This week on A Prairie Home Companion, it's a live broadcast performance from The Fitzgerald Theater in Saint Paul, Minnesota. With special guests, mixologists of soul, folk and jazz, Lake Street Dive, blues bombshell Hilary Thavis, and vocalist Molly Dean. Also with us, the Royal Academy of Radio Actors; Tim Russell, Sue Scott, sound effects man Steve Kramer, and Lindsay Marcy, Butch Thompson sitting in with The Guy's All-Star Shoe Band, and the latest News from Lake Wobegon.
  • Butch Thompson

    Pianist and clarinetist Butch Thompson is known worldwide as a master of ragtime, stride, and classic jazz. Born and raised in Marine-on-St. Croix, Minnesota, Butch was already playing Christmas carols on his mother's upright piano by age three, and he led his first professional jazz group as a teenager. For 12 years, he was A Prairie Home Companion's house pianist, dating back to the show's second broadcast, in July 1974. Butch's many albums include Vicksburg Blues, with guitarist Pat Donohue (Red House Records).
  • Hilary Thavis

    Funny how things come together. Born in Rome, Italy, to parents from Minnesota, Hilary Thavis grew up loving music - especially folk music - from Woody Guthrie to Italian folk singers like Fabrizio De Andre and Francesco De Gregori. But it was the blues that ultimately captured her attention. Trouble & Truth is the 2011 recording from her band Gaia Groove. Now making her home in the Twin Cities, Hilary is working on a solo album of original songs.
  • Lake Street Drive

    Lake Street Dive, now based in Brooklyn, formed when Rachael Price (vocals), Mike Olson (trumpet, guitar), Mike Calabrese(drums), and Bridget Kearney (bass) were students at Boston's New England Conservatory. The band name is a nod to Lake Street in Minneapolis, Olson's hometown. Describing their music as "a vivid, largely acoustic, groove-driven strain of indie pop," the group has recorded five albums. The latest, an EP titled Fun Machine, was released earlier this year.
  • Molly Dean

    Memorable childhood experiences - piano lessons, traveling with her family, singing in the choir - gave Molly Dean a great start. Now, this Minneapolis-based singer-songwriter is combining elements of folk, pop, and blues in her music, and she's captivating audiences across the Twin Cities and beyond with her sultry, ethereal voice. Resonate is her most recent CD.