2011-03-03: Planks open for Oh My Darling

Please pardon the small bout of time travel — this gig pre-dates (by one day) the most recent one we’ve posted, and there should be another, still earlier one yet coming! A busy week ahead for our intrepid Planks!

In the best Christmas present ever, Blackbox Squeezebeard awoke to a phone call for… “Blackbox Squeezebeard?”, an extraordinary wake-up call informed by the contact info on our press kit page. We have friends in Winnipeg, a good place to have friends, but it wasn’t them who put in a good word for us to our NEW friends in Winnipeg’s country-folk bluegrassy quartet Oh My Darling. (The bird in their ear was someone at the Biltmore — also a good place to have friends — but ah, I digress!)

To make a long story short(er), Thurs March 3rd we’ll continue our spree of appearing at the Railway Club (579 Dunsmuir Street) at more-or-less monthly-by-chance intervals opening for these wonderful winter birds, touring in promotion of their album “Love Shack” — a good place to keep warm and cozy when the drifts get too high on those long, cold prairie winters. Show at 9, $10 at the door! (and save a couple of coins for some of the new Creaking Planks buttons, this season’s outrageous new fashion accessory!

(Now also with Lindsay May!)

The Creaking Planks are open for business!

Please note: accordion and banjo ukulele not for sale.

Hot off the Creaking Assembly Line ™, one more small batch of approximately 60 copies of that critically lauded album Flogged Round the Fleet, still with its swank original Peter Guindon-designed packaging for the last time — the etched tin case with so many uses (storing a slice of American processed cheese, ten cigarillos, or another band’s CD…) AND a free Planks sticker, to help share your love of our band with whatever bathroom stalls you may happen to encounter in your journeys.

But that’s not all! Just slightly over a year following Daisy Jones-Locher’s excellent lead in this department, the Creaking Planks have an exciting array of pin-backed one-and-a-quarter-inch buttons available for sale at shows (or, hey, talk to us about orders at thecreakingplanks at gmail dot com). I don’t know what the well-dressed hipster is wearing this season, but these are the right cut and style to fit neatly on a hat, instrument case, or courier bag strap!

And if you have any better ideas for button designs, we’re listening! Submit your own images and you could help dress and accessorize an entire cohort of stylish Creaking Planks fans!

Maybe you’re in a band or part of an organization that would also like to be represented in button form? We invested in the equipment (some elements among the Planks have a traditional affinity for buttons and button presses, the start of so many good things — like the Work Less party!) so we might well be able to help you button up. (Magnets also!) If not, we can at least tell you where to stick it.

2010-03-04: Creaking Planks with Jeff Andrew and Portland’s Underscore Orkestra

We missed out on a chance to play with them last August en route to our legendary trip down to California, but the fates have intervened and seen fit to give us another opportunity to share a stage with Portland’s Underscore Orkestra, thanks to Jeff Andrew, last seen giving up his own performance spot to allow us to play his double-booked Hallowe’en show at Cafe Deux Soleils, 2096 Commercial Drive!

Of course, there will be no double-booking there this time. The Underscores straddle all sorts of lively genres from gypsy jazz and swing to Balkan and klezmer music — with a shot of heady bellydancing thrown in — and even gruff-voiced Jeff will be having a squeezebox backing him up, qualifying this show to be presented by Accordion Noir, Vancouver’s (and, yea, the world’s) pre-eminent all-accordion-music weekly broadcast.

Us Planks are still sharpening our alternate set of heady tunes we haven’t been coasting on five years of perfection with, so if you missed our anniversary show, we should still have some fresh musical tricks in store for you… and of course, more is yet to come.

Admission is $10!

Creaking Planks flashback, larger than life!

We’ve played at more than our fair share of art openings but never before have we been the art on the walls! Piratical Planks Lee Shoal, Wyoming Johnny, Orange-Eye Sabre-tooth Skipper and Phaulonious J Knucklebones burst off the wall seven feet tall at the Vancouver Art Gallery, a panel in their “WE: Vancouver – Change is coming” exhibition concerning itself with the Vancouver Public Space Network. Our performance at their “Pirates of the SeaBus” flashmob (remember?) is just taken as the most iconic moment of the occasion. It was fun… and years down the line, it turns into still more fun that we get to share with still more people!

Still, a shame we weren’t invited to perform at THIS art opening!