With Medieval-Inspired Band, Alums Take Ye Olde Stage

Bloodied and spent after an ambush by the invading Volsung horde, the medieval knights of Glenbeigh stumbled into a tavern lit by flickering candles, the only respite they could reach before collapsing from exhaustion. Inside the pub, called the Swindling Serpent, the knights’ spirits are revived by the resident songsmiths, the Bards.

That’s the fictional story behind “Tales from the Swindling Serpent,” a new album by the Bards, the fantasy-inspired band made up of University of Maryland alums John Bachkosky ’17 and Kevin Strasser ’18. The Bards, whose work is most influenced by progressive rock and Irish folk music, are regular performers at the Maryland Renaissance Festival, where the two-man act entertains Scotch egg-chomping audience members within sight of the jousting arena and at least one purveyor of giant turkey legs.

“It was our love of folk music and of fantasy storytelling” that gave birth to the album, said Strasser. “I went down the rabbit hole of video game music and old-style, medieval, Renaissance-period music.”

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The Bards isn’t Bachkosky and Strasser’s first joint musical endeavor. The pair grew up in Severna Park, Md., and went to Severna Park High School together, playing music with friends throughout their adolescence and college. Their musical pursuits petered out after college but regained steam during the COVID-19 pandemic, when they “got kind of bored,” said Bachkosky, and began writing songs again. (Bachkosky works full-time at Fort Meade teaching orbits and astrodynamics to military members and civilian employees, and Strasser works in finance for a government contractor.)

The new music goes hand in hand with a short story that Bachkosky and Strasser wrote together called “The Mist,” which tells the story of the imaginary country Glenbeigh and its invasion by Volsung fighters. (“Glenbeigh is a real place in Ireland, and I 100% did not know that when I made up ‘our’ Glenbeigh,” said Bachkosky. “When I went to Ireland this past May, I took a picture with the town sign.”)

Writing the dense lyrics for the album was “labor-intensive,” said Bachkosky. He and Strasser, along with founding Bards member Greg Mazur '17, spent a weekend brainstorming ideas at Bachkosky’s family vacation home near Deep Creek Lake, and then Bachkosky “took those ideas and pieced them together, like putting a puzzle together into songs.”

The result was 14 string-heavy songs (think Dropkick Murphys meets Led Zeppelin) with titles like “The Harbor Brawl” and “The Flower of Dunmaire,” which includes the lyrics “Should you come upon a tavern veiled by the ocean air / And should you find yourself without a penny to spare / Be wary of the offer to tend a garden oh so rare / On the scent of desperation thrives the Flower of Dunmaire.”

At the Renaissance Festival, surrounded by attendees in corsets, feathered hats, chain mail and capes, the Bards’ music comes to life. With a general audience, they tend toward classic Irish drinking songs like “The Wild Rover” and “Whiskey in the Jar”—better for a mead-quaffing crowd to sing along with. Onstage, Strasser and Bachkosky join in the costumed merriment, with serpent-adorned bandanas and regal burgundy and gold vests.

“It’s all about audience participation and just feeling like a big community,” said Strasser. “Everybody’s getting dressed up and being in this fantasy escapist world together, and we’re all too happy to take part in that.”