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

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!

My Lazarus Guitar

My Lazarus Guitar

I own a Ro Ho custom-built jumbo 12-string guitar. Had it almost 35 years. I’ve had plenty of Taylor 12-strings and all have bitten the dust except for one. I’ve had Guilds and Martins, too, but the brand didn’t matter. The huge tension of twelve steel strings on their necks proved too much for all of them. But this old Ron Ho, it’s been through a thousand venues, decades of service, and never once failed me.

So you can imagine how I felt when, after a flight back from Boulder, I discovered that its neck had snapped at the

headstock, even though I’d loosened the strings as always. Frankly, I was devastated and fell into a mild depression. Or at least a guitar depression, if that makes sense. In order to do shows, I had to rely on an Alvarez 12. No fun at all. No resonance, no bass, no crispness. This went on for a while until I said to myself, “I can’t stand this. Bodkin, you’ll never have another guitar like this. Why not try to fix it?”

I took wood glue and watered it down to a runny liquid, and slowly dripped it in between the sharp shattered needles of wood after prying it open a little, letting the waterish glue soak into the injured places for a couple of hours, then I topped it off with thicker glue. Thinking, “Well, this will either work or it won’t,” I tightened three wood clamps onto the neck and head just so and left the poor thing standing there in the kitchen for a few days, dreading the test.

The thing I’d always loved about this guitar was its action—that is, how low the strings sit above the fret board. It had always felt like butter, even at the 12th position. For a 12-string, which is hard enough to bear down on in the playing, that’s heaven. Even a riser made of one thin sheet of paper inserted or removed under the bridge can make a huge difference.

Anyway, the test. That’s when you put on fresh strings, tighten them to pitch and then play, listening for buzzes and intonation problems. It’s nerve-wracking, because if it’s too low, it will buzz somewhere, and if it’s too high, you have to take off all twelve strings and make adjustments, then tighten them all again for another test.

As I put on the strings, I could see the scar on the neck. A thin crack, filled with dark. Still, they say wood glue is tougher than the wood around it, so I strung it and gingerly tuned it to the open E flat I usually play in, expecting the neck to explode off any second. I did all this at arm’s length. 12-string necks experience 400 pounds of tension.

So imagine my relief when it held. It felt and played just the way it always had. Same resonant boom. Same super-low action. It really was as if nothing had happened. Truly, it had come back from the dead. My Lazarus guitar.

This was about ten years ago now, and it still lives

 

The Fun of Composing New Music

The Fun of Composing New Music

I work with two 12-string guitars, a Taylor and a hand-built Ro Ho custom. This week I’m preparing my musical scores for two Viking tales for Saturday’s show. Ever since I began performing these stories for adult audiences about six years ago, each season I return to the music afresh. Earlier this year, at a show down in Cambridge, I debuted a beautiful, relaxing theme that solved a musical puzzle I’d been struggling with for decades. The tale is THOR’S JOURNEY TO UTGARD. Much of the music conveys action or an impending strange fate, but moments do arrive where the feeling “all is well” needs to be expressed.

I finally found it. It makes me happy to play it when, at the story’s end, Thor and Loki realize that they scared the Frost Giants of Utgard quite handily, but had no idea they’d done so. They’d been fooled by Frost Giant magic ever since they’d arrived in Jotunheim.

If you’re at the show, you’ll know exactly what music I’m talking about.

Hope to see you there!

Odds Bodkin

ODIN AND THOR BATTLE THE FROST GIANTS

Adult Storytelling with Music

Saturday Sept. 24, 2022 at 7 pm (doors open)

Nova Arts, 48 Emerald Street, Keene NH

Tickets: $25

 

 

 

 

 

New Odds Bodkin Recordings

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

Live and Online Adult Story Performances by Odds Bodkin Coming Up in March and April 2022

Live and Online Adult Story Performances by Odds Bodkin Coming Up for March and April!

Master Storyteller and Musician Odds Bodkin announces four LIVE shows coming up at Grendel’s Den on Harvard Square in Cambridge, MA, plus POWER MYTHS OF ANCIENT GREECE, a compelling 3-part series over Zoom starting March 3rd.

“a modern-day Orpheus”–Billboard

Feb. 27 (Sunday) at 5 pm: VOYAGE OF THE WAISTGOLD, the world premier of Bodkin’s original pirate fantasy tale in verse. Live at Grendel’s Den on Harvard Square, the artist reads aloud his outrageous new literary work, narrated in “pirate patois.” GET TICKETS

 

 

March 3 (Thursday) at 7 pm EST: EARTH OVERTHROWN: GAIA AND THE TITANS, the “Genesis story of ancient Greece,” performed with a 12-string guitar score. The first in his POWER MYTHS OF ANCIENT GREECE series on Zoom. Watch from anywhere. GET TICKETS

 

 

March 17 (Thursday) at 7 pm EST: THESEUS AND THE MINOTAUR’S FEAST, his debut telling of this wondrous and gruesome myth performed with 12-string guitar. The second in his POWER MYTHS OF ANCIENT GREECE series on Zoom. Watch from anywhere. GET TICKETS

 

 

March 20 (Sunday) at 5 pm EST: BEOWULF: THE ONLY ONE, his beloved telling of the original version of Beowulf. Live at Grendel’s Den on Harvard Square, Bodkin evokes the old Viking world with voices and 12-string guitar. GET TICKETS

 

 

April 3 (Sunday) at 5 pm EST: ODIN AND THOR BATTLE THE FROST GIANTS, his performance of two powerful Norse myths, Thor’s Journey to Utgard and The Mead of Poetry on two 12-string guitars, with a lore introduction on Celtic harp. All before a live audience at Grendel’s Den on Harvard Square. GET TICKETS

April 14 (Thursday) at 7 pm EST: THE ILIAD: CAPTIVES, PLAGUE AND FURY, his tour de force telling in modern language of Book I of Homer’s Trojan War classic, The Iliad. The third in his POWER MYTHS OF ANCIENT GREECE series on Zoom. Music on thunderous 12-string guitar. Watch from anywhere. GET TICKETS

 

 

April 17 (Sunday) at 5 pm EST: THE FALL OF GAIA, his in-person version of Hesiod’s Theogony, with a panoply of character voices and music on 12-string guitar. This show is live at Grendel’s Den on Harvard Square. GET TICKETS

 

 

 

11 Days Left in MASTER DRIVE Sale! Ends July 30th!

11 days remain in Odds Bodkin’s MASTER DRIVE sale at the storyteller’s online shop.

Get $50 off the price of his MASTER DRIVE this July. This flash drive features his complete audio stories, his epic poem The Water Mage’s Daughter (550 pages pdf), a live performance video plus original musical compositions.

Just plug it in and distribute the stories to your family’s devices! All mp3 audios.

 

Regular price: $199.95. Now $149.95!

Perfect for Family Travel!

 

Age-Coded Stories Include:

The Adventures of Little Proto (audio)

Little Proto’s T-Rex Adventure (audio)

Little Proto and the Volcano’s Fire (audio)

The Teacup Fairy: Very Old Tales for Very Young Children (audio)

The Evergreens: Gentle Tales of Nature (audio)

With Twinkle in your Eye: Funny Folktales from Everywhere (audio)

Rip Roarin’ Paul Bunyan Tales (audio)

The Winter Cherries: Holiday Tales from Around the World (audio)

The Blossom Tree: Tales from the Far East (audio)

The Wise Little Girl: Tales of the Feminine (audio)

Earthstone: The Eco-Musical (2 hour audio)

The Odyssey: An Epic Telling (4 hour audio)

Giant’s Cauldron: Viking Myths of Adventure (audio)

Hidden Grail: Sir Percival and the Fisher King (90 minute audio)

Stories of Love (audio)

David and Goliath: The Harper and the King (audio)

The Myth of Hercules (audio)

 

Plus Rare Works:

Beowulf: The Only One (live audio recording)

The Iliad: Book I (50-minute video)

The Water Mage’s Daughter: a 13,000-line epic poem. (PDF e-book)

 

Plus Odds Bodkin’s Original Musical Compositions on Acoustic Instruments and Kurzweil synthesizer:

Rapunzel’s Window

At Beauty’s Door

Black Irish

Soft-Hearted Men in the Good Old USA

Little Paws

Christmas Morning

The Great Irish Elk

 

Order yours today!

Huddle Around the Zoom Fire Sunday Night for Beowulf

With 12-string guitar and Celtic harp, character voices and sound effects, master storyteller Odds Bodkin will perform his classic tale, BEOWULF: THE ONLY ONE, for adults this Sunday night at 5 pm EST. The tale contains mayhem and violence and is not recommended for children.

Shorn of its heraldic side stories, Bodkin’s version of Beowulf cleaves closely to the original thousand-year-old story of a thane who rescues an aged king from monsters that attack his hall. Filled with striking scenes and plenty of humor, the story translates vividly over Zoom.

 

Tickets are $25

 

BEOWULF: THE ONLY ONE

ODDS BODKIN

MARCH 28, 2021 AT 5 PM EST ON ZOOM

 

This performance is sponsored by Grendel’s Den.

 

Deep Inside Act II of Beowulf, A Bizarre Scene

He’s already killed Grendel, a towering, sword-proof beast, but now Beowulf has sunk to the bottom of a reeking mere to hunt and kill Grendel’s mother. If Beowulf rids Denmark of these demons, King Hrothgar will declare him his son. In Beowulf’s world, that’s the promise of full half of Hrothgar’s fabulous wealth, enough for Beowulf to become a king himself back home. Hrothgar is the richest man along the Baltic.

Denmark and Sweden/Geatland

 

As he approaches her underwater cave, Grendel’s Mother curses Beowulf. She has dragged her son’s carcass here along with the bloody, hairy arm Beowulf tore off Grendel in the mead hall, which she has stolen back before retreating to her home. She is huge, with fangs and claws, yet she stands like a woman at the water’s edge. With Grendel gone, she is now the last of their kind. Through the ripples she sees soft colored lights beyond the submerged entrance. The man, the killer of her son, has arrived at the mere’s bottom.

Into the water she slides, kicking through the blackness toward what she sees is a helmet with glowing gems on its crown.

Holding his sword out, the man cannot see her. Stealthily, she swims to behind him and violently clamps her fangs onto the helmet, thinking to crush it, along with the soft human skull inside.

Up until this moment, Beowulf has been reliving boyhood memories. How Hrothgar once paid the blood price for Beowulf’s father, and the Wylfings had stopped pursuing him. It had been wonderful to stand on the ship’s deck heading home to Geatland with his father, who was a free man at last. Yes, Beowulf has come here for glory, but also to show gratitude to King Hrothgar of the Danes for that act of mercy so long ago.

Feeling sudden pressure inside the helmet, Beowulf slides out of it and slashes the sword, Hrunting, at the she-beast behind him, but the blade is too slow in the water. With a bubbling scream she shoots back into her cave, ready for the fight.

She is three times his size.

However, Grendel’s Mother does not know that this man is Beowulf, a fearless thane of the Geats who has come from the north, a warrior with the grip of thirty men. He doesn’t know it yet, but after she stabs him in the chest, he will kill her with a weapon crafted by long-dead giants.

————————

 

In the actual telling of this scene from BEOWULF: THE ONLY ONE, haunting, scintillant music on 12-string guitar builds the creepiness, while Grendel’s Mother hisses loudly to herself, and Beowulf’s voice speaks his inner monologue, “Fate often saves an undoomed man if his courage holds.”

Come see and hear the entire tale via ZOOM on Sunday, Feb. 28th at 5 pm EST.

BEOWULF: THE ONLY ONE

AN ODDS BODKIN ZOOM STORYTELLING

SUNDAY, FEB. 28, 2021 AT 5 PM EST

TICKETS: $25

 

Hear a sample from the tale:

SPONSORED BY GRENDEL’S DEN.

 

 

 

 

 

On Becoming Two Very Different Monsters

In my storyteller’s version of Beowulf, Grendel doesn’t speak, but his mother does. As descendants of Cain and the last two forest demons of their kind, they represent all that was terrifying to humans in the medieval darkness. Forests were always thick and close back then, and no electricity lit the earth. Let’s hope those times don’t return.

Robert Zemeckis, in his animated 2007 film version of Beowulf, made Grendel a multicolored, hairless giant. Straying even further from the original story, Zemeckis presented Grendel’s Mother as a sexy Angelina Jolie with smooth golden skin, naked most of the time. Both Grendel and his mother spoke words.

For my version, I’ve gone a more traditional route and followed the basic Beowulf text, imagining Grendel as giant wolf on two legs who can roar, and that’s about it. His mother is a female version of this species of ancient forest demon, covered with fur and just as big. She speaks in a terrifying shrill voice. There’s nothing sexy about her.

Tasked as I am to create voice characterizations for my tales, I spent considerable time exploring my lowest, most guttural vocal register for Grendel. What he emotes is roaring fury. Unbridled, explosive fury. He possesses cruel confidence, both in his invulnerability—he has magic, blade-resistant fur—and in his ability to kill, at least until he meets Beowulf in the mead hall. His persona takes a lot of energy to create. I dread to think what I look like when I enact him.

I don’t watch myself do these things. I just work in my trance.

Grendel’s screechy, crafty mother, on the other hand, is signaled by a rapidamente motif on 12-string guitar and her heavy running footfalls. “Killer has a sword,” she thinks in her underwater cave as Beowulf sinks down toward her, “what kind of sword?” If a blade is giant-made, she fears it. Human-made blades cannot cut her. Instead, they vaporize, something Beowulf discovers to his horror when he tries to cut off her head, and it doesn’t work.

Two very different monsters. Two very different voices.

There are plenty of other character voices in Beowulf: The Only One, including Beowulf, Hrothgar the King and various thanes.

 

 

Odds Bodkin

Beowulf: The Only One

An Adult Storytelling on Zoom

Sunday, Feb. 28 at 5 pm EST

Tickets: $25

Of Oaks and Thunder

The Druids of ancient Europe were the “Oak Seers.” Dur means oak. Wythe means seer. Put together you get Durwythe, or Druid. Dur is an old word for oak, from which we derive our word “door,” since in the old days the strongest doors were of oak. They were, pardon the pun, durable. The Norse god Thor’s name has the same etymological root: dur, or oak, that tree most often struck by lightning. What comes with lightning? Thunder. Hence Thor, the God of Thunder.

His name has–sorry, here comes another pun–endured all this time because wonderful stories are told about him. The most intriguing among them, at least by my lights, is Thor’s Journey to Utgard. It’s the tale of how to prove his strength to his enemies, the Frost Giants, he journeys to their capital city and messes up terribly, or at least so it seems. He fails at every task of strength put before him as the giants guffaw. Loki is along for the journey as well, and he fares no better. These are not the characters you see in Marvel movies or those stories. These are genuine old myths.

As the first long tale in my Zoom performance tomorrow night, Sunday Jan. 10, Thor’s Journey is humorous in places, mostly because he and Loki trade barbs and insult one another at every turn. But still, it’s epic, as is the score on 12-string guitar. Here’s a sample:

 

 

I’ll be introducing Viking mythology as I play Celtic harp, and then I’ll launch into the two long tales with an intermission between them. Lots of characters. Lots of music. Lots of fun. Join the crowd. Folks will be tuning in from all over.

This Zoom event is sponsored by Grendel’s Den in Cambridge, MA.

 

ODIN AND THOR BATTLE THE FROST GIANTS

ODDS BODKIN, storyteller and musician

SUNDAY, JAN.10, 2021 at 5 PM EST on ZOOM

TICKETS: $25

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

ODIN’S BEST FRIEND IS MISSING

Odin has no friends, really, other than harmless and trusting Kvasir, who wants nothing that Odin possesses. But now, Kvasir has been missing for months and word has come that in the mountains of Jotunheim a giant is bragging that he owns a magical mead. It’s a drink that bestows power and wisdom with one sip.

The problem is, he is claiming it was brewed from the blood of the god Kvasir.

Which means that somebody killed poor Kvasir for his essence. Odin’s great eye can see anywhere he casts his gaze, but he cannot see everywhere at once. Who has done this? To find out and return his friend’s blood to Asgard, Odin goes on a long quest of disguises, shape-changing and implacable revenge.

The Mead of Poetry is one of two long Norse myths I’ll be performing this coming Sunday evening over Zoom. My 12-string guitar will sport fresh, crisp strings and I will be ready with character voices and narration. I’ll create voices for Odin, Thor, Loki, Bauge the Giant, Utgarde Loke, King of the Frost Giants, Gunlod the Singing Giantess and a host of others.

The show begins at 5 pm Eastern Standard Time on Zoom. Grab your $25 ticket and you’ll receive a meeting link, and then a password the day of the show.

I’ll be full screen for the event with great sound. See you there!

–Odds Bodkin

ODIN AND THOR BATTLE THE FROST GIANTS

Odds Bodkin, Storyteller and Musician

Sunday, Jan. 10, 2021 at 5 pm EST

Tickets: $25

 

This show is sponsored by Grendel’s Den of Cambridge, MA.