Decatur folk musician Caroline Herring announced on Facebook yesterday that she would be appearing on Prairie Home Companion this coming week when Garrison Keillor and crew are at the Fox Theater on Saturday, May 22nd. Tickets look to be sold out.

With Prairie Home regular Roy Blount Jr. as one of the other special guests scheduled to be on the show, it’s too bad that Decatur couldn’t host the event itself with all the connections!

Random Fun fact: According to Roy Blount Jr.’s Wikipedia page, he went to Ponce de Leon Elementary, which used to sit on the current site of the Decatur Post Office, and if my memory serves me, looked a lot like Clairemont Elementary.

After a bunch of wealthy, drunken table revelers ruined a performance of A Prairie Home Companion at Chastain Park in the summer of 2005, Garrison Keillor snubbed his nose at Atlanta by relocating his show to Columbus, GA in April 2007. While the Columbus audience may have behaved better than the corporate lushes in Atlanta, his take away from that show may have been even worse.

Apparently at that performance, Keillor was unlucky enough to gain the attention of one Andrea R. Campbell, 43, of Hawkinsville, GA. Campbell’s subsequent”transcendental” love of Keillor compelled the mother of five to send the radio host a myriad of strange gifts (like alligator feet and dead beetles) along with unwelcome letters of fantasized sexual encounters. After trying to break into Keillor’s home in St. Paul (perhaps in an attempt to get him to read a hilarious “greeting” to her kids during the intermission of his next broadcast?) he obtained a restraining order against Campbell.

Even with a restraining order against her, the Hawkinsville resident is inclined to believe that its not Keillor who does not desire her taxidermy-laden affections. The AP quotes her saying “I believe that he’s paranoid, or some woman, his wife, is upset and told him he has to do something about it,”.

Sigh.

So, all of this begs the question…will Keillor ever return to the Georgia or has the parade of love-starved locals and unappreciative transplants scared him away forever? If he never returns, his trips will be sorely missed. Not only by me, but also by local son Roy Blount Jr., who will have to make due with “Wait, Wait…Don’t Tell Me” appearances to showcase his wit.

MSNBC