Joe's Odyssey

Being a successful bard requires above all else adaptability. 

Of course that applies to life in general.

You plan and plan and plan and then you inevitably have to adapt and stay as relaxed and focused and efficient as possible while doing so. Sometimes you have to make split second critical decisions to get things back on the right track if they start faltering.

Your first responsibility is to get to the gig and deliver the best show you can under whatever conditions you find yourself. Everything is…

My UK/Ireland tour is really two tours.

The first seven days I play three shows: Oxford, Dublin, Edinburgh. 

Then I have three days off to explore Edinburgh and London.

For the second phase, I play three shows in three days starting with Cambridge and continuing to Exeter. Exeter is a half day and three train rides from Cambridge. After a quiet morning walk around Cambridge and some breakfast, I begin my rail journey. 

The trains in the UK aren’t quite as luxurious as they are in Italy, but to an American they…

I characterize my Odyssey as a solo performance.

But in reality it’s a duet between my voice and my guitar.

I’ve been playing guitar for a long time. Longer by a lot than I’ve been a serious singer. Creeping perilously close to four decades of six string obsession. My body and brain grew up around and were shaped by the instrument and I can’t remember much of a time of not playing (or wanting to play) the guitar.

The upshot is that I’m a pretty good guitarist.

It’s the musical thing I do the most effortlessly…

I have Friday off in Edinburgh.

Thursday was amazing: a short run in the morning up to the sunny heights of Holyrood Park, an afternoon wandering the Royal Mile with my host at University of Edinburgh, and then an Odyssey show in a warm intimate theater space on campus with great attendance and brilliant discussion. 

And my voice, after five days on the road, finally feeling like my voice should feel. 

There’s something about the third show of a tour for me lately that seems to be when things click. The first…

Can you have nostalgia for a place you’ve never been? 

Because I swear Dublin stirs in me something that feels a lot like nostalgia as I ride the bus from the airport through the city center to my hotel near the University College Dublin campus. That feeling only intensifies as I take advantage of a day off to explore the city on foot, first on a long run to the coast and then by wandering the city center.

Why might Dublin evoke this nostalgia in me, someone with no cultural connection to Ireland? It’s a…