Posted: November 29th, 2011 | Author: Blackbox Squeezebeard | Filed under: Show announcements and recaps | Tags: Big Blue House, Blackberry Wood, Carnival Sized Cinnamon Hearts, ESL, Tarran the Tailor | No Comments »
Friday night, Dec 2nd, we’re heading out to the Big Blue House (1624 Salisbury) to help an intimate private residence groove and gyrate to the vibrations only a dedicated crew of folk music misfits can coax out of their infernal contraptions. Also on the bill, we’re crossing paths with Tarran the Tailor again, plus ESL, the Carnival Sized Cinnamon Hearts puppet show, and our friends in Blackberry Wood, singlehandedly buoying up RIM stock this quarter with their infectious energy!
Posted: November 29th, 2011 | Author: Blackbox Squeezebeard | Filed under: Show announcements and recaps | Tags: Aubyn Rader, Jen Miller, Memewar, Railway Club, The Fictionals | No Comments »
Has it really been almost a year since Memewar magazine invited us back to the Railway Club stage? Well, we’re on our way once again to their comedy night Wednesday, November 30th, starting around 9 pm, with Memewar stalwart Aubyn Rader sitting in again on drums. (Plank codename pending!) Jen Miller will be playing Very Serious music, and improv troupe The Fictionals will be trying to spin comedy cold from the audience’s straw. We will try our level best to be comical, but… well, you saw the joke in that last blog post. Normalize? Chuckanut Drive? Maybe we can play instrumentals and double the humour content…
NB — our next appearance at the Railway, Wed Jan 18th, will be our 7th anniversary party with Raghu Lokanathan and Ana Bon-Bon!
Posted: November 25th, 2011 | Author: Blackbox Squeezebeard | Filed under: Show announcements and recaps | Tags: birthday, goofing off | No Comments »
Well, on Sunday, November 6th — the day after our fantastic visit from the Accordion Babes — we had a rump Planks delegation visit the Roseblade house to help celebrate a bonafide 1st birthday party for a 40-year-old, busting out songs from the Planks’ feature set at the Cobalt’s “Ink” open mic five years ago or so.
Then, yesterday, Thurs Nov 24th, we were supposed to join David Roy Parsons (of “Beat Up Old Guitar” fame) for a set in Victoria at the Fort Cafe… but the hoary winter winds of a fierce seasonal storm put the kibosh on that ferry crossing after a very spirited afternoon spent sitting inside a wind-buffetted car. Well, what’s something that CAN go right?
Here’s something difficult to ruin (worse than it already is, at least) — a visual gag a long time in the conceptualising:
Editing some outrageous Creaking Planks live audio in Audacity…
okay, let’s clean this up a little bit…
and… voila. Wait — what?!
Thank heavens for the “undo” function, that’s all I can say. (”Accordion Insanity” photo by Jonathan Dy, and that “normal” band is Clyde Stacy and the Nightcaps. They probably sound all right!)
Update: more normal than normal, and more abnormal than, well, than pretty much anything!
PS: Creaking Planks 7th anniversary show coming up Wednesday, January 18th at the Railway Club with Ana Bon-Bon and Raghu Lokanathan!
Posted: November 2nd, 2011 | Author: Blackbox Squeezebeard | Filed under: Show announcements and recaps | Tags: Accordion Babes, Accordion Noir, Amber Lee Baker, Little Mountain Gallery, Renee de la Prade | 1 Comment »
We first crossed paths with them during the Great Website Outage of early 2010 and we were all so blown away we nearly neglected to leave ourselves time to play a set! Then they did us a good turn, bringing three of us into their home turf later that summer (a tale still to be told). Renee de la Prade of Culann’s Hounds and Amber Lee Baker are the two roving ambassadors of the Bay Area’s thriving accordion community, championing the underdog instrument with their annual pin-up cheesecake calendar / album, presenting sights and sounds of a bakers’ dozen of awesome lady accordionists, and thanks to our ties with them through the weekly Accordion Noir radio show / podcast, they will be playing two shows in Vancouver this weekend.
Ours is the latter of the two: Saturday, November 5th, from 8 to 10 pm, the Little Mountain Gallery (195 E. 26th Avenue at Main) will be huffing and puffing with an intense and intimate acoustic squeezebox session, when the Accordion Babes Renee and Amber Lee are joined by the jug band of the damned (that’s us!) and, for a $10 admission fee, you as well. This could well be your only opportunity to get your hands on the 2012 calendar without having to resort to the hassle of mail order, and they can autograph and dedicate the calendar in person to whichever fan of kick-ass female-fronted bands is on your holiday gift list!
(If you can’t make it out Saturday night, the Accordion Babes are also performing in town the night before, Friday, Nov 4th, at Spartacus Books (684 E. Hastings), also from 8-10 pm, with a babelier line-up of our friend Natasha Enquist from Victoria and Katheryn Petersen (with Trumpet Babe Melissa Hammer in tow). And, of course, there is nothing keeping you from attending both performances!)
