Garrison Keillor, the creator of A Prairie Home Companion, is back on tour for live shows, almost five years after he faced a sexual harassment scandal. In November 2017, Minnesota Public Radio cut ties with Keillor after receiving a report of alleged inappropriate behavior with a woman who worked with him. Keillor’s solo tour includes a stop at the Ryman Auditorium in Nashville on July 10.
Keillor, 79, was accused of inappropriate sexual behavior with a female employee at his show, which led MPR to cut ties with its biggest star. Keillor also lost his weekly Washington Post column and MPR cut ties with PrairieHome.org and stopped distributing his show The Writer’s Almanac. Keillor and MPR settled the case out of court, and the archives of A Prairie Home Companion and The Wrier’s Almanac were made available again online. Despite the changing perception of his career, Keillor has started work on his comeback. In April, he published Boom Town: A Lake Wobegon Novel.
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“For me, it’s not worth thinking about it,” Keillor told the StarTribune recently when asked about his critics. “It’s five years. If people still consider it an issue, that’s up to them.” In an interview with the Wabash Plain Dealer, Keillor called his scandal a “shakedown” and insisted the initial complaint was filed by a contractor who was not given severance. However, an MPR News investigation published in January 2018 found multiple allegations of “inappropriate behavior,” beyond the one that led to MPR cutting ties.
“It is what it is. And there is no way to defend yourself in that atmosphere. #MeToo, the motto was the woman must be believed. And so the women that made the charge never were cross-examined. They were never examined by anybody,” Keillor told the Wabash Plain Dealer. “They made their statements and they wanted anonymity. And they wanted money. And an insurance company paid the money and then MPR said something that I had been inappropriate and I don’t know what they meant by it. That put the story on the front page of the New York Times. And that will end your career.”
Notably, Keillor’s schedule does not include stops in Minneapolis or St. Paul. His managing director, Kate Gustafson Sanderson, told the StarTribune she believes most of his critics do not think he should perform in the Twin Cities, so he is avoiding them.
“There’s a strong vocal minority that feels like they have a mission to stick it to us, and you can’t answer every question they have. They’ve made up their minds,” Sanderson said. “We say, ‘Trust us,’ but what can you do? We don’t want to dismiss the Me Too movement. It’s of critical importance. But if you knew everything, we just don’t fit into it.”
Keillor will stop at the Ryman Auditorium on July 10. While some of his other stops in smaller cities have been solo shows, the Nashville date is billed as A Prairie Home Companion American Revival, with Aoife O’Donovan, Joe Newberry, Heather Masse, Rich Dworsky, Sam Bush, Pat Donohue, Fred Newman, Tim Russell, and others joining him. This is his first appearance at the Ryman since his separation from MPR. Tickets for the show go on sale Friday at 10 a.m. on the Ryman’s website.
