I just said ‘Do you know what we need? We need a Viking Mead Hall!” And they all laughed – but they’re not laughing now. I mean, neither am I, but that’s beside the point! – Clive Nolan
If you’re like me, with decades of attending gigs behind you, you’ve probably seen shows in some of the most unlikely places. Tiny venues, converted forts, basements, living rooms and college gigs in what seemed like a converted classroom among them. But, I wonder, have you ever been to a gig put on at a perfect replica of a Viking Mead Hall, complete with shields, swords, axes, furs, big wooden doors and an impressive fire pit outside for cooking whatever large chunks of meat are put into it? Nope, nor me neither. But now, you can put that right, even if you didn’t think you needed to, as Clive Nolan’s magnificent ‘folly’ constructed painstakingly at his Herefordshire home. And it’s quite the atmospheric location, for sure. With a show coming up soon from the Imaginaerium project (helmed by Clive with Italian singer Laura Piazzai), things are gearing up again to throw open the doors to the non -Viking hordes. While down at Clive’s impressive country pile recently, I had the chance to talk to him, along with Laura, about not only the venue itself, but also that Imaginaerium outfit, and their recently released second album, Siege. First off I confirmed with Clive that The Mead Hall really is his ‘baby’, so to speak…
‘Yes, it is really, since we moved here. this is an old Victorian house, and like many Victorian houses it had a walled garden, Now, inside this walled garden happened to be a whopping great swimming pool, which had been dug too deep in the first place and had all sorts of problems with it – and I thought well, this is England, how often do you get the chance to use an outdoor swimming pool anyway? So I thought, let’s fill it in. So anyway, 260 tons of mud later, I was standing on top of this mound of earth with some other people, and I just said ‘Do you know what we need? We need a Viking Mead Hall!” And they all laughed – but they’re not laughing now. I mean, neither am I, but that’s beside the point! Of course, originally it was a more modest plan, just to build what they call ‘a folly’, not much more than a glorified garden hut. But the idea grew, and I started to think how good it would be if we could maybe use it to put on concerts – particularly my music, as that might be a way to even save me from some touring and let people come here instead. So I started researching online for details of Viking halls which had been built in Scandinavia, and of course watching all the Viking TV shows and movies and all of that – and this is probably a sort of ‘mash-up’ between the reality of what the Vikings would have built and the more ‘romantic’ view that people generally have today from how it’s portrayed. I think we’re along the right lines at least; I know that the original Mead Halls would sort of tell the story of the community on the walls, such as if a great warrior died they would put his sword up there, and it would be the history of their locality in a way. Because when you come down to it, a Mead Hall was essentially like a sort of Village Hall today; it was the hub of the community, and when the winter came everyone would come in and batten down the hatches with all of the supplies they had farmed, and stay there for the winter to keep warm and see out the harsh weather.’
I suggest that putting the shows on conjures up that feeling of coming together as a community, singing songs and telling stories and that sort of thing. Clive agrees with this. ‘Yes, I think it does really. I like the fact that every time we put on an event, be it a night or a weekend, this little community forms and for that time is based in and around this hall. That was what I was aiming for as opposed to putting on big shows, that sort of unique intimacy and atmosphere, and community identity. And I think it does that pretty well – or I hope so, anyway! It’s able to be converted into two different set-ups, with these big, long wooden feasting tables that we’re sitting at now able to be taken out (needing four men apiece I might add) and we have some nice red theatre-style chairs that we can then bring in for the concert audience. So it’s one thing for a Viking event or that sort of thing, and another for a show. What I’m hoping is that people will come along and enjoy the whole experience of the venue as much as the concert itself – they might forget the music later, but they won’t forget the visit. And it is working already, with people who came for the first weekend event here already signed up for the next one, and the third as well – in fact, some people might well be getting very special medals for attending three! So it is going very well, and in fact the Imaginaerium show in October sold out four months in advance. Now, I know it’s only 60-70 seats, we’re not breaking stadium records here, I get that – but the thing is that these seats are not cheap, and I am very conscious of providing something which is well worth it. It isn’t London, people have to get to Hereford, I’m very conscious of that, so I am personally very proud of each and every ticket sold, And also, it’s good for local business, because when we have an event here, the accommodation nearby gets sold out in the B&Bs and what have you, so if it benefits the local community as a whole, that’s a great bonus. We’re very careful about the noise containment, and we don’t really have any direct neighbours, so I don’t think there are any negative connotations to the surrounding village – and in fact that’s something I hope to put to the test later this year as I plan to put on a small Christmas market, which is something I’ve always planned to do, and this will be the first one.’
Obviously, as has been referred to, the next weekend musical event coming up in October will – in addition to a new production of Clive’s musical She – include a performance by Imaginaerium, originally the idea of the late and sadly missed Eric Bouillette, but now continued and led by Clive along with the irrepressible Laura Piazzai. Having recently released their second album Siege, following from the debut Rise Of Medici rock opera, this seems to be a perfect time to bring Laura into the conversation and talk about the project. Laura is happy to oblige: ‘Well, it all began with the musician Eric Bouillette, in 2018; he wanted to start this epic project, and he asked me if I wanted to be a part of it, which of course I did. He asked me if I wanted to write lyrics, which I was less keen about! I said I didn’t think I would be good to write the kind of lyrics we needed, but that I knew someone who could! I mentioned Clive’s name to him, and he became very excited about that – he was excitable rather like me! – and he asked did I think he would do it. So I said ‘I will convince him’, and thankfully he didn’t take too long to agree, as he was inspired by the history, as were we. With the Covid pandemic happening the situation worked in our favour at least, as there was certainly time to work, and we were able to get things launched. Clive gave us a storyboard he developed within about twelve hours which was amazing, he had all of the characters in his head, and the idea took shape straight away. It had come from the plans of two people then involving a third, and the friendship which developed between us was a very important thing.’
Unlike the first Imaginaerium album, The Rise Of Medici, which was very much driven by Eric (‘He got to hear the album’, says Clive, ‘but he never got to hold it in his hands sadly – he passed a month before release’), the new album Siege is a broader concept than its ‘rock opera’ predecessor. Clive again: ‘Yes. The first one had an element of drama to it, definitely, but for this album we stepped back from that. We’re not in the business of just doing musicals or rock operas – there are other avenues for that – and we decided to just do a concept album, which in this case deals with things being ‘under siege’ in general – be it historical, or something psychological, or health related, or whatever. It was a sort of broad mission statement that we could then apply the music to’. Laura interjects at this point, ‘One thing we have found is that people have assumed it is a concept album about Boudicca [the opening track is the outstanding ‘Cry Boudicca!’], but of course it isn’t. That’s the eight-minute opening song, telling the story of Boudicca, but the rest deals with the concept of being under siege, as Clive was just saying there. The love of history is still present there in some of the tracks for sure, but the reality of the concept is in the title Siege.’
I ask next about the rest of the musicians on the album, and whether this is now in any way a relatively static group of people, or whether it can change at any time. As Clive explains, ‘No, it’s not static. Imaginaerium isn’t a group as such, that was Eric’s idea, that it would be a project rather than a fixed group – in fact, if Eric had still been around it might not have even included Laura and myself – he might have gone for something completely different, who knows? But now, Imaginaerium is me and Laura at the core of it. The other musicians may well be around for two or three albums, it’s possible, but they may not, and it’s important that people realise it isn’t a band – because otherwise they start saying ‘well, where’s so-and-so gone? Has he left?’, that sort of thing. On this album, Simone Milliava, on guitars, was on the Medici album, but Mirko Sangrioli – another Italian, funnily enough – who plays guitar and drums on Siege, is new to the project” Luis Nasser on bass, who is American, is new to it as well, and we also didn’t use the extra singers who were on Medici, so it’s a different dynamic. I mean, who knows, we might use a whopping great 200-piece choir on the next one, or it could just be a piano and vocal album – being a project rather than a band gives us that freedom. I mean, with Arena for example, each time we make an album we have to make the music fit that particular group of people and the sort of sound that’s expected, because that’s how it is with a band of course, but with this we do have that freedom to change it up. And you take the people who are going to be the best fit for what you’re aiming to do’.
What about live work, I wonder – because this is surely going to be something a great many admirers of the albums are going to be keen to know about. Clive has clearly thought a lot about this already, as he explains: ‘Well, of course there is the show here coming up in October, but you’re right in that there is nothing else firmed up in planning just yet. We were hoping to do more at the same time as this one, but it didn’t work out unfortunately – the theatre in Holland that we were going to play at had a problem with ‘noise pollution’, so they’ve had to get some building alterations done, so that meant abandoning that plan for the time being. We do want to do more live work, certainly – and I think the next step is going to be getting a full touring band together for live appearances. The show here is a rather intimate one – there will be musicians on the stage, but some will be using backing tapes for stuff that we would normally do live. It works in a small setting like this, but going forward I think there have to be two extremes; either just me and Laura with piano and vocal, or else the full guitar, bass, drums band line-up. And I do think that we should do both, as they would both work in their own way, I believe’.
It’s important, I feel, to stress the fact that the use of backing tapes alluded to is purely for logistical reasons owing to the size of the venue at the Mead Hall, and the fact that the stage is rather limited in terms of room – it is in no way cutting down a show for any cost or ease of performance reasons, and it is clearly flagged in advance. Clive is in agreement with this. ‘Yes, that’s right. If we were to do the full show then there would have to be not only a drumkit but also an orchestra, which would simply be impossible, obviously. We have crammed a lot of people onto the stage before – when we did a performance of Song Of The Wildlands, or the ‘Viking album’ as I like to call it, we had about 25 people up here, and that was a lot of bodies crammed on, but there are logistical limits to what we can do if we still want the audience to be able to fit in! We certainly will never sing to backing tapes, or have any backing tracks used without everyone being clearly aware, we aren’t in that business of deception in any way. In fact, when we go out with a full Imaginaerium band, we’ll probably still have the orchestral parts on tape, as it just isn’t practical to cart an orchestra around with you, either financially or in regards to space. Everything else will be live, and cutting the orchestral element out would just be detrimental to the show. In terms of the venue here, when we had a prog weekend recently, it worked out very well, with some people using backing tapes and others having completely rearranged things for a stripped down performance. It’s just different options to use the space to its best advantage. It’s at the very heart of live performance, I think, presenting the music in different ways, not always the same as it is on the recording. People can certainly judge for themselves if they come here of course – the October event is – I am very happy to say – sold out, but there will be more. And my plan is to announce the next one at the show itself in October, and then we’ll do the whole social media thing and publicise it. So everyone will get a chance to come here if they wish!’
For my part, having spent some time here both listening to rehearsal performance and talking to Clive and Laura at one of the big Viking tables, I find the whole ambience of the Mead Hall a wonderful environment to experience some music, and I am very keen indeed to check out a full event. When that next one gets announced at the October show, if it scratched your own personal ‘itch’ in terms of a performance, my advice would be to waste no time in getting hold of a ticket. It’s a venue which I am sure will live long in the memory, and will certainly be one of the most unusual shows you will attend for quite some time. Now, where did I put my longsword…
No comments! Be the first commenter?