Proclamation
Be it known throughout the parish and the county as stated, that the players called
Medieval Folk Metal
of the parish of
Thaddeus-upon-Avon
The village is real.
Medieval folk metal from a village that does not appear on any map. Three records, one parish, and a bass player named Dave.
1987–1995 · Ren Faire Records
Entered by the Keeper of the Register, and posted at the lych-gate.
The Order of the Day
Gates at nine. The band does not leave the parish between items.
I · The Founding
Omaha, spring 1987. Four men were working the Nebraska renaissance faire circuit — county fairgrounds, a canvas pavilion, forty dollars and a meal ticket.
His proposal was not a stage name. It was a village. Thaddeus-upon-Avon: a parish, a river, a population, four hundred years of records. They would not be playing a village. They would be from one.
The others agreed, with one exception who arrived later and declined.
They were booked that August under the name of the mead stand they were playing beside. The sign painter got it wrong. The banner over the stage read YE OLD SQUIRTS and stayed up for three days.
They kept it. Bordeaux's stated reason, then and since: a village does not choose its name either.
“The faire was pretending. We were not.”
The canvas pavilion, August 1987. The banner stayed up for three days.
II · The Parish Register
The register records each member twice: the name given in Omaha and the name entered in the parish. Entries are listed in the order they were made. The Keeper's hand throughout.
Particular habit. Conducts with the flute in the hand he is not playing with, beating time at the guitarist during instrumental sections.
Since. Still in Omaha. Still keeps the register. Has continued making entries in it since 1995 and has declined to say how far it now runs.
Particular habit. Plays with his back half-turned to the audience during solos, facing the drum kit.
Since. Runs a guitar shop in Council Bluffs. Has the original banner in the back room. Will show it to you if you ask twice.
Particular habit. Sets the tempo by knocking a stick twice on the rim, never counting aloud.
Since. Still works the faire circuit, now as a blacksmith. Has not been out of character in the presence of the archive.
Particular habit. No particular habit entered.
Since. Left in early 1989 over what the band describes as a disagreement about the register and what Feld describes as a disagreement about money.
Particular habit. Stands completely still for entire songs. Does not move at all.
Since. Lincoln, Nebraska. Insurance adjuster. The only member the archive has reached. Answered on the second ring.
The register. Bought at an Omaha stationer in 1988. Filled in by hand.
III · The Chronicle
The chronicle of the band as the archive has it. Read in order. Nothing has been corrected that was not wrong.
Chapter the First
There is a particular indignity to the renaissance faire circuit in the upper Midwest, and it is not the mud or the money.
The armourer sells belt pouches and calls you milord and then answers a pager. The whole apparatus runs on a shared understanding that none of this is real and isn't that delightful.
Ye Old Squirts declined the understanding. Not as a gimmick — as a working condition. From August 1987 they were from Thaddeus-upon-Avon, and they were from it on stage, off stage, in the van, and in print. Vendors found this difficult. Two faires stopped booking them.
"People think we were doing a bit. We were not waiting for anything."
— Thaddeus Quill, 1993
Chapter the Second
What separates Ye Old Squirts from every other band that has ever put a lute on a record is that they did the paperwork.
Thaddeus-upon-Avon has a parish register, kept in a ledger Bordeaux bought at an Omaha stationer in 1988 and filled in by hand over eight years. It has baptisms. It has a mill dispute that runs across four pages. It has a bad winter in 1704 with an unusual number of entries.
Songs are drawn from the register the way another band would draw on a hometown. "The Miller's Complaint" is a real entry, in the sense that it is written in the ledger in Bordeaux's hand.
In 1990 the band wrote to the Ordnance Survey in Southampton asking why the village did not appear on their mapping. They received a courteous reply confirming that no such place exists. They framed it and hung it in the rehearsal space, and have consistently described it as correspondence rather than as a refutation.
Chapter the Third
Dave Prager joined on bass in the spring of 1989 and did not take a name.
It was raised. According to Wisniewski it was raised twice, across two rehearsals, and then it stopped being raised, because Dave's position did not move and because he was better than the bass player they had before.
He appears on all three records, on every sleeve, on every poster, and in the parish register, as Dave.
Nobody in the band has ever explained this and nobody has ever apologised for it. Asked about it in 1994, Quill said that Thaddeus-upon-Avon is a real village and real villages contain a Dave.
He is the only member the archive has been able to locate. He answered on the second ring, confirmed the dates, corrected two of them, and declined to discuss the village on the grounds that it was not his to discuss.
Chapter the Fourth
The last record is one piece of music in two parts, thirty-eight minutes long, and it was issued inside an eight-page parish newsletter.
The newsletter is for a village that does not exist. It carries a bring-and-buy notice, a dispute about a hedge, the times of a service, a short obituary for a man named Harold Peake, and a letter to the editor complaining about the band.
It is credited throughout to a local historian, W. E. Sallow, who does not exist either and who has the byline on every article including the one criticising the group.
The record sold poorly. The newsletter has been reproduced twice by people who were not aware there was a record attached.
IV · Broadsides
Every record is entered here as a broadside: one sheet, the woodcut at the head, the songs set out below it. Durations are as pressed. The words of every song are on file.
The First Sheet · 1988
To be sung to its own tune.
Recorded across two weekends in a scout hall in Papillion for the cost of the hall. The sleeve reproduces four pages of the parish register in Bordeaux's hand. Reviewers who assumed the register was a prop were not corrected.
The whole, as pressed: 36:00
Printed for the parish by Ren Faire Records, 1988.
Read the broadside →The Second Sheet · 1991
To be sung to its own tune.
The record where the flute stopped being a novelty and started leading.
The whole, as pressed: 40:30
Printed for the parish by Ren Faire Records, 1991.
Read the broadside →The Third Sheet · 1994
To be sung to its own tune.
One piece of music in two parts, issued inside an eight-page parish newsletter for a village that does not exist, written throughout by a local historian who does not exist either. Sold poorly. The newsletter has since been reproduced twice by people unaware there was a record attached.
The whole, as pressed: 38:00
Printed for the parish by Ren Faire Records, 1994.
Read the broadside →
The scout hall, Papillion, 1988. Two weekends. The cost of the hall.
V · Parish Notices
Thaddeus-upon-Avon · Occurrences touching the band, 1987–1990, set down as reported
Four occurrences are entered. Each is given as reported to the archive. None has been disputed by the parish.
A sign painter misheard the mead stand next door. The band kept the mistake.
Booked for three days beside a mead stand called Ye Olde Squire's, and billed under it by a fairground sign painter working from a phone message. The banner that went up over the stage read YE OLD SQUIRTS. It stayed up for the full three days because nobody had a second banner.
Bordeaux has said the band discussed it once, on the first evening, for about four minutes. The decision was to keep it, on the grounds that a village does not choose its name either.
The new bass player was asked for a period name twice and said Dave both times.
Dave Prager auditioned in March 1989 and was asked, as a matter of course, what he would like to be called. He said Dave.
The question was put to him again at the following rehearsal, more carefully. He said Dave again. It was not raised a third time.
They asked the British government why their village was not on the map. The reply confirmed it does not exist. They framed it.
In February 1990 the band wrote to the Ordnance Survey asking why Thaddeus-upon-Avon did not appear on their 1:50,000 mapping of Warwickshire, and enclosing a hand-drawn plan of the parish.
A reply came in April. It was courteous, two paragraphs, and confirmed that no settlement of that name exists in the county or elsewhere in England.
The band framed it. It has hung in every rehearsal space they have used since.
Rained out. They played the whole set to the vendors, who could not leave.
The Central Nebraska faire was rained out on the Saturday. The gates opened and almost nobody came through them.
The band played the full ninety-minute set to the vendors, who could not leave because their stock was staked down. A woman running a candle stall watched the entire thing from under a tarp.
Prager has said it was the best they ever played. Asked whether the others agree, he said he had not asked them.
Correspondence received, April 1990. Framed. Hung in every rehearsal space since.
Grand Island, 1990. The full set. The vendors could not leave.
The Parish Roll
The Keeper continues to make entries. The archive keeps a roll of its own. Join the Sideband Label list for new recordings, merchandise, and anything further the archive is permitted to copy from the register. Goods for the parish are kept at the Sideband Label stall.
Your name will be entered in a fair hand. Removal on request, as with any parish.