Most of the tidbits we’ve been sharing here to reward fan interest and closer scrutiny by people whose support we’re trying to muster up to vote to send us (only ’til noon Tuesday!) on that Tracks on Tracks musical train ride to Toronto for the NXNE festival… well, many of them have been more than a little fallacious. The pictures, especially. A picture is worth a thousand words and most of them are BS. But what follows is a mostly-true account of hidden Planks history punctuated by, well, very sporadic photography. We took lots of pictures, and somewhere in the haze of time lost almost all of them. But when discussing one grand trip, why not finally air the accounts of this epic voyage? So without further ado…

It just goes to show you that you never know where the ripples in a pond will go from its initial splash. In a January 2010 show we covered very cursorily (our website was down, we had no choice!) the folks at Accordion Noir invited Renée de la Prade (of Culann’s Hounds) and Amber Lee Baker (of the Anomalies) to visit Vancouver to promote their fabulous Accordion Babe cheesecake pin-up calendar / CD and put together a squeezy show here — the first of their Pleasing Squeezing series — to help display them in a relevant and exciting context. The supporting acts were grand, but as so often happens, the Planks were provided to headline, to help sweeten the deal with their regular venue and just to take the sometimes unglamorous closing slot. The night had so much entertainment the Planks ended up barely getting a chance to take the stage before we had to shut down, but we made a strong impression on our visitors and when we parted ways they vouched to put in a good word on our behalf back in their stomping grounds.

Fast-forward two months and we found ourselves the recipients of an unsolicited invitation to play at that year’s Cotati Accordion Festival! Clearly this was an offer we could not refuse. And yet clearly, due to the distances and time involved, ultimately it was an offer that many of the Planks couldn’t accept, either. At the last minute the to- and fro- portions of a 10-day journey of gentle drives were axed from the itinerary, replaced by a glamorous rump of an unlikely Planks trio — accordion, cello and bari sax — salvaging the tour through triage, determining to fly down, rent a car (”the Hearse”, the rental folks called it) and play 5 gigs in the Bay Area over 4 nights, making the most of our weekend staging ground.

… for various reasons, incognito:

Basing ourselves out of Berkeley, where friends Ben & Rachel (of Vancouver’s epic but defunct folk combo Tarkin) were temporarily calling home (gosh! land of huge jade plant bushes! sulfured apricots! the Cathaus’ front gate!), we extraordinarily rented some equipment from Oakland’s Best Music Co. (only traveling with one of our three axes for several reasons, not limited to our airline’s sterling reputation for safely transporting instruments) and headed forth to play a test set at the Delta of Venus in Davis Thurs Aug 19th, trying out our rented and borrowed gear with Ben (later issued the impromptu pirate codename Hawknose Stilton) sitting in on banjo and mandolin. We didn’t make a huge impact in the hollowed-out summer-vacation college town, but a good time was had by a few and we worked out some parts for our extraordinary instrumentation… then got some much-needed shuteye after being up for 40 hours.

Friday the 20th had us inadvertently taking a scenic detour (a recurring theme in our generously-scheduled navigation) through the heart of California’s wine country en route to Santa Rosa and an exciting gig at the Toad in the Hole with our Babe-ly friend Amber Lee. The Toad is the kind of neighbourhood pub that you only wish you had down the street in your hometown, a fun and whimsical place where the regulars might decide to mount a parade and re-enact the Sgt. Peppers’ album cover on a lark, later refreshing themselves with a startling array of artisanal beers and what must be the Platonic ideal of pub food, deliciously made with simple and local ingredients. Recovering from the discovery that Blackbox’s borrowed instrument had, following 50 years of survival traveling from Sweden to Canada, lasted precisely one night in his hands before becoming inoperable, we followed up Amber’s adept opening set to her hometown crew and kept their attention through to the end of the night, joined by friendly resident squeeze-weirdo J D Limelight.

Amber put us up that night (with her fabulous snake) so we’d be well-situated for the 20-minute commute to Cotati the following day (she had to leave early that morning for pre-fest rehearsal with the astounding Hubbub Club marching band, but we left her with a very relevant bottle of “Accordeon” wine for her troubles). Then we promptly got lost in Sebastopol, going down the road in precisely the wrong direction.

Ultimately we made it to Cotati and managed to unload, whereupon Blackbox had to take off on a quixotic quest. Ironically, following the disintegration of the loaner instrument in his hands, he had found himself committing the egregious faux pas of headlining at an accordion festival without an accordion. Fortunately, if there was one place in the world he could be reasonably assured of being able to borrow a squeezebox, it was here. And lo, the clouds parted, and the sun shone down on a dealer’s tent… revealing the kindly gents from Victoria’s Tempo Trend music store, filling their RV with surplus squeezeboxes and taking to the summer festival circuit in an attempt to offload some of them. Just bring it back to Victoria in good shape, they told him, after attending to a long line-up of prospective customers. Meanwhile, he was missing a great line-up and a chance to have Dick Contino autograph the record sleeves he’d brought down carefully packed away in his luggage!

Backstage, things were gloomy. To have come all this way, to this, the largest crowd we’d ever played to… and have so few Planks to show for it… fortunately, someone flipped the “festival magic” switch, and suddenly Alex Meixner’s drummer was sitting in with us. (Why not? After all, he came here to drum, and drumming is what he loves to do!) Matt Tolentino asked if we could use a clarinet, and finally Alex Meixner concluded that while we were poaching nearly his entire crack band, he may as well join us also. Hats off to the Cotati tech crew who was able to accommodate a more than doubling of our band size with about 20 minutes’ notice. The Great Morgani suddenly wrapped, and then there we were, on stage, blinking in the sunlight (and holding on to our charts for dear life, as galing gusts threatened to whip them away at every turn!)

Click to enlarge

The advantage of playing simple arrangements of well-known songs is that talented musicians can parachute in on literally less than an hour’s notice and grandstand all the way home. (Also for members of an act who play to crowds who may leave the room if a Polish polka is followed by a Slovenian polka, we represent a chance to play the songs we love to play, not necessarily the songs we have to play 8) With Meixner’s band providing a new heart for us, we gave up the gusto and were well-received. Also, we had a blast on-stage.

Cotati being an alt-accordion fest, it represents all kinds of traditions as well as having a strong strain of the bizarre from the Bay Area punks. So you get polka, zydeco and cojunto along with Dick Contino, but sometimes the crowd is really ready for some Gogol Bordello and Nine Inch Nails without knowing that it’s even on the table, and then they get it served up to them. (Polkacide was prepared to bridge the gap, piercing implants shined up and faux sausage links dangling out of leiderhosen leg holes, but not for a little longer yet.) Duckmandu relieved us on the side stage, and there was a lot of outrage backstage when they found that by “we have four CDs to sell” what we meant is that our total stock of CDs was four, not that a selection of four different albums were up for sale. We had a blast with Alex Meixner (I crashed an interview he was conducting backstage and some version of our story ended up in the final account 8) and his crew, and they were dismayed to hear that instead of jamming all night in the party suite nearby we had to scoot on along to San Francisco in order to make our gig later that night at the Revolution Cafe.

But first, you can get a great eyefull of the festival milieu and us in it courtesy of Rachel, who posted a whole gallery of shots from this impossible and wonderful event. Someday we hope to return, and we hope to have our act a lot more together when that time comes 8)

You can also hear a terrible live recording of our entire set. Killer playing at very low levels, buried beneath the incessant blowing of the wind over the mic. If you crank it, you can hear our great performances clearly and imagine you’re hearing us playing an exclusive engagement in the eye of a tornado.

Creaking Planks At Cotati 2010 (feat. guest players Hawknose Stilton, Shirley Temple, Razorneck Chowder, Bones McGrew, and introducing Eurus, the East Wind!) set list:
01:20 — Insane in the Membrane
05:45 — Womanizer / Toxic
12:28 — Fight For Your Right to Plunder
16:59 — Dead Man’s Pants
19:10 — Psycho Killer
24:01 — the Song of the Count
28:20 — Kishka Anthem
31:09 — Kiddie Closer
35:31 — American Wedding
44:09 — Snazzy Portland

Barring one or two wrong turns, there we were pulling up to the Revolution Cafe, where we discovered resident weirdo Count Z Bop defending his territory by insisting that we let him accompany us on bongos. No problem, we needed percussion anyhow! The crowd was pleasantly baffled by our set, by the end of which Blackbeard was singing with the Tom Waits voice (the gurgle of a dog that has barked until it cannot bark any longer, and tries to continue nonetheless; the sound of two pieces of beef jerky rubbing against each other) from overuse. But our musical cold-call there was well-received, profitable and got us an invitation to a Hungarian picnic the following day (which we couldn’t find, another side-story.) Sunday was our day off and our pay was getting to see the sights of San Francisco, the platonic ideal that Vancouver tries, stuntedly, to emulate. To Taqueria Farolito where we quaffed off-menu horchata and consumed burritos the size of babies (and discussed with Ludwika the doula dressing them up in baby clothes) and compared technique with the notorious donair vampire of the Outlaw Band. Off to gawk at wild parrots in the neighbourhood trees and the sea lions delivering the oceanic equivalent of Hastings & Main! The mechanical amusements museum provided plenty of quarter-powered diversions (including a mechanical accordion-playing device demonstrating the horrors of automation and a kinematoscope revealing just what exactly the belly dancer does on her day off.) Then we briefly dipped our toes in the Pacific (though there was no real need to, as we have plenty of it up here), and then we were off to our final gig: at Peri’s Saloon in Fairfax, a venue with the longest contract we’d ever seen (admittedly, much of it codifying common sense).

There we posed for a photo (since lost) of us under our name on the marquee, and deeply entertained our barmaid Denise, who enjoyed our set so much she got on the phone and brought all her friends in to enjoy our performing our set a second time, at the end of which Blackbox’s voice was really done, for reals. Rachel sat in with us on mandolin, tipping us off to the someone-beat-us-to-it pirate codename Amanda Lynn Peg. As the hour got later the venue mysteriously filled leaving us to wonder exactly who goes out to drink at midnight on a Sunday night? The answer is: plenty of wonderful weirdos, one of whom got to enjoy a moment of XKCD t-shirt solidarity with Cap’n Jack Spare-ribs for the second time that day.

That wraps the whirlwind visit! We managed to get the Hearse back to the airport car rental office essentially by coasting it into the parking lot in neutral gear. The flight back north was uneventful (though an observation: many more settled, illuminated areas are passed continuously when flying north-south than east-west) and to avoid a repeat of the World’s Most Expensive Cab Ride fiasco which we started the tour with, saved money by chartering an airport limousine to return us to our domiciles.

A year and a half later, we told you about it. The statute of limitations has got to be up on that one, right?

In conclusion: can’t wait to do it again! Even this hypothetical trip to Toronto won’t top it, but maybe we can shoot for a close second. Big thanks to Renee and Amber Lee.

You heard it before, but now we have re-recorded a new, exuberant version on which its author is actually present! The previous version was good, but this one is great! Our hit single, the Kishka Anthem, can now be heard at our new bandcamp page (and, well, here — see the sidebar! or below! or even on CBC Radio 3! — but you can tip us there!)

(Generally elsewhere it is accompanied with a similar but different photograph from our Prophouse gig last May, but this one splendidly emphasizes the constipated look on Blackbox’s face while Pavel sings. Cosmic truths revealed through photography! And maybe it really will steal our souls.)

We would have blacked out our site today in honour of the SOPA / PIPA protests, but as Cap’n Jack Spareribs said — here in Vancouver we had a white-out instead. Besides! There’s too much at stake! If we closed our doors today we might lose one last opportunity to remind you about our fabulous concert tonight tonight tonight, celebrating our 7th anniversary as a band, down at the Railway Club.

The West Ender didn’t forget…

(And thanks to Robin Hunt for snapping that shot back during the Steamer Tea Party in Feb 2010)

And we hope that you don’t forget either!

Now you can’t say that nobody reminded you. But wait, there’s more! Of course, our 9 pm show features the Creaking Planks, but also two other grand acts you don’t get many chances to enjoy in these parts — Raghu Lokanathan of Prince George, and Ana Bon-Bon visiting from London, England! If those names don’t mean much to you, perhaps you’d enjoy a refresher while you’re not killing your lunch hour surfing Wikipedia. We took over 4 hours on the air last week in promotion of this show and here’s two and a half of them for you to enjoy, resplendently chock-full of the music of Raghu, Ana, and even some relatively recent recordings by our very own Creaking Planks to bring you up to speed. First we devoted 60 minutes to canned tunes on Accordion Noir Wed the 11th, then on Fri the 13th we did much the same for 90 minutes on Sound Resistance — but this time with SpongeDev SquarePlanks joining in, allowing some spirited, if rump, dual-Plank performing live over the air.

We’ll have many more than two Planks on-stage tonight, with our lovely show running until midnight! Three swell acts will run you only $8 ($6 for Railway Club members!) and we look forward to you helping us with some ridiculous audience interaction antics.

Sometimes, the opportunities come so close together there just isn’t time to write them all up! Late the night of Apr 5th, a crew of five Planks , perhaps our biggest yet on the radio (including Dr. Stelhand’s debut on the chacharangi and Ludwicka LePearl’s debut on the beverage dispenser), joined Teddy Smooth and E-Roc (and practically a cast of thousands: Andrea Superstein formerly of the Marmaladies, Ligia Oancea, Jane Stanton, Suzy Shameless and Iona Beerwagon from the Terminal City Rollergirls, and Burgundy Brixx & the Purrfessor of Kitty Nights) to celebrate the 2nd anniversary of CabaRadio over at CiTR.

You can hear us here! Our first song, the Volga Boatmen birthday song, begins at 8:41 (CabaRadio enjoys great production values, and it enjoys them at its leisure), which we follow up with Psycho Killer at 9:40, our Kishka Anthem at 13:34, and Kiddie Closer again for kicks at 17:56.

Memories! Sights to rival the sounds from the CiTR lounge:

In promotion of our fabulous 6-year-anniversary show next Monday night, we’ve hit the airwaves! Last night we joined Teddy Smooth and E-Roc at CaBaRadio again over at CiTR in the UBC student union building, where we played tunes and made strange innuendo late into the night. Always good times. We hadn’t confirmed the engagement with enough advance warning to let potential listeners know, but … in all honesty, how many of you would be tuned in to campus radio after midnight? (More than I expect, hopefully!)

We lifted a page from our friend Ryan Fletcher at CJSF’s Melodies in Mind and as guest troubadors took it upon ourselves to musically interpret some public service announcements the show wanted its listeners to know about, including a very special rendition of a song from the Rocky Horror Picture Show, screening this weekend… well, you’ll get all the info in the recording. Also excitingly present, though you have to wait through the whole recording — a world exclusive sneak peek of some recent studio work we’ve been doing on Phaulonious J Knucklebones’ original songs, thanks to new friends made at the Orange Party! Admittedly this recording isn’t done yet, but it’s more than half-baked … and it’s been a very long time since we were committed to any permanent media in any form. A better representation of us, to be sure!

We managed to mine the Plankian portions of the show from its podcast and serve it up to you here; in the meantime, it’s not too late to catch the black wave of our promotional hype, as we’ll be on the air tonight down in the downtown eastside studios of CFRO Co-Op Radio at Accordion Noir, whose audience we haven’t joined since an Accordion Noir Festival promo appearance back in 2008. Excitingly, we’re hoping to take on the challenge to do our own version of their lovely theme song — and would encourage you to do the same!

In the meantime, here’s a log for our truncated CaBaRadio recording:

• Creaking Planks – Dead Man’s Pants (Al Mader) 3:39-5:54 (2m15)
• Creaking Planks Duo – announcements medley – LIVE! 6:56-10:37 (3m41)
• Creaking Planks Duo – The Girl In The Pink Canoe (Big Rude Jake) – LIVE! 16:14-19.25 (3m11)
• Creaking Planks Duo – Womanizer / Toxic medley (Britney Spears) – LIVE! 22.28-28.28 (6m00)
• Creaking Planks – Kishka Anthem (debut!) 32.06-34.57 (2m49)

We’ve also managed to skip the queue usually involved while waiting for the Accordion Noir folks to post their episodes online as a podcast. It’s here, 12 hours later, and though we don’t have a full track listing (edit: the AN folks do, up at their website, with creative song titling), here’s all the places you can hear four mighty Planks playing their hearts out:

• Creaking Planks Quartet – Accordion Noir theme (Andy Fielding) – LIVE! 0:00-2:32 (2m32)
• Creaking Planks Quartet – Insane in the Membrane (Cypress Hill) – LIVE! 11:07-14:30 (3m23)
• Creaking Planks Quartet – Flatbush Waltz (Andy Statman) – LIVE! 15:03-17:14 (2m13)
• Creaking Planks Quartet – Tanz Tanz Yidelehk – LIVE! 23:47-27:33 (3m46)
• Creaking Planks Quartet – Sometimes All Of The People Aren’t Here All Of The Time – LIVE! 29:39-32:49 (3m10)
• Creaking Planks – Kishka Anthem (studio mix) 33:04-35:53 (2m49)
• Creaking Planks Quartet – Vanha Jatsi Station ID – LIVE! 42:52-43:38 (0m46)
• Creaking Planks Quartet – Psycho Killer (Talking Heads) – LIVE! 44:00-47:41 (3m41)
• Creaking Planks Quartet – the Song of the Count / Bones Bones Bones (Sesame Street) – LIVE! 50:20-56:58 (6m38)

Also eminently worth mentioning — us welching on our word! We were going to take all January off to develop new material for our anniversary show, but we did join the cool cats at Bandidas again for their own anniversary back on Jan 6th. We didn’t promote it since it was their own private party of sorts, but we played the heck out of lots of great songs there. Many happy returns and hope to see you again there next January, Bandidas!

It was a cold, wet, late night at UBC, and as the witching hour approached we wondered if any of our fans would be hearing the three of us make merry music over the airwaves, courtesy of Teddy Smooth and E-roc at CiTR’s CaBaRadio. Maybe not. But still — there’s always the Internet’s long memory (sorry, tail) to fall back on. Thrill as we (eventually) reflect on our origins and quip regarding the recent Accordion Noir Festival! And enjoy three great tunes, including one recently exhumed while Stateside from the ancient past.

Here’s the recording! And here’s the playlist!

• Creaking Planks Trio – Insane in the Membrane (Cypress Hill): 12:57-16:30 (3:33)
• Creaking Planks Trio – CaBaRadio stinger: 16:31-16:40 (0:09)
• Creaking Planks Trio – Kiddie Closer (Nine Inch Nails): 16:41-20:34 (3:53)
• Creaking Planks Trio – (Hit Me) Baby One More Time (Britney Spears): 26:42-29:29 (2:47)

Bonus! Hear us simmer in the background as we promote a different radio station’s affairs!

Picking up on an invitation from former Butchershop Floor cohort Ben Lai, the jug band of the damned convokes at UBC for the first time ever in order to spread our curious musical taint out over the public airwaves (CiTR 101.9 fm or later as a podcast) as the second hour of a special two-hour station fundraising extravaganza installment of the long-running live music radio show Live From Thunderbird Radio Hell. Beware! We go live from 10-11 pm!

Edit! Missed the live broadcast? Fortunately, the show podcasts!

Track listing:

• 1. Dead Man’s Pants (1:31)
• 2. I’m A Lousy Lay (3:58:)
• 3. The Girl In The Pink Canoe (10:31)
• 4. I Want You (But I Don’t Need You) (13:52)
• 5. Rhymin’ And Stealin’ (20:15)
• 6. Fight For Your Right (To Plunder) (23:15)
• 7. Insane In The Membrane (31:33)
• 8. Womanizer / Toxic medley (34:51)
• 9. The Song Of The Count (45:07)
• 10. Kiddie Closer (48:23)

On Friday February 6th, Free Geek Vancouver (one of our now three “house band” arrangements, though admittedly they don’t have incredibly frequent occasions on which to call on us) invited us to do a brief set opening for a speech on copyright and freedom by renowned hacker Richard Stallman at the Maritime Labour Centre.  We rolled out a couple of technological standards (Korobeiniki aka “the Tetris song”, Kraftwerk’s “Computer Love”) as well as a new piece for the occasion (Flanders and Swann’s “the GNU song” — enjoy this rendition by the Muppets!)  Most harrowingly, however, the organizers hoped for us to join the evening’s main speaker for a stirring rendition of his Free Software Song, in the unorthodox time signature of 7/4.  Due to complications, we were unable to secure either a sound check or a moment’s rehearsal with the main attraction, so what follows is a raw document (c/o Alan Zisman, who recorded our whole set — perhaps to be exposed here once it’s recovered) of us bucking up and boldly plunging once more unto the breach.

(The Feb 19th, 2009 episode of Each For All at Co-op Radio used a recording of our Korobeinki rendition to open the episode before discussing Free Software and rebroadcasting Stallman’s lecture.)

Also, cheers to Julie Peters who threw our new, “kid-friendly” rendition of Closer (straight from our CJSF apperance, from one campus station to the next) on the Feb 11th episode of her radio show Audio Text (on CiTR, 101.9 fm) alongside passionate appearances from RC Weslowski, Magpie Ulysses, and Duncan Shields.  If you like, you can download a podcast recording of the episode here — though we only turn up with the one song.  The rest of the crew do their bit to make it a charged, erotic recording that meets its holiday occasion head-on.

Unrelatedly, If anyone out there (I’m looking at you, Portland) has ended up with any early Creaking Planks demo material, would it be possible for you to send us a digital photo of the design and packaging (such as it is)?  We’re perversely interested in putting up a gallery here of merchandise that is essentially unobtainable.  See what you missed?

Building somewhat from the somewhat meagre turnout the previous time we had representation on this show a year ago, Ryan Fletcher kindly invited us back and we now offer a wider selection of Planks for delightful infernal noisemaking from 8 through 8:30 pm, after which we give up the mic for a half-hour to Seva … then jump back in to the song circle from 9 through 9:30, with Sayde Davis Black, Sillken and Vanessa Silva. If you can’t catch the station on the air, you can try to stream its signal online!

Then we’ll be back in a week to play the Highland Pub Monday Feb 2nd… if we have it in us to scale Burnaby Mountain twice in one month! Phew!

Update: Blackbox, Rumblebucket and Cap’n Jack Spare-ribs made it up through the fog and snow and had a gas on the air… then, later, the episode was kindly made available to us. A groomed recording of the show (largely omitting the other guests) will shortly be made available in this very spot (and here it is)! Highlights of the show include:

• 01.22 Dead Man’s Pants
• 08.27 Osasa
• 13.48 Song of the Count
• 18.22 Numbers and Names
• 23.10 our new kid-friendly version of Closer
• 28.14 Insane in the Membrane
• 37.24 Lousy Lover and
• 43:09 Snazzy Portland (guess we shouldn’t have bothered with that kid-friendliness!)

Bonus! Our stalwart horn stepped in to join Sayde Davis Black for a tune, “Livin’ it Right” from 32:12-36:44! Also from 41:01-42:07 we improvise a tune to a public service announcement (a bit of flavour particular to this show) which is unlikely to turn up on any of our set lists despite its distinctive and unmistakable Plankian flavour. All that plus a pile of interviewish remarks and sorry wordplay. Makes you kind of wish you were there… and now, through the miracle of technology, you can be!

Last summer (August 2007), following a kind word from our rare musical saw player par excellence Rusty Sawbones during a recording session at Rave On Studios, the Planks were invited to contribute a tune to the second annual Very Vancouver Christmas SPCA benefit compilation (of which volume three is now available!)  Taking a tip from Andrea Hector’s “Old Mutt For Christmas” the first year around (as well as perennial holiday novelty favorite “I Want A Hippopotamus For Christmas“), during a reading material-less Greyhound trip back from a silent-movie-themed wedding in Washington State, Blackbox drew up a list of holidays and animals associated with them, aiming to distill them down into a document stating a central core thesis: that animals are pals for all year round, not just holidays.

Of course, knowing that everyone else on board would capitalise on the donation of their work to demonstrate their soft-pop radio friendliness, and knowing that even if we tried the Planks could do no such thing, instead we perversely went for contrast and dwelled gleefully glumly in our trademark melancholic sound… but with goofy lyrics, however cogent to the matter at hand.

Our local animal shelters are still earning royalties from our somewhat terrifyingly sloppy recording (second only to the terror of the photoshop jobs that incrementally crammed the entire band into a single frame), so it can’t be dished up for your enjoyment without stealing valuable pennies from the pound (but here’s a fun way you can send some kibble their way!), but Plank alumnnus (and filk superstar!) Strong Brew Lundervillain did record an uncannily spirited version of her own with musical partner John (and here is their website) and here you can even download it.  Gadzooks!

Now, for the first time, if you like you can even have the option of reproducing the tune for yourselves courtesy of one of Blackbox Squeezebeard’s bastard streamlined lyrics/chord arrangements, not entirely dissimilar to the ones the Planks learn all their songs with!

		intro:
 	   A-          D-          E7
 	(I want a hippopotamus for Christmas...)

A-           E7        A-       E7 A-           E7              A-  A7
Never give a puppy for Christmas / Never give a chipmunk in the fall...
D-           A7            D-              E7            F+         E7
Never give a woodchuck for Groundhog day / Never give an octopus at all!
A-           E7       A-    E7 A-           E7           A-     A7
Never give a bunny at Easter / Never give a cat for Valentine's...
  D-                A-  E7 A-           B7            E7              A-     A7
A Passover pig is a bad idea, and don't even think of New Year's porcupines!

 	D-		     A-                        E7                                   A-          A7
 On St. Patrick's Day don't bring in any snakes / St. Patrick drove them out but you can't undo his mistakes...
       D-                             A-                 B7                          E7
 Don't give a caged bald eagle on the day of July 4 / On Hallowe'en a raven we'll be giving NE-VER-MORE...

(two instrumental verses, restart first line of first verse, then)
D-                         A-              E7         F+       E7                             A- D- E7 A-
Never give a woodchuck for Groundhog day / Never, no never, no never, give, an octopus at all!