Radio Regulars

supporting the music and musicians heard on public/community/non-commercial radio in the Twin Cities area since 1991

The History...My Story

Rewind. February 1986.

I had just started listening to a radio show called “A Prairie Home Companion”. I found out about it from reading the Time magazine article some months back.  I’ve always had an ear for the unique and the unusual concept. If music was involved, so much the better. This radio show out of St. Paul, Minnesota caught my fancy because it was offbeat, fun and the music was fascinating. It was here that I learned a lot about musical styles I hadn’t paid much attention to or barely knew existed, like folk, bluegrass, ragtime jazz…and I actually liked a lot of what I was hearing.

But yet, there was one thing missing I hadn't heard yet. Rock and roll. As a child of the 60s it was the music I grew up with. But I thought there wouldn’t be much of a chance of hearing any of those songs on this show. This was all about folk songs, jazz piano, a bit of classical here and there. That is, until one day, when I heard this piano player who was on instead of Butch Thompson. His name was Richard Dworsky. I never heard of him before. I remember he said he was going to do this song called “Mama Is A Dancing Girl” written by a guy from south Minneapolis named Fred Vagle. Well, I don’t think I’ve ever heard piano played at such lightning speed, and he had a vocal range from top to bottom. I found myself leaning into the speakers. Who IS this guy??  Then, later on in the show, he played some music as background when Garrison Keillor read the greetings. Hmm, hold on here…some of that sounds awfully familiar. Wasn’t that “Blackbird” I just heard? Hey, isn’t he playing “Sunlight” by the Youngbloods? (And to be fair, Garrison occasionally did cut loose with some rock and roll classics himself as time went on.)

Much to my delight, Richard came back on the show for a couple of weeks. He did Beatle covers and made them fresh and original. (I remember one ironic comment he made when introducing his version of “I’ve Just Seen A Face”. He said he looked at the back cover of the “Rubber Soul” vinyl album and noticed the sentence “this product will not become obsolete” !). He slipped in more oldies behind Garrison’s greetings and I began to think, cool. This guy is a musical kindred spirit. A few months later, when he sang “Save Your Heart For Me”, the Gary Lewis and the Playboys hit, just him and his piano…that sealed the deal once and for all.  This show now had my serious attention---and it was fan letter time.

Around the same time, I became convinced that I needed to experience life beyond what I knew growing up in southern Connecticut. I had my first away from home travel experience to the Midwest a few years earlier and that started the wheels turning.  I traveled to southern Michigan in 1983 and 1984 and loved it, but ruled that out as a possible place to live because the economics needed to live on my own weren’t quite there. In doing my research, I found that not only was the Twin Cities area artistically rich, it was also rather affordable in the late 80s. Thus, I thought I would plan a visit and do some more research.

Ironically, this trip to St. Paul came to pass at the time when “Prairie Home Companion” was on hiatus by 1987 and we didn’t know if it would ever return to the airwaves again. But, it didn’t stop me from having almost the ultimate fan experience. My letters had paid off. I arrived in the middle of a Minnesota Public Radio pledge drive and I got to help out. During a break, both Dale Connelly and Jim Ed Poole of the Morning Show came to the volunteer room and wanted to know where the person from Connecticut was. I got to meet and hear Kate MacKenzie and Stoney Lonesome in Town Square Park. A show staff volunteer took me under her wing and gave me a tour of the World (now Fitzgerald) Theater. Yow. Pinch me. 

 (To digress...No, I didn’t meet my musical kindred spirit, Richard Dworsky, on that first trip. I suppose it was just as well—I might have hyperventilated on top of all the other wonderful experiences of that weekend. That meeting would have to wait until a year later, during a matinee performance of “The Prairie Home Companion 2nd Annual Farewell” at Radio City Music Hall in New York in 1988. I was in the very back of the hall, but I didn’t care. I was there. At the end, something told me to go to the front of the stage. I did, and out came Rich. We met, we chatted, and suddenly, a voice behind me said “Stay right there. I want to get a picture of you.” I turned around, and it was my pastor’s wife with a camera. I had no idea she was going to be there. So, quite unexpectedly, I got a sweet picture of the two of us to mark the occasion. I’m convinced it was one of those “God things”.)

After that weekend, my mind was made up…I would become a Minnesotan. I moved to St. Paul in 1989 and almost immediately fell into another Cinderella like experience with some of my MPR favorites (read all about that one here).

Fast forward to about 1991. Once I got settled and had been in St. Paul a couple of years, I got to work on a goal I had: to show tangible support for the artists I heard and loved, to make sure their current work would be heard and recognized. So, the paper version of Radio Regulars, the newsletter, was born. In the process, I got to meet and became acquainted with some of those people I heard every week: Robin and Linda Williams, Stoney Lonesome, Kate MacKenzie, Arne Fogel, Tom Keith, Prudence Johnson, Peter Ostroushko, Butch Thompson, Pat Donohue, Dan Rowles, and Rich, just to name a few. To have these people validate my work and trust me, let alone know me by name, was a dream come true. On the MPR staff side, I must also thank Kate Gustafson for being a dear friend who supported and understood what I was doing all these many years. I never could have imagined all this as a listener back in Connecticut.

Oh, and one more fast forward... to the year 2000. I discovered the goldmine of musicians and kindred spirituality of St. Joan of Arc Church in south Minneapolis. A group of the church's musicians played an afternoon showcase at the Fine Line Music Café during the old Mill City Music Festival and I decided I needed to check out this church .To my delight, many of the above mentioned folks, like Peter Ostroushko, Prudence Johnson and other make frequent musical appearances at liturgies and concerts. Among the mainstay musicians: recent public radio fixture and local musical treasure Dan Chouinard…and a fellow named Fred Vagle and his dear wife, music director Anna Mae. Who knew 15 years earlier when I first heard that song Rich played that made me lean into the speakers that I would meet the composer and get a warm hug at church from him every Sunday?

Much has changed over the years. I’ve cast a wider net in my support of musicians. I've known the joys of being able to encourage many other Twin Cities local musicians (that's another story!), but I remain a fan of all those folks whose music touched my spirit. Rich has flourished as a composer and music director of the Guy’s All Star Shoe Band on A Prairie Home Companion. After 20 years of fandom, he still makes the piano come alive for me.

Thus, the support and the story continues...I hope you'll keep reading the Radio Regulars page and join me in continuing to support and encourage the musical gifts of these folks.---Wendy V

The aforementioned pic of me and Rich Dworsky, 1988

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