I've played both my Odyssey and The Blues of Achilles on the same day only six times.
Three of those were at NJCL conventions ('23-'25). I also did them both in the same day at University of Kentucky (2022), UC-San Diego (2024), and two different schools (Brock and Toronto) on my Canadian tour in 2024.
Three of the six times I've done the Blues of Achilles first, then the Odyssey, which is the correct chronological order in terms of the events depicted in the Homeric epics: first you fight the war (the Iliad) then you come home (if you're lucky. Or maybe just if you're alive - the Odyssey).
It's a small sample size but I prefer the opposite order: to sing the Odyssey first and then The Blues of Achilles. Either way, it makes for a challenging physical and emotional day for a bard. At University of Michigan, there was something more: I was give a talk to a class at 10:00 am between a 9:00 am performance of the Odyssey and a late afternoon performance of The Blues of Achilles. This talk is something I've been working on for a few years and is called How to Be a Modern Bard. I really like doing it. It walks the audience through my creative process and the source material for The Blues of Achilles.
And I've never done both performances AND given the talk on the same day.
The Odyssey show (for a class of about 120 students) is really something. My mantra for the day is to stay as relaxed in my efforts as possible. Which is something I should do every performance (and something I coach my students on all the time) but is always a challenge and a work in progress.
This show, I nail it. The playing and singing feel effortless. I wear the Odyssey like a second skin (sometimes a first), inhabiting it more and more even as I do it less and less in favor of the Iliad. I feel the same spaces in my own work that I felt in Homer's.
Immediately following, in the same room for another class of over 100, I give my How to Be a Modern Bard talk. It's fun, I play a song from The Blues of Achilles as an example, the students ask great questions.
After more interactions with students and a little down time, I set up in a beautiful room in the student Union. As I start The Blues of Achilles, not only is every chair full but audience members are standing at the back of the room and sitting on windowsills. My voice fills the high ceilings. It is warm and worn as a war bard should sound.
I don't own The Blues of Achilles in the same way I do the Odyssey. Part of that is the fact that I've done over 20 years and almost 400 performances of the Odyssey while The Blues of Achilles is only 5 years old and right around 120 performances.
But another part of it is that I don't think a bard can own the Iliad in the same way they can own the Odyssey. The Odyssey is about being a bard. The Iliad is about being a human (or maybe, being mortal is a better way to say it), which is ironic because the first word of the Odyssey is (essentially) “human.”
Why do I like playing the Odyssey first and then The Blues of Achilles when I play them in the same day? Some people say the Odyssey is about how to live and the Iliad is about how to die.
But while this is true, I've come to understand that somewhat counterintuitively the Odyssey is profoundly cynical and the Iliad is shockingly optimistic. The Odyssey portrays a character who lives but never changes. Odysseus is the same guy in book 24 as he is in book 1: he causes pain everywhere he goes. He delays or avoids true human connection and contact compulsively, keeping people, even loved ones, at a distance.
The Iliad portrays a character in Achilles who is dying. But it also posits that humans can change through simple acts of connection. Achilles goes from sub-human in his anger and grief to re-humanized in the tears he shares with Priam. It doesn't fix the death that circles him, but it does allow him to let go of his anger and become human.
As the last strains of Somebody Loved echo through the performance space, I listen and feel my own humanity in the connection with the characters and the audience. It's a beautiful thing. It's the only thing.