Joe's Odyssey

I awoke in the dark in my hotel room in Connecticut and immediately checked the weather. When I went to sleep there was snow forecast and I was worried that the backroads on the drive to my morning shows would…

I awoke on Tuesday with my manic Monday travel schedule still echoing in my brain and body… but feeling refreshed after just a few hours of sleep. A hotel breakfast, a shuttle ride back to the airport to pick up…

After three days home following my show in West Virginia, I headed back out on a Monday morning for the second part of my ten show run: four Odyssey shows in three days in two states, Texas and Connecticut. 

For the second straight day I’m on the road in the pre-dawn darkness. 

I’ve got an almost five hours drive from Lexington to Wheeling, West Virginia, where I’ll be performing at The Linsly School, a show that will mark the…

After a great first day of tour on Monday and a beautiful, intense Blues of Achilles show at Earlham College on Tuesday night, I awoke on Wednesday in my quirky mid-century modern Airbnb in Richmond, Indiana. I only had a…

Life has a way of waiting to give you what you want until you’re ready for it. 

2020 was supposed to be the year I took my touring to a new level. 

With a second Homeric piece to offer in…

Fresh off four Blues of Achilles shows in six days in Kansas and Texas, I came home to Chicago and drove the 15 minutes to the campus of UIC to perform my annual fall Odyssey show there. 

I hadn't…

Here's what I wrote in the conclusion to my post about the 2021 (Virtual) NJCL Convention last July: 

"The NJCL Convention next July 2022 is scheduled to be in Lafayette, Louisiana, and I know by then we'll be able…

When you live in the world of Homeric epic, you're never too far away from grief.

One of things I find most interesting about the environment of the Iliad and Odyssey (and really a lot of Ancient Greek literature and…

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…

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…

"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…