18 full-length storytelling albums on a single flash drive.
TICKETS: $20 in advance, $25 at the door.
ILIADMATIC: ODDS BODKIN BRINGS BARDIC STORYTELLING TO A TRANSFORMED GRENDEL’S DEN
Calendar
Upcoming Events, Shows & Performances:
NUDGING THE SERPENT OF MIDGARD
NUDGING THE SERPENT OF MIDGARD
At the end of a string of failures, Thor’s last chance to prove his strength is by lifting a kitty cat’s paw. Groaning and huffing, he tries, but it barely rises before it slams back to the floor. As the Frost Giants roar with laughter, the god of thunder looks over at Loki, who has lost an eating contest earlier, and is embarrassed, too.
Little do they know they’re both victims of illusory magic, and they are competing against impossible odds, even for Aesir.
At the tale’s surprise ending, the truth emerges. Thor takes solace in his father Odin’s words, which I’ve drawn from the Viking book of etiquette, Hávamál:
When some thane would harm me
in runes on a moist tree’s root,
on his head alone shall light the ills
of the curse that he called upon mine.
Catch the beginning, middle and end of this full-length tale, plus a myth of seduction and vengeance on Sunday, April 1 2018 at 7 p.m. at the Riverwalk Music Bar in Nashua, NH and again on May 26, 2018 at Sunrise Ranch in Loveland, Colorado.
I’ll also include little-known lore while playing my Celtic harp. Lots of amusing character voices animate the tales. Hope to see you there!
PS: by the way, under the giant’s spell, Thor thought he was lifting a kitty cat. Turns out it was the Great Serpent of Midgard, the heaviest thing on earth.
HAUNTED BY THE MUSIC
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