QUICK TAKES - June 26, 2009

For the 35th anniversary of his “A Prairie Home Companion,” humorist Garrison Keillor will be in “Lake Wobegon” when he reads the news from Lake Wobegon.

Keillor, 66, caps the latest season of “A Prairie Home Companion” with a Fourth of July broadcast from Avon, part of the central Minnesota region that helped inspire Keillor’s make-believe hometown, “where all the women are strong, all the men are good-looking and all the children are above average.”

The performance marks 35 years since Keillor’s public radio variety show debuted on July 6, 1974, at Macalester College in St. Paul.

That show, broadcast live, had an audience of about a dozen people. “A Prairie Home Companion” is now heard on nearly 600 public radio stations nationwide, attracting more than 4.3 million listeners a week.

After this Saturday’s “Prairie Home” performance at Tanglewood with actors Martin Sheen and Steve Martin, Keillor plans a “grass-roots show” for the Fourth of July, with longtime special effects man Tom Keith, the Guy’s All-Star Shoe Band, the Lake Wobegon Brass Band, the St. John’s Boys’ Choir and singer Andra Suchy.