Radio personality and author Garrison Keillor decided that 2013 is the year to call it quits. Keillor has been the tender-voiced host of A Prairie Home Companion since 1974, which has been a significant outlet for American Folk Music over the decades. Previously Keillor had named former Sing Out! editor Irwin Silber’s The Folksinger’s Wordbook as his second most important book, behind the Acts of the Apostles. As Keillor notes, he is “on the lookout for replacements,” suggesting that the beloved variety show will continue without him.

The following is a note from Keillor about his impending retirement, from the Prairie Home Companion Web page:

I’m in London, walking around under an umbrella with my daughter in hand, looking at fields of yellow and white daffodils, the flower that excited Wordsworth. This morning a reporter rang me up, as they say here, to ask if I am retiring in the spring of 2013, as reported in the papers. There isn’t a simple answer to that. The simple fact is that mortality is a helpful prod that keeps us trotting along, mindful of our place in life, and awakens us to the beauty of spring daffodils (there being fewer springs ahead than behind) and reminds us performers not to hang around too long. There is a point at which people start to worry for you onstage and that’s when you should hang it up. It’s a delicate illusion we create and if we dodder and dither, the game is over. We’ve all seen old gaffers who pushed the public’s loyalty much too far and it’s not a pretty sight. Some performers put out 20-year-old publicity photos. Mine show a 68-year-old man with bushy gray eyebrows and in some pictures he looks every bit his age. I was 32 when I started A Prairie Home Companion and now I’m looking down the road at 80. So what? Big deal. Welcome to the world.

I love this radio show, which has been a solid fixture in my bumpy life, and I want it to push on bravely into the future with new hosts and a new spirit, and to that end I am planning for the future. The spring of 2013 strikes me as a good time to step quietly into the wings and watch some younger livelier person step out. I am on the lookout for replacements. I hope to keep a gentle paternal connection to the show for years to come and to go on with The Writers Almanac, and meanwhile I am looking forward to Nashville on the 26th and then New York and a flowering spring.

Garrison Keillor