Joe's Odyssey

The last state I conquered in my somewhat Quixotic quest to perform my Odyssey in all fifty was Kansas in November. 

At the time I wrote about the pace at which I’ve been able to add new states and how it has slowed the last few years, complicated additionally by Covid. With only seven states remaining, I came into this year thinking it was realistic to get two more in 2022 and I wrapped up my successful spring touring season by visiting and performing in a place I’ve never been (performing or otherwise)…

After a wonderful virtual show for Vassar, it was equally wonderful to do an in person show at a place I've come to think of as a sort of home: UIC. The last true classroom show I did was... also at UIC last year, somehow already seven months ago.

Surveying those seven months, I find a number of notable in person shows: at two conventions, in a new state, and in three new countries. 

This time I was able to perform safely without wearing a mask, which was a nice logistical improvement over last semester's…

"Why did you adapt the Odyssey into song?"

Of all the thousands of questions I've fielded over 343 performances of my Odyssey, I find this one the most difficult. 

And there it was again, from the audience of Vassar students to whom I performed virtually on an April afternoon almost 20 years to the day of my first college Odyssey performance at Indiana University in 2002.

In my answer, I catalogued my academic and musical bona fides as well as some of the other versions of Homeric epic that inspired me…

My first Odyssey show in almost three months was for a wonderful group of students at the Illinois Junior Classical League convention in the Chicago suburbs on Sunday, February 27, 2022.

It was also the last show before the 20th anniversary of my first Odyssey performance, which happened in my parents' living room (in a different Chicago suburb) on Sunday, March 17, 2002.

I'm not sure how to process this very Odyssey-appropriate milestone. Some of the folks in the small audience that day in 2002 are no…

After a whirlwind November that included my European tour and a longer driving trip into the Great Plains for shows in South Dakota and Kansas, the first two weeks of December found me wrapping up my 2021 show slate with four virtual Odyssey shows (and one other non-Classics virtual show, playing Bob Dylan songs for a course at UT-Austin).

I thought of these four shows over eight days as a sort of "tour" of its own and I've decided to write about them as a group. 

For one thing, this marks the 100th blog…