The Brobn–?
The Brobnogdi–?
The Bropdognog–?

How the hell do you pronounce that?

Sound it out. Brob-ding-nog-ee-an, at least, that’s the best way I’ve ever come up with trying to pronounce it and I still can’t do it 4 times out of 5. If I’m not thinking about it, I can say it. But the moment I think about it, it’s simply not coming out of my mouth right.

Okay, pronunciation aside, lets got down to business. Who and what are the Brobdingnagian Bards? Hence forth, we’re just using The Bards by the way. Even spelling it tangles me.

The Bards are comprised of Marc Gunn and Andrew McKee. That covers the who, unless you want to go read about how they met and where they came from here. That alone is actually an interesting read.

Now that the who is covered we’ve reached the what. Marc and Andrew perform a mix of traditional and comedic Scottish and Irish folk songs across the states. They bounce from Renaissance Faire to Convention and even touring Ireland to promote their music and find new things to write and sing about. They even do house concerts, how cool is that?! And kilts… yummy kilts!

In addition to traveling and performing they have a semi regular podcast for promotion and the joyous consumption from their fans. Each podcast includes two to three, or more, of their songs as well as witty banter between Marc and Andrew. Truth be told, it’s made me a bigger fan of the duo because of their candor.

I’ve been listening to the Bards for a few years now, catching their music where I can and saving up to get some of their discs. In hearing about A Brobdingnagian Minute I decided it was high time I learned a bit more about the Bards and finally hit their homepage to subscribe to newsletters. Thus did I discover I should have been banging my head on the desk because they’re practically in my backyard! In all this time I’d had no CLUE the duo hailed from Austin, Texas. They have won awards at the Austin Music Awards and I felt like an idiot for not knowing about it.

Ah well, the past is the past and now that I know they’re local, I intend on trying to catch their next performance in Austin. In the meantime, everyone else can catch them on their website and even enjoy some streaming music. Give The Bards a chance. I promise it will be time very well wasted!

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