A Granite Falls Home Companion: Our Story
Novel-writing: satisfying, but long and sometimes lonely. Sketch comedy: quick, collaborative, and imperfect. Plus, you get to make people you like say silly things.
Sometimes my friends and I put on a show.
Since 2020, I’ve worked with Madi Ramirez-Tentiger and friends to produce live and filmed parodies of a public radio staple that was the soundtrack of our childhoods. I’m the head writer, director and producer, as well as the person who writes the grant applications.
It started as a way to pass time during quarantine. Now…
The Living Room Years
2020: BIRTH
My husband wanted to help our musician and DJ friends survive financially during lockdown. He asked me if I would like to read literary fiction each week during a half-hour slot of his living room livestream. Realizing that the people needed something else, I pivoted, asking comedian pandemic pod friend Madi RT to collaborate.
The show began as us reading our high-school speech team sketches. Then I started missing a certain retired public radio host, even though he was canceled. In April, Jessica Feeler – contrite, reformed, and not touching people without consent – was born.
Taking It Public
2021: EVOLUTION
We moved back to Miles’s family farm, and I was surprised to find myself actually living in rural America – near towns just like the one the original show had celebrated.
Then, local taproom The Bluenose Gopher asked us to do a live version of our show. We began calling it A Granite Falls Home Companion.
Filmable Sketches
2022-23: CAMERAS?!
Some of the sketches we wanted to produce live onstage simply would not work. We needed sets: a barren farm, Lynchian shots of downtown Granite Falls, and a fake Raytheon Technologies office, to name a few.
Two Southwest Minnesota Arts Council grants made us buckle down and actually film the things: two half-hour taped shows. Friends like Will Hanson, Alek Sievert, Michelle Bohacek, Paul Drees, and local extras helped. Miles Taylor did all the music himself.
Exploring New Venues
2023+: GROWTH
Our home will always be the Bluenose Gopher. But in July 2023, we performed our first-ever show for a non-local, non-captive audience: a packed house at the Little Theater in New London. There would be more.
(embedded video of full recording.)
.jpg)
Sticking it to the Man
2024: REVENGE
Unfortunately, the host parodied by Jessica Feeler decided to un-cancel himself and start performing again.
So we set up camp in the Cities the same weekend he returned to the Fitzgerald, performing a totally-legal parody version at Bryant Lake Bowl. Musician Dan Duke provided a live soundtrack; we did a musical version of Chicago’s “Cell Block Tango” full of facts from this MPR article.
Only one group of people thought they’d be seeing a nicer show and walked out halfway through!
The result was the cover story of the second issue of the publication The Yellow Medicine Arrow, found in gas stations all over the region for a time.
We’re especially proud that the Legion show kicked off the regional Arts Meander, featuring work by numerous local writers and actors (as well as a live score by Mike Gill and performances by Damen Tesch/Charlie Shivers). A full filmed version courtesy of Tyler Gastecki can be found below.
.png)
Updates
For more, including one-off sketches, pictures, and upcoming shows, follow us on Facebook.
Interested in booking us for your bar mitzvah, retirement roast, or corporate team-building event? Contact us here.