Pacific Home Companions

Brownsmead Flats, a Northwest natural resource, headlines CRR Gala

Some fifteen years ago this paper’s editor asked a favored freelancer to go hunt down a loose band of minstrels who’d named themselves for their own riverine habitat, Brownsmead Flats, and were showing up more and more at community events around the rivermouth.

In his subsequent article Steve Brock said, “I got really caught up in the folksy, sometimes political, sometimes humorous songs, their excellent vocal harmonies and great musicianship.” In a nice imaginative touch, he concluded that, “It reminded me of what you might expect to hear on a show like ‘Northwest Home Companion,’ if there were such a thing.”

Editor Sue Piper, forever a fan of Garrison Keillor and his quietly epic “Prairie Home Companion,” got the comparison immediately and it’s stayed in her mind ever since. “When we started to think about the book launch