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STEPHEN JOHN: Good afternoon with news from Minnesota Public Radio. I'm Stephen John. Allina Hospitals and Clinics have announced its new board of directors. Minnesota Public Radio's Tom Scheck reports.

TOM SCHECK: Allina has added 10 new members to its 21-person board of directors and has dropped 19 members of the former board. The new board includes five doctors and board members at some of Allina's hospitals and clinics. Allina officials say the new board will meet soon to elect officers.

The decision to restructure the board comes one week after Allina completely restructured its board of directors for its HMO Medica. In late July, Allina announced that it would separate its Hospitals and Clinics division from Medica.

The recent decisions come in the wake of an investigation by Attorney General Mike Hatch, who says the company spent millions of dollars on administrative expenses. Hatch's audit is expected to be made public this month.

Allina is also facing a federal grand jury investigation into allegations it overcharged Medicare by at least $19 million. In the interest of full disclosure, Allina's chief operating officer, David Strand, is chairman of NPR's board of trustees. An Allina board member also serves on NPR's board. I'm Tom Scheck, Minnesota Public Radio.

STEPHEN JOHN: The Lewis Kemp seafood company in West Duluth says it is closing its factory and consolidating it with another facility in Motley. Lewis Kemp says it will wind down operations over the next several months and will close its doors for good by January. There's no immediate word on how many employees would lose their jobs.

The forecast is calling for clear to partly cloudy conditions this afternoon. There's a slight chance of showers in the southwest, highs in the 70s, lows tonight in the upper 40s and 50s, and more pleasant weather tomorrow.

In Fargo-Moorhead this hour, it's 70 degrees. Duluth has 66. Brainerd is at 69, while it's 64 in Albert Lea and 71 in the Twin Cities. That's news from NPR. I'm Stephen John.

SPEAKER: Programming on Minnesota Public Radio is supported by Valleyfair Amusement Park, celebrating their 25th anniversary this year. Valleyfair, 25 years dedicated to the philosophy of a great day of fun for the whole family.

GARY EITCHEN: It's six minutes now past 12:00.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

And good afternoon. Welcome back to Midday on Minnesota Public Radio. I'm Gary Eichten. Glad you could join us.

Well, this hour, we have a Voices of Minnesota triple header for you. We're going to hear from an advocate for the humanities, a jazz saxophonist, and a traditional Irish music vocalist. Here is the host of this hour, Minnesota Public Radio's Dan Olson.

DAN OLSON: Is it hot enough for you? Here's a Voices of Minnesota summer sampler to help take your mind off the heat.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

When the Minnesota Humanities Commission decided to promote reading as a way for kids to do better in school, Cheryl Dixon and her colleagues started the Mother Read, Father Read program. The appeal to this program is, would you like to be a better parent? Well, of course. Who wouldn't?

[MUSIC PLAYING]

When the army camp commander heard that Percy Hughes had a great throwing arm, he put him on the unit's baseball team. But Hughes says he got his real break playing in the camp band.

PERCY HUGHES: In this army ground force band, these were guys out of Count Basie's band, and you name all of the great Black bands.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

DAN OLSON: Katie McMahon had a soaring career as a vocalist with Riverdance. She gave it all up to marry a guy from Minnesota, where she's launching her career as a solo performer.

KATIE MCMAHON: The good thing about America, it being so large, is that there's room for all different types of music. It might even be more difficult, in a way, to have a traditional Irish music career in Ireland.

DAN OLSON: Relax. Let cooler heads prevail. You're listening to Voices of Minnesota.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

Cheryl Dixon has just wrapped up 24 years working for the Minnesota Humanities commission, 21 of them as president. She spent a fair amount of time appearing before state lawmakers who held the purse strings to her commission, answering the question, what are the humanities?

CHERYL DIXON: Good question, I always say. Good question. But one of the things that I didn't do in 24 years, Dan, is to get people to stop saying, what does the Minnesota Humanities Commission do, or even, what are the humanities?

And that's really frustrating because we've really been doing great things in Minnesota for so many years. And there are an incredible number of people out there who do know us.

DAN OLSON: Here's your web page, K-12 education programs, Mother Read, Father Reed, Minnesota Core Knowledge Regional Center, National Issues Forums, perhaps best known, maybe among some, Center for the Book. And we'll get to most, if not all of these. What are the humanities? Let's start there.

CHERYL DIXON: Well, we can answer that two ways. The way I like to answer it is, the humanities are everybody's history and culture, everybody's. But the way we often have to answer it is by giving people the laundry list that Congress provides us. And that laundry list is history, literature, ethics, archaeology, anthropology, philosophy, a long list of those areas of study that we commonly think of as the Humanities.

DAN OLSON: How do you explain it to folks when people ask, but how do I relate it to my life as just folks? What are the humanities in my life as just folks?

CHERYL DIXON: Well, then we say, if you've ever been interested in family history or in the history of our country, in, say, Civil War history, for example, if you've ever wrestled with a moral problem, if that's ever been an issue for you, if you've ever read a line in a novel or any other nonfiction that has just struck you right to your heart, and you said that's the way I would have said it had I been able to say it, those are all the Humanities.

The Humanities are so much around you, and they're so embedded in your life, that that's sometimes why you don't notice them.

DAN OLSON: Cheryl Dixon said she had raised her family and was looking for something interesting to do. So in 1975, she walked into the offices of the Minnesota Humanities Commission and offered to work for free.

That was back in the days when the commission had three employees and around $200,000 to give away in grants. Now the commission has more than two dozen employees and makes grants each year, totaling $350,000.

Along the way, Dixon says, the commission asked itself, what's one of the most important things we can do to promote access to the Humanities? The result is the commission's Mother Read, Father Read program.

CHERYL DIXON: Reading is the key to the door. If you can't read, you're left out of everything. And so they asked the staff to look around and see if reading readiness and literacy were being adequately covered in Minnesota.

And we found a gap. We thought there was a gap for parents, especially for stay-at-home moms. And so we found a program in North Carolina, of all places, and especially of all places because the program was designed for women prisoners as a way to help these women communicate with the children they saw so seldom. And so we brought the program to the state, and it took off like wildfire. It is an extraordinary program.

DAN OLSON: What happens? Do adults sit down with children?

CHERYL DIXON: Well, the job of the Humanities Commission is to train the trainers. So we work with people in head start, even start, early childhood, family education, early K-1 education.

And we train them to use this wonderful curriculum, which is based around 180 carefully chosen children's books. And they're chosen because there's more to the story than just the story.

There's always a moral lesson or something that everybody agrees on that we want our children to have. No matter who we are, we all agree that honesty is important, that saving is important, friendship, family.

DAN OLSON: It's the values.

CHERYL DIXON: All of those wonderful things that we care about. And so we brought this we started training people. It's now at 650 sites around the state. Actually, it should be at 6,000 sites around the state but we're doing the best we can.

DAN OLSON: Volunteer based, are people from the community coming in? Are parents coming in to schools, or does it take place in homes?

CHERYL DIXON: It doesn't take place in homes. It mostly takes place in human service agencies where parents come for all kinds of reasons. They come, and the appeal to this program is, would you like to be a better parent?

Well, of course. Who wouldn't? I haven't met anybody yet who wouldn't like to be a better parent.

DAN OLSON: How could you turn down that?

CHERYL DIXON: And so when you tell those parents the single best indicator of how well a child will do in school is how much they've been read to before school, that's a very powerful thing to tell parents.

DAN OLSON: Another commission goal is promoting a common body of knowledge for all Americans. The commission adopted the idea advanced by educator and author, E.D. Hirsch, Jr, that it is unjust when poor children and children of color do not get the chance to learn what is offered to other children. So he says, all children should learn a universally shared core of knowledge.

Critics jumped on Hirsch for advocating what they assumed was a strategy to fill American classrooms with the White Anglo-Saxon Protestant view of the world. Cheryl Dickson says that is not so.

CHERYL DIXON: Hirsch is one of the warmest, kindest, most concerned persons about social justice I've ever met in my life. And when teachers came to him and said, Mr., you've got a really good idea here, we just think you picked the wrong things, he said, terrific. That's just fine with me.

And in fact, this extraordinarily generous man took the earnings from the books he wrote, Cultural Literacy and The Dictionary of Cultural Literacy, put them in a foundation, and supported teachers from all around the country who wrote this curriculum.

He told them that he wanted one thing from them, and that is that they get the best multicultural advisory board in the country to vet the curriculum. And they did. The chairman of that committee was Henry Louis Gates of Harvard. And Gates says it's the best multicultural curriculum he's ever seen.

And proof of the pudding is that Minnesota has two Afrocentric charter schools in Minneapolis, Sojourner Truth and Harvest Prep. Both of them are core knowledge schools.

DAN OLSON: Cheryl Dickson says one of the attractions of working for the Minnesota Humanities commission is giving money to small towns in order to help them tell their story.

CHERYL DIXON: Well, there's a freshwater fishing museum up in Tofte that I think is pretty cool.

DAN OLSON: Yes, say a word about that.

CHERYL DIXON: Well, it's really interesting. One of the things that I like about it. so much is that the people who run the resort that's near it, Bluefin Bay, have discovered that this little fishing museum is a real draw for their clientele. And so they have devoted part of their budget to supporting this little museum.

Now, I think that's a wonderful story for the legislature when business people say, look, these little museums are really good for the tourism business in Minnesota, and we need more of them. So that's a great story.

Another story I love is Braham Pie Days.

DAN OLSON: Yes, I've heard of the Braham Pie Days and have never been there, I regret to say. What happened?

CHERYL DIXON: Well, the whole idea, I think, of a community finding what is there about us that's special? How do we want to look to the outside? And is there a way that what we are can appeal to people who aren't from here.

And Braham discovered that they had this reputation for great pies. And so now they have pie art and pie jewelry and probably even a pie opera, for all I know. It's terrific.

But it's another way the humanities can help, of all things, economic development because the humanities can help a community decide what they want to be and help them, then, stay of stead-forth in that.

DAN OLSON: Along the way, Cheryl Dixon has helped the Minnesota Humanities commission raise money for special projects. One of the big ones was $3 million to renovate the Gillette Children's Hospital school building.

The building is now a conference center available to groups. Teachers are some of the most frequent users. They show up for as long as a week at a time during the summer for training in ways to bring more of the Humanities into their classrooms.

CHERYL DIXON: Teachers came to us, and they said, we can go back to school in the summertime. We can go back and take a course in American history or in literature. But it happens to be what that college is teaching right now and what that professor wants to teach that summer.

Wouldn't it be wonderful if there were an organization that designed programs for us, for teachers? And so we did that. And those programs have turned out to be absolutely wonderful.

One of the first decisions we made, which I still think is one of the best decisions we made, is not to do programs for elementary teachers or for secondary school teachers, but for K-12 teachers.

And one of the things that happens in schools is teachers start looking at third graders or eighth graders. And this program forces them to talk about everybody's teaching, and how would you present that to third graders? Well, I don't know. How would you present it to 11th graders? And it really enriches these seminars.

But they always come to us and say a couple of things that keep us doing this kind of work. One is, you're giving us the real stuff. And by that they mean subject content.

They're saying, in shorthand, we get a lot of pedagogy. We get a lot of child psychology. We get a lot of 101 ways to use milk cartons in the classroom. And I'm not saying that they don't need those things. They do. They need all those things. But they also need subject content.

And so it's really exciting to have a group of teachers for a week, day and night, who are so totally engaged in a subject that we can't get them to stop. They're so committed and hard working.

DAN OLSON: Cheryl Dixon is a native of Pierre, South Dakota. Her father was the town's Studebaker dealer, not a lofty position in pure social order, she recalls, because Studebakers weren't really considered a classy set of wheels. Even so, she says, it was thrilling as a teenager when her dad let her drive a new car. Dixon credits her father's influence for her interest in the Humanities.

CHERYL DIXON: He loved everything that people did, have done. The history of humankind's accomplishments and failures were of endless fascination to my father.

DAN OLSON: He must have grown up with Hubert Humphrey in South Dakota.

CHERYL DIXON: Well, my father was associated with George McGovern, very closely associated with George McGovern, when people tried to rebuild the Democratic Party in South Dakota in the early '50s.

DAN OLSON: Did he hold office, your father?

CHERYL DIXON: Yeah, in fact, my father was the only Democrat ever elected to the State Senate from the district then or since, by the way. And he also served in the House. He was on the city council for many years.

DAN OLSON: So you grew up in this stew of politics.

CHERYL DIXON: --stew of interest and excitement. My father only finished eighth grade. He was passionate about education for his children, just passionate.

DAN OLSON: Cheryl Dixon, thanks so much for coming by to talk with us.

CHERYL DIXON: Thank you very much for having me, Dan.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

DAN OLSON: Retiring Minnesota Humanities Commission President Cheryl Dixon. You can visit the commission on the web at thinkmhc.org. You're hearing Voices of Minnesota on Minnesota Public Radio. I'm Dan Olson.

[KATIE MCMAHON, "THE PEACOCK'S FEATHER"]

That's Katie McMahon on the harp playing the Peacock's Feather. A Dublin native now living in Minnesota, she's launching her career as a solo artist singing and playing traditional Irish music. We'll hear from her in just a little while. First, we hear from one of Minnesota's finest jazz saxophonists.

PERCY HUGHES: As we progressed on our instruments, whenever there was company coming, she'd say, boys, get your instruments out.

["DOWNTOWN UPROAR" PLAYING]

DAN OLSON: Percy Hughes is remembering growing up in South Minneapolis and being called on by his mother to perform for visitors.

PERCY HUGHES: She had a few tunes that we had learned well enough to play in front of people.

DAN OLSON: So this was a family where family members, at the drop of a hat, at a moment's notice-- you were on stand.

PERCY HUGHES: Oh, yes. [LAUGHS] And as I think back about my mom, I know it was my mom who had the real interest in music. But she always had records, the old 78 of jazz. And naturally, we got to hear jazz at such an early age.

["DOWNTOWN UPROAR" PLAYING]

DAN OLSON: Percy Hughes's musical training has taken him a long ways to, among other things, a collaboration in 1986 with the late Red Wolf, a jazz trumpeter. On the death of Duke Ellington, Red Wolf decided to preserve Ellington's music composed for small groups.

PERCY HUGHES: This is what Red's project was, to transcribe all Ellington compositions or Ellington sidemen compositions, like Billy Strayhorn, and Johnny Hodges, Rex Stewart. So many of his sidemen composed songs.

DAN OLSON: Percy Hughes shared reed duties with Russ Peterson as Red Wolf led them and others at the Emporium of Jazz in Mendota for the 1986 recording session, where they played Ellington tunes, including Downtown Uproar.

["DOWNTOWN UPROAR" PLAYING]

Ellington's Downtown Uproar, the late Red Wolf is on trumpet. Gene Byrd is on trombone. Stan Hall is on piano. Al [? Clossmoor ?] on guitar. Dick Norling is on bass. Dick Bortolussi is on drums. Russ Peterson and Percy Hughes are on reeds.

Percy Hughes was born in St. Paul and raised in Minneapolis. By his teens, he was already an accomplished musician. His fortunes rose when a young radio announcer named Lake Hammond, now the host of Minnesota Public Radio's Jazz Image, featured Hughes and his fellow musicians on Saturday afternoon broadcasts. Jazz, however, didn't pay the bills.

PERCY HUGHES: Before the war, before I was inducted into the service, drafted, I worked for Minneapolis Honeywell. I was one of the first Blacks hired for skilled work.

I was a machine operator. Multiple drill press, I remember that. But once again, thanks to Lake Hammond, and the band became so popular, Dan, very popular, that jobs started pouring in. And I had a chance to spend the summer up at Bar Harbor with my band.

So I made that choice. Consequently, here, a certified letter came from Honeywell. Either come back or forget it. So I left Honeywell because I made a decision. Music is what I want.

DAN OLSON: Percy Hughes was also a fine baseball player. He was an infielder with a great arm. When World War II came along and Hughes was drafted into the army, the camp commander put him on the baseball team.

PERCY HUGHES: Our regimental commander was very bullish on having a good ball team. And I was a good ball player. I was a leadoff man. I couldn't hit a fence. I only weighed about 140, pounds. But I could sting the ball.

DAN OLSON: You didn't worry, as some musicians do, about what--

PERCY HUGHES: No, I never thought about it because I was doing what I enjoyed, I loved. So it never entered my mind that I could hurt myself or I wouldn't be able to play music. But I had no, really, professional thoughts about music at that time.

DAN OLSON: Percy Hughes recalls hearing the military baseband and deciding he wanted in. He called back home to Minneapolis and asked his parents to send his clarinet and saxophone so he could try out.

PERCY HUGHES: In this army ground force band, these were guys out of Count Basie's band, and you name all of the great Black bands. See, everything was-- there wasn't any intermingling. Everything was either Black or white back in those years. So each camp had one of everything, a band or whatever.

DAN OLSON: And these were ceremonial occasions the band would be called upon to play for. Some top brass would come in. The band had to be there.

PERCY HUGHES: We were there for all of the ceremonies. And we played at the Officer's Club. Officers had a lot of dances. [LAUGHS] I won't say any more. But that was my learning.

DAN OLSON: After the war, out of the military, Hughes wanted to resume his bid to make music his career. The problem was finding a place in Minnesota where a Black man could get a start.

PERCY HUGHES: Back in 1946, coming out of the service, and the members of my band, we really didn't have a place to just sit and play. And Treasure Inn was a nightclub, Rice Street, the intersection of Wheelock Parkway and Rice Street.

And three wonderful guys, Dick Man, Howard Brown, and Claude Mason, three Black guys, they purchased this club, and it was a success. It worked. Dan, going to the job, we played three nights a week. Before we got to the club, that place would be packed with college kids. It was just amazing.

DAN OLSON: We don't have a recording from those Treasure Inn days. However, we have more from the 1986 session at the Emporium of Jazz in Mendota, where Percy Hughes joined Russ Peterson on saxophone, led by Red Wolf in Duke Ellington's Prelude to a Kiss.

["PRELUDE TO A KISS" PLAYING]

Percy Hughes and his band members played all the Twin Cities clubs, making the Flame at 16th and Nicollet in Minneapolis their home. Jazz artists, including Dizzy Gillespie, Sarah Vaughan, Oscar Peterson, Patti page, Gene Krupa, and many others were the star attractions.

Percy Hughes said they'd finish their set and then join his band for sessions into the early morning hours. The music filled the soul, but it still didn't pay the Bills. Percy Hughes had to find a day job, in this case, the postal service, carrying mail.

PERCY HUGHES: And that was one of the best things that I could have done for a couple of reasons. It kept me healthy. I was a mailman, and I enjoyed-- I brag on everyone that I carried 28 Minnesota winters outdoors. I'm really proud of that.

But it changed my whole way of living. I stopped drinking. I stopped smoking. And it worked. All of a sudden, I had so much extra energy.

DAN OLSON: Percy Hughes used the extra energy on stage and on the tennis court. At 63, he became a certified tennis teaching professional. He continued to play tennis after two hip replacements.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

These days, Percy Hughes continues the work of his friend, the late Red wolf, preserving the Duke Ellington charts transcribed by Wolf. His advice is simple.

PERCY HUGHES: Expose your grandchildren and your children to Duke Ellington music. That's the important thing. Catch the youngsters with these sounds.

DAN OLSON: Percy, it was a pleasure talking to you. Thank you so much for your time.

PERCY HUGHES: A real pleasure, Dan.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

DAN OLSON: From 1986, Percy Hughes is on clarinet with Red Wolf, Gene Berg, Russ Peterson, Stan Hall, Al [? Clossmoor, ?] Dick Norling, and Dick Bortolussi at the Emporium of Jazz in Mendota, playing Ellington's The Mooche.

["THE MOOCHE" PLAYING]

You're listening to Voices of Minnesota on Minnesota Public Radio. I'm Dan Olson. And now it's Katie McMahon.

Born and raised in Dublin, she started playing the harp at age four. She started touring in her late teens with the Celtic choral group, Anunna. The people who started the group, Riverdance, heard her singing and playing and invited her to join them.

Now she's living in Minnesota. How did that happen? You'd be right if you guessed romance was a factor.

KATIE MCMAHON: The first time I came here, I was on tour with Riverdance, and I met my husband, Ben Craig, backstage in the Orpheum Theater, downtown Minneapolis. And he asked me out swing dancing.

DAN OLSON: Well, there you go. There's a Minnesota date.

KATIE MCMAHON: Well, a guy who can dance, that's a good thing in my book. But so we went out for a while, and got engaged, and got married. And this is how I've ended up here, and I've been living here for about a year and a half now.

DAN OLSON: Katie McMahon, you've brought your harp. Would you describe this instrument and say where it came from?

KATIE MCMAHON: It's based on a 1,000-year old design, and it's got 48 strings. It's called the Irish lever harp. Each lever brings the string up a semitone, but it also means you're limited as to how many keys you can play at one time. But once you've set the harp, it stays in the same key. So you don't have to worry about black notes, like the piano.

DAN OLSON: It's a beautiful design on-- do you call it the sound box of the harp?

KATIE MCMAHON: Mm-hmm. Yeah, this harp was made by Paddy Cafferkey in County Galway in Ireland. And he did a very fine job and made beautiful carvings. And his are probably some of the best Irish harps you can get.

DAN OLSON: You're having another one made, you say?

KATIE MCMAHON: Yeah, he's making me a smaller one so that I can travel easier because it's pretty heavy.

DAN OLSON: What would you like to do?

KATIE MCMAHON: OK, I'm going to sing a song from my new album, Shine, called, O Row My Little Boat. It's about a little boy who goes off in his boat in the west coast of Ireland for the day and has a great time rowing away. And it's in Gaelic, and it's one of the first songs I learned from my harp teacher when I was 12.

[KATIE MCMAHON, "O ROW MY LITTLE BOAT"] [SINGING IN GAELIC]

DAN OLSON: Katie McMahon, you've had now already many lives. Here's your solo career in Minnesota. Before that was Riverdance. Then, before that was Anunna. And then even before that, a teenager, you were a member of Christ Church, a highly regarded sacred ensemble in Ireland.

And here we have some pieces that I think we should hear about. Would you like to start with the Hildegard Von Bingen item and say a word about that?

KATIE MCMAHON: Yes. I became involved with this project. It's a CD from Sony Classical called Lights in the Dark, and it basically reworks tunes from Hildegard Von Bingen, who I believe is 12th century. Yes.

DAN OLSON: Close. It's going to be close enough for doing a rework.

KATIE MCMAHON: She was a nun, and she was quite a strange nun, indeed. She was into aromatherapy, into music. And she had an order of like-minded nuns, and they all wore very colorful clothes.

And she was really quite the character, but she wrote fantastic music. She had lots of visions and wrote about them. So it was very spiritual stuff.

And basically, Richard Souther is the composer, arranger on this CD. He took the original chants and pieces and reworked them, giving them quite a modern edge with different electronic pieces and then with the Elan pipes too. So it's got a nice mixture of stuff. And the song I think we're going to play is called Tree of Wonders.

[KATIE MCMAHON, "TREE OF WONDERS"]

DAN OLSON: This is Katie McMahon in Tree of Wonders from a CD entitled Illumination, Hildegard Von Bingen.

Now we're jumping to another chapter of your life. Anuna, the Celtic choral group which preserves traditional music in Ireland is still around. You're a former member now, an alumna.

KATIE MCMAHON: That's right, yes.

DAN OLSON: And what would you like to tell us about a piece you did with Anuna?

KATIE MCMAHON: Well, Anunna was a great experience for me. I was, basically, taking a year off college, and I joined all these groups. And this was just the most fun group I'd ever been in because I'd been in lots of different choirs, and they can sometimes be stuffy.

But these were a lot of young people. Most of us were in college. We partied a lot. We decided to throw away the music and not have a conductor. And we started processing and wearing very cool Gothic black clothes and using candles. And we performed a lot in churches.

And this song, Siúil a Rúin is quite a fun song. It's about a lady whose husband leaves her to join the army, and she goes off and follows him and tries to find him in all the different countries.

[ANUNA, "SIÚIL A RÚIN"] I wish I were on yonder hill

It is there I sit and cry my fill

And every tear would turn a mill

I wish I sat on my true love's knee

Many a fond story he told to me

He told me things that never shall be

[SINGING IN GAELIC]

His hair was black

His eye was blue

His arm was strong

His word was true

I wish in my heart I was with you

[SINGING IN GAELIC]

[VIOLON SOLO, HARMONICS]

I'll dye my petticoat

I'll dye it red

And around the world, I'll beg my bread

Till I find my love alive or dead

[SINGING IN GAELIC]

DAN OLSON: All right, Katie McMahon, let's get back to the brand new CD, which is out now. But I guess your big party, the release party, is in mid-August. Is that right?

KATIE MCMAHON: That's right. I haven't got an exact date, but I do have my first solo gig, which I'll be doing in the Cedar Cultural Center on September the 9th. And this should be a fun night. And I'll have my entire band with me and Irish dancers and everything, so it's going to be quite the production. I'm starting to rehearse, and it's a big production.

DAN OLSON: It'll be a little bit of Dublin right there on Cedar Avenue in Minneapolis on the West Bank. Obviously, all the pieces, 12 pieces, are great. You have a couple of favorites, though, I gather, from Shine.

KATIE MCMAHON: I do, yes. Shine is by a friend of mine, Kieran Farrell, and it's basically a prayer yearning for a simpler time. In answer to that prayer, an angel shines it's calming light down.

[KATIE MCMAHON, "SHINE"]

(SINGING) Fill my soul with the pleasures of old

When time was no more than a breaking dawn or setting sun

Fill my soul with the stories that were told

By the fire at the heart of my family home that we've outgrown

[FLUTE SOLO]

Take my hand and show me a land

Free from the touch of the one who claims and tries to tame

Take my hand

Help me to understand

Why I feel this way the more I live from day to day

Here at night

By candlelight

You shine on me

Resting calmly by my side

You shine on me

Giving kindly

Gently guiding

Shine on me

What you are

I cannot see

But shine on me

DAN OLSON: Katie McMahon. Where do you want your music to take you here in Minnesota? What else do you want to do?

KATIE MCMAHON: I really, really enjoy what I'm doing at the moment. I like playing for people, and I like meeting people. It's fun because a lot of people here have seen Riverdance and remember me from then, and they have been following where I'm going. And it's nice. It really is a good town for that.

DAN OLSON: You come from a culture, Ireland, where traditional music, music from hundreds of years ago, is really valued. We value it here too. We don't have such an old tradition.

But I wonder if you find American popular culture edging you out of the spotlight and people thinking, gosh, she has a wonderful voice, a miraculous voice and a great harp style? But there's NSYNC and Destiny's Child and everything else. I'm thinking, obviously, of the younger crowd. How does that make you feel?

KATIE MCMAHON: Well, the good thing about America, it being so large, is that there's room for all different types of music. It might even be more difficult, in a way, to have a traditional Irish music career in Ireland.

But here there's enough people. In fact, a lot of teenagers, even, write to me. They're very into it. And it's a very rich music scene, particularly here in the Twin Cities. There's lots of different ethnic music. And I've got to mention my husband's band.

DAN OLSON: Please, let's get a plug in.

KATIE MCMAHON: Stockcar Named Desire.

DAN OLSON: Oh, really? Say it again.

PERCY HUGHES: Stockcar Named Desire.

DAN OLSON: This is Ben Craig and colleagues, I gather. He's a rock man.

KATIE MCMAHON: Yeah, he is. He plays upright bass, and that's fun. You can do your swing dancing to that band, and they're kind of rockabilly, Rock and Roll type stuff.

DAN OLSON: So here's a Minnesota household with traditional Irish music on one side of the dinner table and Rock and Roll on the other. This is good.

KATIE MCMAHON: It's interesting. In fact, my husband had never heard Irish music before, and he called it joke music when he heard it first.

DAN OLSON: Joke music, what is that about?

KATIE MCMAHON: Well, he's just never heard it, and it sounds really odd to him. But now he's beginning to it.

DAN OLSON: Well, I would think so. He'd better.

KATIE MCMAHON: Yeah, well, he's stuck with it now, isn't he?

[LAUGHTER]

DAN OLSON: And now, would you like to do one more live piece and say a word about it?

KATIE MCMAHON: OK, let me just change the key in the harp here.

DAN OLSON: Let go of the levers.

KATIE MCMAHON: This next song is called Donal Agus Morag and-- oh, no. It's a completely other name. It's down the Moor. I always get it mixed up because it begins with D. And it's from my first album, After The Morning.

And by the way, I have to plug Irish on Grand here, which is a great shop in St. Paul, and they always have my CDs. [LAUGHS] And this is a real fun song about two people who meet on a mountain in among the heather and what happens then.

[KATIE MCMAHON, "DOWN THE MOOR"]

One morn in May when fields were gay,

Serene and pleasant was the weather

I spied a lass and a bonnie bonnie lass

She was whooping the dew fray among the heather

Down the moor

In among the heather over the moor and through the heather

I spied a lass and a bonnie bonnie lass

She was whopping the dew fray among the heather

Down the moor

I steppened and up to this fair maid.

What is your name? Come to me hither

And she answer me down the bonnie burn side

And I'm herding all my ewes together

Down the moor

In among the heather over the moor and through the heather

And she answered me down by the bonnie burn side

And I'm herding all my ewes together

Down the moor

Barefoot was she

She was calmly dressed

And on her head, never a hat, nor a feather

But the plait hung neatly around her waist

As we tripped through the blooming heather

Down the moor

In among the heather over the moor and through the Heather

But the plait hung neatly around her waist

As we tripped through the blooming heather

Down the moor

I courted her that lee long day

My heart was as light as any feather

Until the rays of the red setting sun

Came shining down in among the heather

Down the moor

In among the heather over the moor and through the heather

Until the rays of the red setting sun

Came shining down in among the heather

Down the moor

Then up she got and away she went

Her name and place, I cannot gather

But if I was a king, I'd make her my queen

That bonnie wee lass I met among the heather

Down the moor

In among the heather over the moor and through the heather

But if I was a king, I'd make her my queen

That Bonnie wee lass I met among the heather

Down the moor

DAN OLSON: Katie McMahon, thank you so much for coming by.

KATIE MCMAHON: Thank you.

DAN OLSON: Traditional Irish harpist and vocalist, Katie McMahon. Her new compact disk is titled Shine. She performs Sunday, September 9, with her fellow musicians at the Cedar Cultural Center on Minneapolis's West Bank. I'm Dan Olson.

GARY EITCHEN: And thank you, Mr. Olson. Dan is the producer of our Voices of Minnesota series and has been at it for some long while, talking with Minnesotans of note about their careers, their lives. It's an interesting series.

By the way, if you missed part of today's program, or simply would like to hear it again, we'll be rebroadcasting this program at 9 o'clock tonight, our triple header, our Voices of Minnesota triple header, at 9:00 tonight, a rebroadcast.

And then, of course, if you can't listen at 9:00, it's going to be available for a full week on our website, minnesotapublicradio.org. A full week's worth of programs are always available on our website.

And also while you're at the website, make sure you take advantage of the soapbox feature, where you get an opportunity to weigh in on some of the issues that we discuss on our Midday program.

I know many of you call in, or try to call in, any way, to get your questions on the air. And you get a busy signal, or maybe you're a little bit too shy, or you're not near a phone, and you don't get your questions on and your comments. Well, here's a great opportunity to do it online, minnesotapublicradio.org.

I sure hope you can join us Monday. The September primary is looming. There is a lively race for the mayor of Minneapolis underway. And on Monday, we're going to talk with the leading candidates for mayor of Minneapolis, R.T. Rybac and Mark Stenglein, during the 11 o'clock hour.

Over the noon hour, we'll be talking with candidates Lisa MacDonald and Sharon Sayles Belton. So it's a great opportunity to find out more about the candidates for mayor. That's on Monday.

Sarah Meyers is the producer of our program. Cara Fiegenschuh is our assistant producer. I'm Gary Eichten. Thanks for tuning in.

SPEAKER 1: Word of Mouth tonight contains Horton Foote on writing and the theater, Richard Nelson on collecting art, and a very strange voicemail message.

SPEAKER 2: Press 4 if you're hungry.

SPEAKER 1: Word of Mouth is tonight at 6:00 and 11:00.

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It's partly cloudy through the afternoon with a high reaching the upper 70s. Tonight, we can look for a clear sky with an overnight low in the low to mid-50s. And then tomorrow, it's sunny with a high in the low 80s. It's pretty much the same kind of weather.