Vancouver’s favorite open mic series on and off since its inception under T.Paul Ste.Marie and DJ Dutch Boy in 2001, we first featured there slightly over a year ago, following a strong reception at the BC:Clettes Rouge et Noir cabaret, and probably spent as much time trying to jockey everyone into place on the cozy stage as we did playing.  We ended up performing several times over a period of a few weeks and then totally dropped off the radar for months.  Let’s see if we can’t stagger things out a bit this time!  Thundering Word is now hosted by Bill McNamara and Wanda Nowicki, and it doesn’t just have featured performers — it’s also a fully fledged open mic!  Turn up to Cafe Montmartre (4362 Main at 28th) around 7:30 pm to sign up and you, too, could share our stage.  Though probably not while we’re on it — there’s hardly room enough for us as it is!  DJ Cassady will get you hooked up and we’ll see what spoken word / music fusion may result.  (I’m on the edge of my seat!)

We should be returning to Cafe Montmartre January 11th to be the filling in a Petunia sandwich again, but you’ll be hearing more about that closer to the date.

Edit: Bill made a new drawing to promote our appearance this night!  We only just found out about it upon arrival, but it’s a swell “Night on Bald Mountain” rendition of our “jug band of the damned” tag-line.  Stand back and enjoy!

We must have made a good impression last month, since we’ve been invited back to play the same party again! (The “Velofusion” Critical Mass afterparty at the ANZA Club, 3 W. 8th at Ontario.) So to make up for past misdeeds, we’re going to play the exact same set, but entirely in reverse — undoing everything we did previously!  We’ll pay for our stage time, dancers will lift their stomps right off the dancefloor and everyone will spit fountains of beer back into their little red plastic cups.  What do you mean that’s crazy talk? I think it’s a great idea!  But, admittedly, perhaps one whose time has not yet come.  OK, you won me over — we’ll mix things up with some different players and different charts, but don’t think that the mere passage of Hallowe’en can hold back the Song of the Count!  The Planks set is slated for ~9-10 pm.

The Orkestar Slivovica must have done something good last month also, since they’ve been invited back, too!  It’ll be like a little reunion.  Oh, how much can change over the course of 30 days!  Also taking the stage that night are The Heard, Vital Divine, and DJ sets from Bee Winter and Adrian Blackhurst’s global funk & Balkan beats!  The proceedings are fundraising this time around for Spartacus Books, the little anarchist bookstore that could, not only home to Squeezebeard’s monthly “57 Varieties” open stage and Vancouver’s only Esperantist group but also the ultimate wellspring for Accordion Noir! Admission is $10, but only $5 if you arrive with the Critical Mass.

As part of a noble (if irrelevant) lineage of shows going back to the spring’s SeaBus pirate party and further yet to an appearance at the Railway in April of 2006 that Tamara Nile set up for us, the Creaking Planks (need I remind you: THE JUG BAND OF THE DAMNED!) are once again descending upon the stage of the Railway Club (579 Dunsmuir Street) like a plague of, I don’t know, sizzling bacon bits hurtling hatefully from the angry sky.  We’ve been paired this time around with The Lawn Dogs, a band billed as the best-dressed bluegrass band on Bowen Island… at our most elegant and dandified, conversely, we wear basic BC:Clette black and red with costume facial hair in places and styles it should never, ever, be growing.  These baying hounds should be taking the early set ~9:30-10:30, leaving us to close the night in our fourth Railway appearance in as many months.  As Mike Zinger of Whiskey Jar would be inclined to exclaim… “Not bad!”

This is it — we can see a glimmer of light at the end of the tunnel the world has been trundling through for the past eight years.  The question is: is it the headlight of an approaching train or a flicker of the genuine illumination of hope and freedom?  The accordion has been used to propagandize for both sides of the US Presidential election (strangely not so for our three rounds of voting municipally, provincially in by-elections, or nationally — surely an underutilized gambit!) and Blackbox Squeezebeard for one would like to keep things non-partisan.  That said, tonight’s show has gotten caught up in optimistic posturing as a welcoming party for Barack Obama (who will surely be weighing in approval on our renditions of Bob Uker’s songs about unemployment and hopelessness, albeit via the television in the corner broadcasting his acceptance speech.)  And if the unspeakable should happen, we plan to follow the edicts of Leonard Cohen, as put forth in his poem The Music Crept By Us: “However since it is / New Year's Eve / and I have lip cancer / I will place my / paper hat on my / concussion and dance.”

Hype and bombast aside,  the show promises to be a lively one with an 8 pm opening set from The Ahs (aka Lovenschtein and Schteigel) for a half-hour, Riel Hahn’s comedy at 8:30 for another 30 minutes, then an hour of the humourous nostalgia of Sister DJ’s Radio Band, who kindly invited us to play for an hour (starting at 10 pm) following their set.  All this hosted by Dave Malicki, plus that business on the TV set. All this goes down at Zawa (formerly Zesty’s) at 920 Commercial Drive, with doors at 7 pm, for only $5.

…

This show has struck a chord!  Coverage not only by S.R. Duncan’s “The Drive Is Alive” and Allan Macinnis’ “Alienated in Vancouver” blogs (first promotional, then a review!), but our show was also mentioned on the front page of the Monday, Nov 3rd issue of the Vancouver Sun!

…

And here we were!

Photo by Femke van Delft