HAUNTED BY THE MUSIC

Posted on February 26, 2018February 26, 2018 by Odds Bodkin

Mostly the music haunts me. I still recall sitting out on my back porch under the sun umbrella one summer day trying to stitch the heartbreak together. “What can get at this tragic mood?” I kept asking myself, conducting experiments up and down the 12-string’s fingerboard. New chords I’d never played slowly revealed the sculpture-in-the-stone moment, the “ah ha!” release, when I finally said, “Wow. That’s it. That is beautiful. That has the dignity, the elemental loneliness and the magnificence I need.”

I was searching for a leitmotif for Beowulf the Viking hero. Having composed them for Odysseus in The Odyssey, David in David and Goliath, young Percival the knight in The Hidden Grail and other of my long-form bardic tales, musically it was a familiar creative process, but not emotionally.

You can get a flavor of Beowulf’s theme at 3:27 in this live recording of the tale.

I’ll be performing Beowulf: The Only One twice in the next weeks, and will be playing Beowulf’s theme and others as I do my best to enact him, King Hrothgar, Grendel the Beast and his vengeful monster mother. I still remember how when I recorded this tale live, the music worked. Two women in the audience felt the way I felt. Right there, in the middle of all those people, so loudly I heard it from the stage, they burst into tears.

Tickets and information:

Sunday, March 4 at 7 p.m. at the Riverwalk Music Bar, Nashua, N

Sunday, March 11 at 5:30 p.m. at Grendel’s Den, Cambridge, MA

With all of the sounds he was able to make, the unique voices of each person, and intricate guitar playing…it was unbelievable.

Posted on January 30, 2018 by Odds Bodkin

Martha Taylor, Chair of Classics at Loyola University Maryland, passed this note on to me after an Odyssey performance last September. It was written by a college freshman.

“I didn’t know what to expect and I was completely blown away by the whole thing. The way he told the stories was so captivating! With all of the sounds he was able to make, the unique voices of each person, and intricate guitar playing…it was unbelievable. With all of the sensory details he provided it really was as if I was there, during ancient times, transported to 700 B.C. in the “Belly of the Beast” so to speak.

I absolutely loved his Polyphemus voice, the old man/priest in Apollo’s temple who gave Odysseus the brandy, the men who accompanied him during the travels, the people in the lotus flower scene within the ivy of the sickly-sweet perfumed island–everything! The way he created such a vivid scene made imagining a transcendent and effortless gift.”

I’ll be at Grendel’s Den on Harvard Square, February 11th at 5:30 p.m., to tell this tale again, with Celtic harp and 12-string guitar.

Catch some adult storytelling this February. THE ODYSSEY: BELLY OF THE BEAST at Grendel’s Den.

Tickets at tables are $15.

HAULING OUT THE SIX-STRING GUITAR

Posted on October 22, 2017 by Odds Bodkin

It’s some of the fastest bluegrass flat-picking I’ve ever done, this music on the 6-string guitar. Haven’t had cause to tell The Phantom Train of Marshall’s Pass in a couple of decades, but since I’m exhuming the corpse of this tale and adding new fictional flesh to it, the music needs to be re-crafted, too.

Been at it for weeks now, since I’m making a live recording of my ghost and horror stories at Grendel’s Den this coming Sunday the 29^th, and the Phantom Train is waiting along with the other tales.

It’s the story of Edward Malloy, the guilt-ridden engineer who drives his passenger train over the Great Divide in Colorado. Long ago, drunk at a switch in Pennsylvania, he let a train take the wrong rails in a snowstorm. A hundred souls died. Now he’s the engineer, and he’s seeing things during his night run, things no man should see.

Come enjoy this hellaciously entertaining story, along with others, at Grendel’s Den in Cambridge MA. Seating begins at 5 pm. Grab yourself a stiff drink and some spooky specialty menu items and prepare to be creeped out. At least I’ll do my best.

Heartpounders: Halloween Tales of Horror

Sunday October 29^th at 5 pm at Grendel’s Den, Cambridge MA

Tickets are $15 tables and $10 at the bar.