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Introducing THE ROWAN CANTICLES: Odds Bodkin has Created a New Epic

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Dear storytelling aficionado,

If you’ve enjoyed my spoken-word storytellings over the years, thank you. Here’s something quite different: an immense and challenging literary work. Rhymes. Archiac words. Convoluted metaphors. In other words, literary fun that runs for 13,000 rhyming lines.

It’s THE ROWAN CANTICLES: A Tale Told in the Ancient Manner.

And you can listen to it as well. Each week I’ll be posting a new Canto (think chapter) on Substack, both in text and audio. I’ll be reading the epic myself using numerous character voices and adding background music. The Cantos run from 3 to 10 minutes long.

If you’re ready to dive in and want to start from the beginning, start with Canto I.

And to help you digest any rare or archaic words I’ve used in the text,  you’ll also find a glossary that tracks the story, right on each Canto page.

Lastly, for anyone who enjoys puzzles, I’ve woven in no few word games. As those Cantos appear, I’ll issue those challenges.

Thanks for considering visiting me once a week! Your comments are always welcome.

May the Muse be with you,

 

ODDS BODKIN

NEW RELEASE! ODIN AND THOR: Norse Myths Told Live by Odds Bodkin

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NEW RELEASE! ODIN AND THOR: Norse Myths Told Live by Odds Bodkin

Get ready for two GIANT Norse myths–a full 80-minute show captured live at Grendel’s Den on Harvard Square–told with stunning music by master storyteller Odds Bodkin. The audience was brilliant that night. They even learned and sang an original song in one of the tales!

THOR’S JOURNEY TO UTGARD and THE MEAD OF POETRY pulse with humor, wickedness, murder and magic. After all, they’re Viking tales. Odds’ character voices for gods and giants leap to life in a bed of 12-string guitar music and vocal sound effects. Two new movies for the mind’s eye.

A great holiday gift for the myth lover in your family! Safe for kids ten and up.

$19.95. Download yours today!

New Odds Bodkin Recordings

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NEW ODDS BODKIN RECORDINGS

From Odds Bodkin:

I’m in the studio next week to mix ODIN AND THOR BATTLE THE FROST GIANTS, my best live show ever of Viking tales and lore. So surprising and wonderful was the audience’s reaction (it was recorded this year at Grendel’s Den in Cambridge MA–college students mostly) that we’re mixing the audience microphone in with the two stage mics to capture that magic. They laughed. They groaned. They even sang.

ODIN AND THOR BATTLE THE FROST GIANTS will be available soon.

By the way, I’m doing a live version of this show at Nova Arts in Keene, NH on Sept. 24th, if you’d like to enjoy it in person. Music on Celtic harp and two 12-string guitars.

Tickets are $25:

https://www.novaarts.org/events/oddsbodkin924

Also being studio recorded next week, my latest original tale, VOYAGE OF THE WAISTGOLD, which we’ll publish soon as well. A 70-minute adult pirate fantasy, it’s naughty but beautiful. Watch for it.

Plus more fresh recordings to follow! A new DARK TALES OF THE SUPERNATURAL, which folks have been requesting for years. It’s going to be a busy few months!

–Odds Bodkin

NEW MUSIC BY ODDS BODKIN AND GAVIN BODKIN/The Faery Hop

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NEW MUSIC BY ODDS BODKIN AND GAVIN BODKIN/The Faery Hop

One night recently Gavin, my middle son, and I sat down in the living room to play guitars as we often do when he visits. It’s one of our great joys, extemporizing together. He had the Taylor 6-string and I pulled out my Ron Ho 12-string. Since it was his turn to come up with the idea and my turn to follow wherever he went, I sipped my scotch and listened to his music, a bouncy notion in major to start, almost immediately followed by a very different, percussive slap in minor.

“Okay,” I thought, “here we go.”

As almost everybody experiences at one point or another, sometimes you’re just on. In basketball, it’s when you can’t miss those three pointers, one after another. In our case, it was this three-minute blast of acoustic music. Totally spontaneous and joyous, especially when the shape of the idea fully emerged. It felt like telepathy, as if we were reading each other’s minds.

So I’ve taken that piece and named it The Faery Hop: Musical Telepathy for Duo Guitars and published it at my download shop. It’s unedited from start to finish, and you’ll hear my recliner cushion creaking each time I lean in, but it’s fun to listen to, especially when you know how it was created.

There’s a sample of the beginning to listen to at the shop page.

–Odds Bodkin

MOTHER’S DAY SALE! Odds Bodkin’s Master Drive $269.95 now $99 Today Only!

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MOTHER’S DAY SALE! Odds Bodkin’s Master Drive $269.95 now $99 Today Only!

Since every mother should have one for herself and her kids, we’ve slashed our price for this special day. Happy Mother’s Day to all!

POETIC PUZZLING

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POETIC PUZZLING

What is The Water Mage’s Daughter? Well, it’s an epic poem in English, yes. And sure, it features thousands of rhymes in different schemes. But along with telling a killer story, it’s also a very cool word puzzle. How? Well, by the time you’ve reached page 347, you’ve read heroic couplets and quatrains in Canticles I and II. They’re fun. Canticle III, however, which up until now has featured “whorls” that rhyme from the outside in, throws out some fresh craziness with words. Here’s the spot in the text where I offer the puzzle:

First, through free verse our tale will wend,

Then back to couplets t’ward the end,

Yet each end-word shall kiss a mate

Somewhere––that’s if you take the bait

And feed on fancy, that old stuff

We love…

In other words, every end-word in the canto (chapter) will rhyme with another end-word somewhere. It may be pretty far away, but it’s in there. So if you’re into word puzzles, this makes for an amusing hunt.

It’s not until 60 pages later that the poem modulates completely back to couplets and stays there.

–Odds Bodkin

Rapunzel’s Window: Anti-Pop Music

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Rapunzel’s Window is the title of a haunting new composition of mine that features air flute and strings. If you know a teenage girl who’s feeling overwhelmed, buy her this 3:09 piece of music to listen to. It’s a whopping $.99 at my online store and is guaranteed to let her know she’s not the only one who’s ever felt that way.

It’s subtitled “Lonely Music for Air Flute and Strings” and so isn’t supposed to make anybody happy. Just reflective.

In preparing to publish this and a few other instrumental pieces, I sent Rapunzel’s Window to a dynamic young woman mover-and-shaker here in the town where I live. I don’t know her very well but together with her husband and others she was part of funding a project here at my home this past fall, so the symphonic songs were a thank you.

About a month later I got a card back, having wondered for a while if she’d ever downloaded them from Dropbox. Turns out she had, and that of all of them, Rapunzel’s Window moved her the most. That was nice to hear. I think of this tune and the others I’ve composed as “anti-pop” or something like that. No thudding rhythms. No sampling of other people’s loops. No obscenities that cheapen love. Just music made by hand on a synth keyboard or with real instruments, or both.

The full tune is available here.

New Slow Bluegrass Tune by Odds Bodkin now at Odds’ Shop

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I just put up a new tune, SOFT-HEARTED MEN IN THE GOOD OLD USA, at my online shop. It’s a sweet, relaxing piece of music featuring 12-string guitar, duo mandolins, bass and drums. Makes me think of the heartland when I listen to it. Here’s a sample:

 

$.99.  While you’re at my shop, check out the other instrumental pieces and, of course, the stories. For adults, my latest is BEOWULF: THE ONLY ONE, a 65-minute tale.

Happy Holidays!

Odds Bodkin

Beowulf: The Only One/Listening Sample

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Beowulf: The Only One, an Odds Bodkin epic storytelling audio with music, will be published at https://www.oddsbodkin.net/shop/ Thanksgiving Day 2016. The 65-minute audio is a new bardic telling of the ancient Viking tale, the oldest known piece of literature in English.

With character voices for Beowulf, King Hrothgar of the Danes, Unferth, Wyglaf and Grendel the monster and his mother, the tale is scored throughout with original music on 12-string guitar.

The download is priced at $14.95.

Enjoy this audio sample! 3:25 minutes.

Odds Bodkin Stories Worldwide

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Two recent download purchases at my digital store have come from Krackow, Poland and Beijing, China. That’s very interesting to me. Even in these far flung (at least from America) locations, people out there know the value of intelligent listening for their children. And themselves.

They know, as a mom who wrote me recently stated, “Thank you for writing about tough topics but remembering that humor is important, too. Thank you for being someone my kids could use to help explain the world but never told them what to think. Thank you for talking about doing the right thing, even if it is hard, but never beating anyone over the head with the morality.”

In all the lines in her lengthy letter here, those three sentences meant the most to me.

Visit the shop and buy some MAGIC COINS as a gift for kids or adults. Recipients can visit and choose which titles they like at their convenience. Latest new releases include Strings in the Clouds, a calming 6-minute composition on Celtic harp and strings. Good music to listen to while working on complicated things.

Thanks for listening!

Odds Bodkin

Beowulf: The Only One is coming out on Thanksgiving Day, Nov. 24th, 2016, American time zone. I have no idea what time that is in Beijing or Krakow, but I hope those customers enjoy it, too!

BEOWULF: THE ONLY ONE Audio Thanksgiving Day Release

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Beowulf: The Only One
A New Bardic Telling with 12-String Guitar

Odds Bodkin’s new 65-minute bardic telling of the oldest story in the English language will be available at https://www.oddsbodkin.net/shop/ on Thanksgiving Day. Employing a cinema-like score on 12-string guitar, human characters and monstrous voices, the audio tells a tale of gratitude and simple courage in the face of ancient evils.

Beowulf: The Only One is gruesome in places and filled with vivid details of old Viking life. Unlike recent Hollywood versions of the tale, the audio closely follows the original poem’s story, from the monster Grendel’s first attacks on Hrothgar’s mead hall to Beowulf’s battle with the Fire Dragon fifty years later.

The story includes frank violence. Not recommended for listeners under 12.

This recording joins Bodkin’s collection of epic tales for older children, teens and adults that includes The Odyssey, David and Goliath, The Hidden Grail and The Myth of Hercules, all available as mp3 audios at www.oddsbodkin.net.

The download will be available for $14.95 using PayPal.