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Rest in Peace, Butch Thompson

 

The most elegant gentleman to come out of Minnesota, Mr. Butch Thompson, died yesterday in St. Paul. He picked up the New Orleans spirit listening to Jelly Roll Morton 78s and carried it through the 20th into the 21st century. He was a pianist and a clarinetist, the piano for the bounce, the clarinet for the blues, and if he could've he would've played both at the same time. We worked together for years, a quiet man, and I never knew him except through his music. God bless the memory, God preserve the music.

–GK

Born and raised in Marine-on-St. Croix, a small Minnesota river town, Butch Thompson was playing Christmas carols on his mother’s upright piano by age three, and began formal lessons at six. He picked up the clarinet in high school and led his first jazz group, “Shirt Thompson and His Sleeves,” as a senior.

After high school, he joined the Hall Brothers New Orleans Jazz Band of Minneapolis, and at 18 made his first visit to New Orleans, where he became one of the few non-New Orleanians to perform at Preservation Hall during the 1960s and ’70s.

In 1974, he joined the staff as the house pianist of public radio’s A Prairie Home Companion. By 1980, the show was nationally syndicated, and the Butch Thompson Trio was the house band, a position the group held for the next six years.

From the early days on APHC, Butch remembers, “It was pretty casual back then. Margaret or somebody would call me and ask if I was busy on Saturday. More than once I remember saying I couldn’t get there by showtime, and being told to show up as soon as I could. Sometimes I’d go onstage without remembering what key something was in. If Garrison was going to sing, I usually couldn’t go wrong with E major.”

By the late ’90s, Thompson was known as a leading authority on early jazz. He served as a development consultant on the 1992 Broadway hit Jelly’s Last Jam, which starred Gregory Hines. He also joined the touring company of the off-Broadway hit Jelly Roll! The Music and the Man, playing several runs with that show in New York and other cities through 1997.

The Village Voice described Butch’s music as “beguiling piano Americana from an interpreter who knows that Bix was more than an impressionist and Fats was more than a buffoon.”

 

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In Garrison Keillor’s newest novel, Boom Town, we return to Lake Wobegon, famous from decades of monologues on the classic radio show A Prairie Home Companion.

**Available in Hardcover, Audiobook, and eReader formats**

Lake Wobegon is having a boom year thanks to millennial entrepreneurship—AuntMildred’s.com Gourmet Meatloaf, for example, or Universal Fire, makers of artisanal firewood seasoned with sea salt. Meanwhile, the author flies in to give eulogies at the funerals of five classmates, including a couple whom he disliked, and he finds a wave of narcissism crashing on the rocks of Lutheran stoicism. He is restored by the humor and grace of his old girlfriend Arlene and a visit from his wife, Giselle, who arrives from New York for a big love scene in an old lake cabin.

 

Praise for Boom Town:

“Wonderfully over-the-top. Blisteringly funny, acute, and true. Keillor’s speaking to us with encouragement and empathy about the American life. But at the same time, he’s got our number that way he’s always had it. This book is a tonic.” —Richard Ford

 

“You can’t go home again unless you’re Garrison Keillor and home is Lake Wobegon. Then, of course, it is imperative that you do so—and we are fortunate indeed to tag along and share in the final chapter of the most fascinating and compelling characters ever conjured from the most vivid imagination of America’s greatest storyteller!

In Boom Town, we are invited to catch up as Garrison gets caught up with all of those beautifully flawed human beings that populate and promulgate their mythical town where all the women are finally accounted for, all the men are self-realized or died trying, and all the children are still way above average.” —Martin Sheen

 

Read the first chapter for free >>>

Purchase Boom Town Hardcover >>>

Download the audiobook as mp3s  >>>

Listen to the audiobook via Audible >>>

Read it on Kindle >>>

 

Forget about songwriting. Try fiction

The word from people who know is that Taylor Swift is working with younger edgier indy artists, trying to stay relevant, hoping to hang on in today’s rapidly shifting pop culture, trying to free herself from the bonds of the narrative lyric and pick up the style of spatter imagery. Miss Swift is 32.

So forget about songwriting. Thirty-two is much too young for irrelevance. In solid professions such as medicine, engineering, law, the humorous essay, you’re just hitting your stride at 32. Miss Swift’s problem is that she prospered for years appealing to 11-year-old girls but now much of her audience is in its early twenties and doesn’t want to be in the same demographic with 11-year-olds so she needs to change the act to drive away the children, make it edgy, frighten the parents.

I see the perils of the music biz while strolling around Central Park on a weekend and passing by kiddie birthday parties where East Side parents have gone to vast expense to celebrate their child’s second or third birthday. The parents are guilty, having hired young women to raise the kiddos, and the lavish party, with catered hot dogs and potato salad and a designer cake, flocks of balloons and streamers, perhaps a mime artist and a monkey, a craft table, a photographer, and a singer, is meant to show the depth of their love. A dozen toddlers sit on the grass, the birthday girl or boy wearing a gold crown, and the singer entertains, and it’s all too obvious: she is talented, beautiful, has a degree in theater, had Broadway ambitions, and now she is performing for two-year-olds, which is like singing to a herd of house cats. She sings her heart out, big projection, great articulation, hoping to impress the mothers standing in back who may hire her for their kids’ birthdays, and she cries, “Let’s all clap our hands!” to kids who don’t know their hands from their feet, and it breaks my heart. Miss Show Biz was a star back in Iola, Kansas, and now she’s a joke: what’s next for her? Singing at birthday parties for dogs?

I intended to move to New York when I was 24 and become a writer and I got myself a room in a rooming house on West 19th and met a serious photographer who drove cab at night to support his wife and two infant daughters living in a squalid tenement on the Lower East Side and taking photographs in the afternoon, black-and-white pictures of street people, most of them as depressed as he. I followed him around for a few days, thinking I’d write about him, but seeing his life up close decided me on going back to Minnesota. A young artist needs friends, supporters, aunts, perhaps a welcoming basement for a while.

Being young and broke in a strange big city with nothing but a distant dream in your pocket is a form of imprisonment and not a course to be taken lightly unless you have a nice trust fund to fall back on. A friend of mine is a successful photographer, also b&w like the cabdriver, but he stayed close to home and married a woman with a good job and they practiced birth control. Twenty years later, the art world started smiling on him.

As for me, I am an heir to the Keiller orange marmalade fortune. The Keillers in Scotland died off and we American Keillors, who were illiterate farmers and misspelled our own name, found a trunk full of stock certificates in a barn in Barnstable belonging to Thomas Keillor in 1774, but Thomas was a Loyalist, opposed to the Revolution, and the shame of this caused many Keillors to change their names. Ralph Waldo Keillor did and Henry Wadsworth Keillor and also George and Martha Keillor. Meanwhile, Thomas fled to Canada with the marmalade stocks, which fell to my grandpa James and then my father John, so my siblings and I are loaded. It’s a long story. And that’s how I financed my career in fiction. My ambition had been to write limericks, but thank goodness I gave that up. There’s no money in it, just misery.

Young men who take up light verse:
It’s not a career, it’s a curse.
Clean rooms or wash dishes,
Rhyme is pernicious,
It’s a huge waste of time, perhaps worse,
A tragic decision
Leading to supervision
In a mental ward by a trained nurse.

Enjoying my irrelevance, thank goodness

“You are the only person I know who gets dressed up to go to the doctor’s,” my wife told me the other day, and I pointed out to her that I was not wearing a tie, only a gray pinstripe suit and white shirt, top button open, and dark cloth shoes, not wingtips. Still she was impressed.

This is a feature of marriage to a much younger woman: her frequent wonderment. I remember Harry Truman, she grew up with LBJ. She’s a late boomer, my generation doesn’t have a name because we predate narcissism, the country was too busy fighting fascism and saving the world, they didn’t bother to hand out generational identities. My wife is astonished that when I visited my grandma on the farm and I had to get up in the night, I went to the foot of the bed and used a chamber pot. To her, this places me back in the 19th century and I don’t mind. Great things happened back then, indoor plumbing being one of them. So I wear a suit to the doctor’s to show him that he’s dealing with a historic personage, a man who carries a piece of our nation’s noble heritage, not some yo-yo or schlump.

I led a free and independent boy’s life, growing up, back before parents read books about parenting, and after my morning chores, I got on a bike and joined other boys and we played cowboys and Indians or we played Civil War, and I usually was an Indian or fought for the Confederacy, so I grew up feeling romantic about Lost Causes. As a white male novelist, I am very comfortable today; my books sell in the low four figures and this gives me the same sense of validation I got when I was nine and fought for Stonewall Jackson.

My wife grew up in a feminist household and so she is the fixer and planner, she walks into a hardware store with complete confidence, she issues crisp orders to plumbers and painters. They glance at me, sitting in a dim corner with a pad and pencil, chuckling to myself, and ask, “Do you need to run this by him?” and she says, “No, he’s an essayist.”

She runs our life while I fight for lost causes, my current one being the plague of impactfulness, the use of “impact” as a verb, mostly by millennials writing mission statements, trying to put some muscle into paragraphs of limp macaroni.

Impactfulness is the result of the flood of Canadians coming over our undefended northern border, tens of thousands of hockey players seeking warmth and music and sophistication, but bringing their Canadian censoriousness with them. Northerners have always claimed moral authority over others, the inevitable result of wall maps and their impactful verticality. I’m from Minnesota, I know about supposed moral superiority, and I know that my crusade will have the impact of wet Kleenex trying to stop a speeding locomotive, that a younger generation is impacting like a steam hammer, or imagines it is, and “impactful” is gaining popularity and my opposition is totally irrelevant.

Well, I enjoy my irrelevance.

I got a letter from a candidate pleading for $25, accusing his opponent of getting millions from wealthy celebs such as Ryan Seacrest and Kendall Jenner and I was pleased that I have no idea who those two are. I am not a TV watcher, I don’t tune in talk shows, I don’t walk around with earbuds. I watched the Jan. 6 hearings, which were riveting television, and I watch baseball, which Abner Doubleday designed for TV. In fact, it’s better on TV because you can turn off the announcers, silence the crowd, walk away during an endless inning and make yourself popcorn with real butter on it and a glass of ice water, chat with your dear wife who is reading through a plumbing supply catalog, step outside and look at the Milky Way, and return to the TV for the 10th inning, the team at bat awarded a baserunner on 2nd, a new rule that makes great sense. (And how many new rules can you say that about?)

It’s a good life, the Seacrestless and Jenner-free life, the woman in charge of practical matters as God intended her to be, the old man penning an essay as the batter lofts a fly to right and the baserunner tags and takes third. Our shortstop comes to bat, swings at the second pitch and makes impact and the runner scores and I’m happy. There’s injustice in the world and plastic particles poisoning the dolphins but I’m okay for now. We’ll get to the rest tomorrow.

Drama is life trying to get our attention

When an old man prepares for open-heart surgery, he maintains a confident demeanor and so does his good wife. He has an excellent surgeon and the procedure has been around since he was a teenager, pioneered by Dr. Walt Lillehei of Minneapolis. All is well. Stay calm and pull your socks up.

The old man is me and Dr. Lillehei attended the University of Minnesota, as I did, but he did not major in English as I did nor did he write surreal poetry and doomsday fiction that took a stab at cynicism. I come from fundamentalist Scots who would’ve looked on heart surgery as a waste of money. The heart is sinful and heart disease is caused by rich living and can be remedied by physical labor, thinner dinners, and prayer. Dr. Lillehei came from progressive Norwegians and he had more curiosity.

I’ve been down this road before, July 2001, under Dr. Orszulak at Mayo, and I rolled into the OR feeling quite chipper, prepared to joke around, and then the anesthesiologist did something and I disappeared. I awoke with an angelic being in blue scrubs whispering to me. I went home for a pleasant couple of weeks lounging in the backyard and resumed life.

Of course I am twenty years older now and things could be different. So the patient tries to gain a clear look at his own life.

It was wildly lucky. I switched from surreal and cynical to light comedy as easily as you’d junk a rusty VW and accept the gift of a Jaguar. I found comedy quite amiable. I worked hard because it offered an escape from a hopeless marriage. I survived some rocky times to earn a pile of money, which I flung in many directions. I bought a mansion that looked like a train station and felt like one too. There was a high wall around the backyard that gave it a penal quality. I bought 80 acres in Wisconsin and put a log cabin on it and discovered that peace and quiet make me uneasy. I took expensive vacations I didn’t enjoy.

What I enjoyed was work. Then I met and married Jenny, who has a forgiving soul and is very funny on top of it. I tell her how much I adore her and she makes a sound like “Hnnh” that always cracks me up. She is a violinist, well-traveled, a New Yorker at heart though she grew up in my hometown so she knows what she’s dealing with. She is a keeper. I feel well-kept.

I am not a forgiving person. I have not yet forgiven two former employees who got me in a shakedown scheme and I made the mistake of settling with them before I had cleared my name. I know I should forgive them before I go under the knife but I don’t know how. The man who cooked up the scheme I sincerely wish would rot in hell but I need to cleanse my heart and have only a short time in which to accomplish this.

Carrying anger in your heart is misery in a bottle and my rector Kate suggested I read Fred Luskin, a psychologist who leads a forgiveness training program at Stanford, if you can imagine such a thing. He put out a book giving nine steps toward forgiveness and No. 3 says that forgiveness does not necessarily mean reconciliation, which is an enormous relief. I envisioned having to put my arms around the traitor and feeling his white beard against my cheek and whispering words of endearment. This would not be within my powers. Mr. Luskin says that forgiveness is for one’s own sake, to restore peace in one’s heart, and is not play-acting. He says, “Forgiveness is for you.” He says, “Make a commitment to yourself to feel better.” I like that. And he is a psychologist so I believe him.

I make myself feel better by thinking about the times I’ve stood in front of a paying audience and hummed a note and sang, “My country, ’tis” and they all joined in and it was so beautiful, people got teary-eyed. It was intermission but instead of heading for the lobby they stood and sang. And maybe Dinah in the kitchen and “She was just seventeen if you know what I mean” and “O Lord my God, when I in awesome wonder” and it was awesome. It wasn’t what they paid to see, they gave it to themselves. We all sang and found forgiveness in it. When I think of those times, it is well with my soul.

I'm very old, as God knows, and he's watching

I turn 80 in a few days, as I’ve been saying for about six months now and it’s a good age. I don’t think about my health, I am living proof that bad habits don’t matter so long as you give them up soon enough. I am quite happy, a BuddhEpiscopalian who doesn’t care about material things though I do fart a lot. I don’t sit around dreaming of what I might do someday. Someday is now, and what I shall do is enjoy it fully. Nobody expects more of me; if I walk into a room and don’t trip on the doorsill, I’m admired for it. My wife starts talking about air conditioning and then she sees me and says, “But why am I talking to you about it?” I’m from the time when we cooled off by driving around with the windows open. It was a good time, my time. Back in the country I grew up in, namely this one, men didn’t go into schools and shoot little kids, we never imagined such a thing, and what’s the reason? Fewer psychiatric medications? Fewer therapists? No. If drugstores sold licorice-flavored cyanide in drinking glasses, we’d see more of that. I plan to expire before the Supremes decide the Second Amendment guarantees the right to carry knapsacks of dynamite aboard airliners. Why should we give up our rights on the Jetway? On the other hand, I do admit there have been improvements: I was in the Detroit airport, Concourse A, the other day and a man sat at a real piano on a low platform and played music, a very graceful jazzer, nothing about man’s downfall, very danceable, and I put a ten in his jar. It was worth it. It made me feel all cheery in the midst of a merch carnival to hear genuine individual talent. It reminded me of that country I grew up in, when more musicians worked the streets. I wish hitchhiking would make a comeback. In my youth, I was picked up by various men, some of them drunk, and in return for the ride, I listened to whatever they wanted to tell me, which sometimes was a lot. A fair trade. It was an exercise in mutual trust. Then the Seventies came along when young men affected the derelict look and when you look like an outlaw there are no free rides to be had, even if you’re very nice down deep. With age comes a degree of wisdom. You learn to choose your battles carefully and not expend anger on hopeless causes such as fairness and equality and getting your home nice and neat. My battle is against the words “monetize” and “monetization.” What tiresome phony weirdo words they are. Just say “sell” or “cash in” or “earn a truckload of bucks from”! Even “exploit” is better. “Monetize” is an attempt to dignify with pseudo-techno-lingo the common ordinary money grubbing that we all do. Stick “monetize” up your Levis. I am going to the mat on this. I refuse to be friends with or share a cab with or sit on a plane next to a monetizer. “Flight Attendant, take me back to Tourist, a middle seat next to weeping children would be preferable to listening to this idiot vocalize.” And now that I have demonetized you, dear hearts, let me move on to the next battle, which is to establish kindness and amiability among friends and strangers alike. I admit I’m still happy about that cashier at Trader Joe’s who said, “How are you today, my dear?” It reminded me of a bygone time. She was, I believe, a woman and I am, to my way of thinking at least, a man though of course there is fluidity involved, and as we all know, the rules of social exchange between W and M have tightened, so I didn’t ogle, I looked at my shoes and said simply, “Never better.” Which is inoffensive, though untrue. I wanted to hug her and did not. My people weren’t huggers. We were Bible-believing Christians who avoided physical contact lest we contract the religious doubts of the embracee and who knows but what it could be true? My brother was a Bible believer who married a girl who then catholicized him. I could say more but I don’t want to cause trouble. I’m a harmless old man, nattering in the corner. I’ll stop now.  

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