Prairie Home Companion Sounds Artist Tom Keith Dies

Washington Post:

Tom Keith, 64, the virtuoso sound-effects man who for more than 30 years was a one-man band, zoo and noisemaker on Garrison Keillor’s popular radio program, “A Prairie Home Companion,” died Oct. 30 on the way to a hospital in his home town of St. Paul, Minn.
The cause of death was cardiac arrest, said his twin sister, Terry Green.
Mr. Keith was a constant creative presence on the Saturday variety show, which first aired in 1974 and is distributed by American Public Media on 600 radio stations.
For the 4 million weekly listeners who tune in to hear about the news from Lake Wobegon, the travels of the philosophizing cowboys Dusty and Lefty and the misadventures of the hapless detective Guy Noir, Mr. Keith was not a technician but a comedian in his own right.

Here he is at work:




If you haven't seen the 2006 movie, A Prairie Home Companion, and you have some free time this winter, I recommend you watch it. Mr. Keith shows off his stuff, John C. Reilly and Woody Harrelson are hilarious as Lefty and Dusty and Lindsay Lohan is in the higher end of her range between The Parent Trap and the current continuous train wreck of her life.