Garrison Keillor: From Prairie Radio to the N. Y. Jungle

It’s been more than two years since Garrison Keillor left gentle Lake Wobegon, but public radio’s favorite storyteller says he’s not worried about stepping up to the microphone again, even if the stage is in rough-and-tumble Brooklyn.

“I hope to become nervous, you know, at the right time. I count on it,” said Keillor, who returns to the airwaves with a new weekly program. “But I hope that it doesn’t raise the pitch in my voice. I think I’m counted on to sing bass parts.”

“Garrison Keillor’s American Radio Company of the Air,” which premieres on public radio stations Saturday will once again feature Keillor’s soft voice--”I’m going to sing just ever so slightly less than people would like me to.”

But he insists the new, live show will not be a spinoff of “A Prairie Home Companion,” which attracted 4 million listeners each week on American Public Radio.

“What I’m doing is taking 13 years of experience doing one kind of live radio variety show in one place and I’m using that to create a different one, a different one in a different place,” he said in a recent interview, sitting behind a desk stacked with books at his Manhattan office.

Keillor’s plans for this season’s 20 shows include “classic American music of all kinds.” Singer Eileen Farrell, pianist James Tocco and opera star Marilyn Horne are scheduled to guest star.

And the 47-year-old humorist says his monologues will return, but with less of a focus on the Midwest.

“I’ve a lot of things I want to talk about, some of which have to do about New York,” he said. “But I don’t have any need to do a routine on New York.”