February 29, 2024 - University of Toronto, Canada 

Lately when discussing my Homeric-inspired work with audiences, I've found myself marveling at how beautiful and strange my path has been, marked with luck, mystery, and coincidence.

A lot like all of life.

When I think about my journey now, I feel something I can only describe as wonder. A spiritual sort of wonder. And gratitude. 

My Odyssey show at University of Toronto was the only Odyssey show out of six total performances in Ontario, Canada, the last week of a leap year February. The other five were Blues…

Read more

January 24 and 25, 2024 - UC-San Diego 

I’ve written before about the transformative experience of reading Homer in Greek for the first time. I got the sense of being in a physical space inside the poetry, surrounded by a living organism.

It’s still among the most connected I’ve ever felt to humanity.

If that was a lightning strike that rewired my brain and heart (and the course of my life), my understanding and appreciation of the world portrayed in the epics has been a decades-long slow burn.

Yes, I sensed right away that a musician/modern bard…

Read more

November 28, 2023 - University of Illinois, Chicago 

On a frigid late November Tuesday morning, I played my 15th show at or for University of Illinois, Chicago. My first was in the fall of 2016 and this was my third visit in 2023.  It's no exaggeration to say the shallow cinderblock classrooms have become a home of sorts to me, a place I feel comfortable, a place I've discovered how to be myself.

In the fall of 2018, I wrote one post about two shows on back to back days and as I read back through all the words inspired by hometown shows, it was this dispatch…

Read more

November 13 and 14, 2023 - Pomfret School, CT, and UMass - Boston, MA 

Just a couple days after my 50 state milestone show in Oklahoma, I flew out of Chicago on a Sunday morning to Boston for my last two out-of-town Odyssey shows of the year. 

Monday’s performance was at Pomfret School in Connecticut. This show has become an annual tradition five years running thanks to my now friend Todd who teaches a semester-long class on the Odyssey to high school upperclassmen there.  

Tuesday was a return to UMass-Boston for an Odyssey show after playing The Blues of Achilles there in…

Read more

November 8, 2023 - Oklahoma State University, Stillwater, OK 

Water in waking
Water in dreaming
You have brought me here to…
******
How can I possibly write something that captures the almost 22 years of Odyssey shows that brought me to a home of sorts: performing in my 50th state, Oklahoma. 

Let’s start with a timeline:

December 2001 to February 2002 - at the age of 24, I write my Odyssey from song 1, Who Am I?, to song 24, Water. 

March 17, 2002: My first performance in my parents’ living room for 15 carefully selected guests.

The week of April 8,  2002: My first public…

Read more

SEE THE ODYSSEY

BUY THE ODYSSEY

Purchase the full-length recording:
At joegoodkin.com by clicking HERE 
At iTunes by clicking HERE 

Connect with The Odyssey