Joe's Odyssey

I have a note in my iPhone that was created on April 5, 2016, and last updated on September 19, 2017.

It's a list of states in which I'd played the Odyssey up to that 2017 date and it's got 33 states on it.

From what I can tell, it had something like 26 or 27 on it when I created it in 2016 while flying from Louisiana (where I'd played at Tulane) to Florida. I remember tapping it out while sitting on the plane and being surprised that I'd already performed in that many. 

I'm fairly certain that early…

Every show matters.  

Every show is valuable.

Every show is an opportunity to connect with an audience and learn about my material. 

Odyssey shows 333, 334, and 335, were in Greece, The Netherlands, and Italy.

Odyssey show 336 was back at my home over Zoom for a private school in Connecticut, about 16 hours after I walked through the door to end 20 hours of travel back to Chicago from Rome (through Newark, my own katabasis).

I played at Pomfret in 2019 and virtually for them in 2020 and I love the…

I have a confession to make… 

I never really learned all that much about Rome in my course of Classical studies. 

My Latin pretty much always sucked in comparison to my Greek and I have the (unfair) tendency to regard a lot of Roman art as just rip offs of better Greek art. 

I did like the Aeneid (in Latin). 

Okay, got that out of the way, what a relief. 

So while I was curious about and excited to visit and perform in Rome, it didn’t hold quite the same stature and meaning in my heart as Athens did. 

Which…

Believe it or not, the “anchor gig” of this European Odyssey tour was in Nunspeet, a town of 25,000 located in the Dutch national forest. 

This gig for the 2019 Orality and Literacy conference in Austin got me in front of an international audience that included a Dutch classicist who recommended me for the OIKOS seminar, an annual conference of graduate students held in Nunspeet. Once I had that gig, I started to build the others for my (eventually canceled due to covid) fall 2020 European tour. 

Just like…

Words are inadequate. 

As a musician, as a bard, I understand this. 

I understand that words can only bring you so close to a story or thing or moment. 

Or to a feeling. 

Music, perhaps, can get you closer. 

Or at least it’s more immediate. It’s energy, it’s vibrations, that act upon your brain often without perceived cognitive mediation. 

While you impose yourself on words, music imposes itself on you. 

This notion is really at the heart of my Odyssey performance: it seeks to add the music and rhythm of…