They were shortly joined by Suzy Boggess who later sang three solo's which were impressive. She is truly an impressive singer. Her songs were beautiful.

Garrison and Suzy sang several duets throughout the night. They were all so pretty with their harmony .
Garrison definitely joked around with her and was very improvisational with their act. He would state something to her as a compliment with high-falutin' literary jargon and catch her by surprise. It really was quite funny. I wish I had been able to get better up-close photos of their facial expressions because they were so great. The show is much more spontaneous than I ever knew from listening to them on the radio.

Fred Newman came out several times throughout the night to perform sound effects for the show. He is so funny-I thought I might wet myself. He doesn't just add the sound effects improvisationally based on where Garrison is leading the story, he adds gestures and acts out the effects.

I can not even remember all the different sound effects he performed-a sperm whale (which came after a joke and song about sperm), dolphins, a boy from Georgia, a boy from Harvard, coon dogs, wind, water, the ocean, a missile, cats, and the list really goes on and on. He is awesome and my new hero. In fact, after his first appearance with Garrison the crowd gave him such an applause that Garrison's next monologue was an allusion to Greek? Mythology with poor Fred chained to a rock, with ravens pecking out his eyes to "show the crowd to be careful who they were applauding for.." It was hilarious.

Of course, we got to here about Lake Woebegon "where all the women are strong, all the men are good-looking, and all the children are above average." It was very funny in the beginning, but lasted for more than 15 minutes it seemed. It became really dark and was told from the viewpoint of a guy as he is being buried by people who don't really know him and the gravediggers who are just there to do their job. It was the least impressive portion of the show. The rest was fabulous. He does not use a script-which I found impressive- throughout the entire show.


During "intermission", Garrison led the audience singing "America the Beautiful", "Home on the Range", and "Can't help falling in love with you". At the end of the show, the crowd started pouring out and I think they were planning on an encore-but everyone left so quickly that it didn't happen. He did not perform Guy Noir-which I love....

The show ended at 10:30-which is impressive- and we arrived back at our house around 11:15. I am really tired now because I have to wake up at 5 to be at work at 6:50-which is ridiculously way too early. It was completely worth it. If you have a chance to go see the show, you need to go. It was beautiful, funny, dark, and overall a great experience.