You could make the case that it all started at the Ryman back in 1974. That’s when Garrison Keillor traveled to Nashville to see the final Grand Ole Opry broadcast from that venerable auditorium and write about the event for The New Yorker. The magazine got its article and Keillor returned home with an idea for a radio program of his own.

Twenty years later, in 1994, A Prairie Home Companion was the very first show onstage at the newly renovated Ryman — and APHC has been back numerous times since.

On Sunday, July 10, A Prairie Home Companion American Revival takes the Ryman stage with humor, music, no end of fun, and, of course, all the latest News from Lake Wobegon.

Joining Garrison: Grammy award-winning songwriter and singer Aoife O’Donovan, Heather Masse (jazz singer who is known as one-third of The Wailin’ Jennys), and Joe Newberry (old-time banjoist, singer, and so much more).

Richard Dworsky will lead an all-star band, featuring instrumental luminaries Sam Bush, Pat Donohue, and others. Sound effects ace Fred Newman and Tim Russell (the man of a thousand voices) round out the troupe.

Garrison Keillor did the weekly coast-to-coast broadcast of A Prairie Home Companion for forty years, wrote fiction and comedy, and invented a little town called Lake Wobegon (where all the children are above average). Since the show ended a few years ago, Keillor has written a memoir, a collection of limericks, and several novels. His most recent books are Serenity at 70, Gaiety At 80: Why You Should Keep on Getting Older, and Boom Town: A Lake Wobegon Novel.